I’ve extremely confused as to why you wouldn’t know what is factual and what is not factual? Do you not have a brain? Did they not teach you how to determine fact from fiction at school?

It’s really easy. If you step outside of your home, and you see a gate, a street, etc. it’s very likely that the gate and street are real. Those are facts.

Well, yes, some people do trust other people and hand over their power to them. Why is that? Laziness? Don’t want to do the work themselves?

There are also many indepedent, highly objective media sources. If you want to find them, you simply google them. And you stop watching TV. You throw you TV away.

Your final comment “So, to conclude, let’s please dispense with claims to absolute truth, objective facts, and so on” is a load of garbage. Science wouldn’t work if nothing could be proven factually. Our entire modern world — technology, planes that fly in the sky, computers that work, are all based on factual information. None of it would work if it wasn’t factual.