The events of the past week in Washington DC have spurred many to become philosophical -  to search for meaning in the chaos that unfolded real time on our screens.Regardless of what you may have debated in undergrad humanities class, there actually are objective realities. Not everything is a construct. Not everything is someone's opinion. Facts do exist.Here are just a few:Anthropogenic climate change. Social inequality, and systemic racism. Joe Biden's electoral victory. The protective power of masks and other PPE during a pandemic. The efficacy of a vaccine. The pandemic itself.These are not merely beliefs. They exist, whether they are believed or not. A patient denying the existence of COVID-19 even as it relentlessly strangles him does not negate the existence of the disease. (That sort of denial, reported by medical personnel, is happening daily in our hospitals).In the here and now of our society, though, everything, including the facts listed above, has become arguable. The argument itself is not new; the debate in our public square has always been loud and fractious. The difference today is that it once turned on a commonly agreed-to set of facts. It no longer does.There are all sorts of reasons  that we no longer have a common point of reference to process information, but the main culprits should no longer be in any doubt. The forty fifth president of the United States, his enablers, and his access to the force amplifier of social media.Trump test-drove his strategy with the “birther” campaign. At his provocation, millions of Americans succumbed to the notion that President Barack Obama was born abroad, probably in Africa, and was therefore an illegitimate president. Never mind reality, and the existence of his birth certificate in the Hawaii state archives.What followed was a systematic massacre of facts, orchestrated in the nation's highest office.  Shared, self-evident truths ceased to exist in America. Allegations supplanted evidence. And there are no longer any arbiters. Journalism is deeply suspect; Trump's relentless “fake news” chant worked, at least with his followers. Even judges are fused in the public mind with the political party of the president who nominated them.This national unmooring culminated with the president denying the fact of his opponent's victory, and the rally on the Ellipse, and the mob heading off to the Capitol, incited by speeches and tweets about victory through strength and trial by combat, and conspiracies.By the time they began scaling barriers and smashing windows and attacking police, nearly everyone was their enemy, from the news media to state governments to the entire judiciary, all the way up to Trump's own vice-president and the Republican leadership in Congress.Now, they face opprobrium, and shame. Many of them will be charged and tried criminally. President Trump, having cynically whipped them up and used them and congratulated them, has abandoned them, at least for now.But are they any more willing to accept facts? Quite the opposite, unfortunately. Many regard the storming of the Capitol as a signal, galvanizing event for what they regard as their patriotic resistance.We have a problem. Seventy one million of us voted for the president who sent the mob against Congress. They remain angry, inchoate, uninterested in any facts but their own.And when there are no shared facts, there can be no system of justice, no scientific basis to policy. There can't even be a sensible conversation. Democracy is deprived of its glue.I am not a social scientist. Business is my wheelhouse, and I want to point out here that many North American businesses, historically conservative and focused principally on shareholder value, are entering civil discourse in new ways, refusing to accept this fact-free reality.In 2017, after Trump famously equated the actions of white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va., he was forced to dissolve his business advisory councils when CEOs resigned from the bodies in disgust.“Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville,” said Campbell Soup chief executive Denise Morrison.In 2019, after multiple exits by member companies over several years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce effectively abandoned its climate change skepticism.That same year, led by 181 CEOs, the U.S. Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation. It recognized that the traditional principle of shareholder primacy had left behind entire sections of the workforce, and replaced it with a new principle: the duty to support a strong and sustainable economy, a healthy environment, and economic opportunity for all.This is not just talk.When some Americans were scorning the Black Lives Matter movement and refusing to accept the reality of the coronavirus pandemic, business leaders confronted both issues with seismic seriousness. Executives decided rapidly and cohesively that accommodations had to be made and action taken, for reasons not of profit and growth, but old fashioned civic duty.Business leaders understand that  prosperity and growth and, yes, peace depend, among other things, on an agreed-upon set of facts.I cannot offer an immediate solution. America's divisions are too entrenched. But I do know we must seek the solution, and I submit that business - hard-headed, bottom-line business – will play a role in advancing that discussion.And advance it we must. Facts and truth are not just real, they are foundational.Maryscott (Scotty) Greenwood is a Washington-based specialist in Canada/US relations and a partner at Crestview Strategy. She is CEO of the Canadian American Business Council. As a former political appointee in the Clinton administration, Greenwood served as chief of staff at the US Embassy in Ottawa.