This reminds me of that terrific quote from "The Internet's Own Boy": "Aaron [Swartz] thought he could change the world just by explaining the world very clearly to people."
What he possibly didn't understand was that the people in power are, indeed, perfectly able to understand the facts, but they can and will simply refuse to do so. Or, as Karl Deutsch once put it so succinctly, and I'm paraphrasing here: "Power means not having to listen."