I replied to rd about this same thing, but I'll do it here too: One has always been able to find the lunatic fringe, if you wanted to. The climate change deniers. The flat earthers. The trickle-down economics believers. The anti-vaxxers.

They always existed, but were pretty much totally ineffectual at expanding their message and base of believers. It was always the same 9 loonies showing up and spouting the same weirdo beliefs or long-debunked "facts".

The fact of the matter is that all the bitching and moaning about government regulation stifling business, and all that baseless bullshit, was proven universally to be wrong, and everyone knew it. We let them froth and fume and spout, but those of us who grew up in LA knew that we no longer have to check the news to see if the smog level is low enough that it is safe to play outside. We know that the acid rain that would burn your skin and kill plants and trees doesn't happen any more. We know that we - even in Flint, MI - have far better, healthier water coming into our homes that at any time in history.

These are all simple, demonstrable facts, and the changes are directly due to the regulation of the industries that polluted our common resources.

And during that time? The US economy has seen growth and innovation and stock values reach levels that we simply couldn't even conceive of previously.

So we had data. We looked at the data, debated the methodology used to generate and analyze it, and made decisions based on that data.

Now our government is being run by people who base their policy decisions on made up shit by an entertainment cable channel and a truly unhinged blogger.