One thing I noticed in the comments was that many readers are cynical about the wrong things. They think all politicians do this; that every president has increased the deficit; and hence that there's no difference between Trump/McConnell and others. All of this is false 1/
In reality, both the Clinton and the Obama administrations were very honest on policy issues -- you can't, as far as I can tell, find any examples of gaslighting on the scale that is standard in today's GOP 2/
Clinton and Obama were also both quite fiscally responsible -- maybe too responsible. Clinton oversaw a big fall in the deficit; Obama inherited a big deficit and an economy that needed deficit spending, but brought deficits way down thereafter 3/
And Obamacare was very carefully paid for -- which is why it didn't blow up the deficit. So by being cynical about "all politicians", you're actually failing to give credit where it's due, and thus enabling the bad guys. In other words, you're part of the problem.4/
