political candidates with no political experience?

Local politics were always kind of like this.

But state level and national politics have devolved to this level mainly because of new technology, and particularly the internet.

Prior to the internet, professional journalists were the primary source of information and they had ethical standards to present information factually.

Since the internet, Uncle Joe Bob can start a blog or just go on facebook and reach thousands of people people.

Americans have always been anti-intellectual and kind of stupid, but we had access to high quality information. This allowed the public to make fairly educated decisions in our democracy.

Since the internet, the signal-to-noise ratio of information has gone to shit. A functional democracy depends on a well informed public. We don't really have that anymore.

I am not saying the cable news era was perfect, but it cultivated a completely different sort of information environment where educated journalists functioned as gatekeepers of information. This largely kept more extremist and unhinged viewpoints out of the public discourse.

The internet is the worst thing to ever happen to our democracy.