> Well they kind of are, in that the real perps are not them but folks like the Koch family who fund entire think tanks and counter programming to serve their narrow interests.

The Kochs also fund Nova on PBS which has produced and continues to produce a large amount of in-depth scientifically accurate reporting about climate change.

> People as a whole are not experts in every possible area, nor is everyone universally smart

But there are experts and there are smart people who write about what they experts say. Someone doesn't have to be either an expert themself or smart themself to realize that they should try to find what those experts and those smart people think in important areas so they can better choose politicians who will handle policy in those areas correctly.

A heck of a lot of voters put in less effort looking into competing claims of rival Presidential candidates than they do to check out the claims of rival manufacturers when they want to buy an air fryer.

Yes, the politicians that do bad things should be blamed, but I'm also going to blame the people who voted for them if the politicians said they would do those things and even a little research by the voter would have turned up that those things are bad.