“I used to spend 90 percent of my constituent response time on people who call, e-mail, or send a letter” about some real issue, he told The New Yorker. His typical constituent back in the 2000s had an opinion about “actual legislation. Ten percent were about ‘Chemtrails from airplanes are poisoning me’ to every other conspiracy theory that’s out there. And that has essentially flipped on its head,” he said, during the last dozen years or so. Now only a small fraction of the messages from constituents are “based on something that is mostly true. It’s dramatically changed politics and
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