The problem with elevating yourself by tearing down the existing authoritative institutions is that once you succeed, you've established a road map for others to tear you down, too. There will always be someone waiting in the wings with an even juicier conspiracy theory, an even zanier hidden truth, an even more intricate data-unskewing method — and there's no longer any authority left to debunk any of it.

This is how a democracy crumbles: not with a bang, but with data trutherism.

==============================

First, I'd like to begin quoting from Hayek's Nobel acceptance speech which is ever appropriate for this moment:

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, "dizzy with success", to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

Now secondly let's dispense with this notion that this trend in distrust of government is new and totally partisan.

http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/

Trust in government has been consistently falling thru the years . . . with the partisan aspect of it flipping depending on who controls the WH.  Dems distrust it more when Bush was in.  Pubs less when Bush was in.  That seems tribal.  But there is more going on.  As government has assumed more and more of the economy, more and more control over people's lives . . . and began to fail at the doing . . . it has become apparent to many that distrust is warranted.

Let's begin with a simple data point the government puts out . . . like this morning on NPR.  "Core inflation" is falling.  When they take out food and gas . . . the things people spend most of their money on besides static things like mortgages . . . food and gas are rising.  So in the face of RISING inflation of the things most impressed into people's buying experience we are told inflation is falling.  Now this is not some academic activity since Bernie's helicopter gets put into play based on such things.  And then of course most of the "income inequality" of which we are beaten about the head is caused by free money policies. 

Let's take another . . . unemployment.  The other of those benchmarks upon which Bernie's helicopter gets put into play (for decades it seems).  Now we are told "unemployment" is fine . . . it's back to where is was and we're peachy keen.  Well except that total employment as a % of the population has NOT recovered.  Which of these is a more realistic assessment of what is going on and what would affect the total economy?

Let's dispense with the pretense that government knows all and that all its "data" is useful or even necessary.  Let's also dispense with the notion that any other "fact" that others might obtain is somehow "shadow" unless sanctioned by government.

The "data" is used as a club to beat into submission anyone that would question the policies of the person pushing the data . . . to call into question their attempt to control.  We live in a complex world where we pretend we understand all the variables . . . it is just as dangerous to democracy to accept this Pretense of Knowledge without skepticism.