The Illusion of Knowledge

What was it, precisely, that brought us from where we were as few as ten years ago to where we are now?  The universality of the Internet?  The advent of Trump?

How did we come to a point where a plumber or a bus driver has come to think he knows more than climate scientists do about global warming, or epidemiologists know about COVID-19?

Whatever its cause, we have lost something extremely valuable in the process.