In fact... more to the point... Remember how nuts things got around here in 99? In the lead-up to "Y2K" things got positively *brutal*. It was just plain crazy... so much so that it was finally the thing that pushed me over the edge to register and fight with some of the nutbars that were posting all of their end-of-the-world crapola.
In some ways... things may have changed, but it many ways they have not. In crises, the fringes seem to control the dialog. We just have to speak up.
Then there's the badgers...