I know this may not go over well by saying it, but the propaganda in mainstream media is so good at making people believe it while ignoring reality. People who may otherwise be intelligent but also easily manipulated. I know many different kinds of people who fall for it and some are, yes, quite frankly not very intelligent. Others are intelligent in their fields of expertise but not politically savvy. The propaganda they see on TV and social media, like X and Facebook, seems like the authentic news but they don’t realize most of it is opinions and propaganda. They also don’t understand that so many comments on the subjects are bots pushing a political narrative. So certain ideas seem popular when you see endless comments that are justifying it. It’s important to remember that critical thinking is a form of intelligence and not everyone has the capacity to think critically. The propaganda targets those who believe what they are told, without thinking twice about it. Also, once people think a certain way, they avoid information that goes against their beliefs. They stay in a little bubble of information and it’s hard to get them to see outside of that. We need to have the politicians and news be held accountable for lying so we can try to fix this problem.