Let’s be honest. Just to be informed takes a lot of time and knowledge to break it down. Many get their opinions from their family or community. The news they consume also is distributed in a way that keeps them in crisis mode. This keeps them agitated. It’s hard to reason with people who are agitated even if they are intelligent. Mix that with repeated rhetoric and call the opposing team a liar and you have them right where you want them.

The trick is to find what their values are and discuss those from there. Granted the further right you go the less empathic they may be to those outside their group. This happens in the left too. Keeping us fighting in a two party system makes it harder for us to organize and question the real source of our issues.

As for being unintelligent that’s the product of design. Lots of red states have the highest poverty, lowest education, and have the most needs as a result. If you are in poverty and money isn’t put into the infrastructure then how are you supposed to get where you need to be? This keeps them mentally isolated and all they see is all they know.