The issue is in the discourse that's leveled against the average person. Its not scientific or data centric, its tribalistic and designed to appeal to emotion over rational logic. As you note, there are smart people who can take all the existing information about the world, read up on political theories and make their own conclusions from available evidence and data. These rationalists are not most people, unfortunately.
Others don't learn such critical thinking and research skills. These people act very much like humans have acted for a millennia, appealing to their trusted shaman or chief as the source of truth rather than a careful, individual assessment of the available evidence. They think in terms of emotion.
Then there is a third group of people who are aware of both groups of people. They use the rational people to research actionable data, and use the science of propaganda to convince the emotional masses to support whatever is useful for this third group in terms of amassing more resources, or more power to later amass more resources.
I'm not sure how we get out of this rut as a species to be honest. As the famous quote goes, you can't rationalize someone out of a perspective they didn't rationalize themselves into.
What a thoughtful response and I think that you’ve done a fantastic job at summarizing the crux of the issue
Namely, that idealized human organizational structures require every citizen to have a level of dedication and persistent scrutiny, education, etc... that would allow for sustainment of a society. This is every Greek philosopher ever saying that education is the key to democracy
Further, because this is the case, societies have tendencies (as we know from history) to lurch around following leaders who exploit this epistemological gap
I fear that you’re correct in the sense that this is not a tractable problem
History shows it's been overcome. It just requires dedicated work, just as it has in labor movements in the United States, and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and the precursors to it.
But you're absolutely right, it takes work to create the environment these ideas can take hold.
I think while it's tempting to suggest education will solve it, its a biological/social impossibility as well. Many people go through the same curriculum but outcomes are very different for various reasons such as underlying cognitive abilities or the presence of other external factors in your life (e.g. having to work part time to support ones self, an abusive stressful household).
This issue is probably why the founding fathers wanted to put guardrails over who is eligible to vote in effort to select for a population that is more likely to be able to interpret legal issues (white, presumably educated landowners presumably familiar with reading contracts and conducting business).
This of course runs into the typical issues around disenfranchisement, since the representative government favors voters (and especially donors as these campaigns are unfortunately donor financed) and their issues over nonvoters. Kamala Harris was just in Brentwood over the weekend with the job of soliciting donations with the wealthy democratic donor base vs. being a VPOTUS, and I find that a little bit unsavory considering we don't even need to have campaigning to have an effective government at all, in theory. It only serves to give those with money an unequal influence on the political process relative to the rest of the electorate.
Others don't learn such critical thinking and research skills. These people act very much like humans have acted for a millennia, appealing to their trusted shaman or chief as the source of truth rather than a careful, individual assessment of the available evidence. They think in terms of emotion.
Then there is a third group of people who are aware of both groups of people. They use the rational people to research actionable data, and use the science of propaganda to convince the emotional masses to support whatever is useful for this third group in terms of amassing more resources, or more power to later amass more resources.
I'm not sure how we get out of this rut as a species to be honest. As the famous quote goes, you can't rationalize someone out of a perspective they didn't rationalize themselves into.