It’s even worse than being uninformed, it’s being purposely misinformed, by politicians who have trained large parts of the public to ignore facts and listen to them instead. I need to go re-read 1984 while I still can.
By politicians who have trained large parts of the public to ignore facts and listen to them instead
I would argue that particular surrogacy was handled by religion in the US, especially fundamentalist evangelicalism.
For religions of this kind, belief without evidence, and especially contrary to evidence, is virtuous, the purest form of devotion — blessed is he who believes without seeing — and it’s not a big leap from spiritual authority to political.
Politicians didn’t have to do any training, unfortunately. We trained ourselves.
Edit: made exception for mindfulness religions, my apologies