Academic Adam Mastroianni at his substack makes the case that the somewhat common-sense observation that most people are stupid, is plain wrong. Psychology has a field dealing with cognitive errors, errors of thinking, and there are a lot of them. People get fooled by a number of puzzles, even the so-called educated. Sure, but making mistakes does not indicate mass stupidity. Mastroianni goes on to point out that if the masses really were stupid, then how could the human race have survived the extreme hardships of the past? Point taken, but no-one is proposing that people are totally dysfunctional. I think the observation running through much Dissent Right and anti-vax social criticism, is that people are easily manipulated and stampeded into obedience. It would be foolish to ignore the fact of mass compliance by the majority of people with the Covid mandates, which were unprecedented. Yet, as China showed, even the most compliant races have their breaking point, where resistance follows, so there is hope of change.
https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-radical-idea-that-people-arent