The default way that rank and file Democrats think of MAGA voters is that they are “stupid,” by which they mean low IQ. While it is true that MAGA voters are typically poorly educated (Trump: “I love the poorly educated”) (2/3 of MAGA voters are NOT college educated, while half of Democratic voters are college educated), that does not make them stupid. Intelligence may correlate with education but not in a causal way. In addition, my own definition of stupidity is stupid by choice (“don’t bother me with facts, my mind is already made up”), not by low IQ. And stupid by choice (let’s call is “operational stupidity”) is much more pernicious than stupid by low IQ. A clinical word that describes this way of thinking is “confirmation bias” (“I will only listen to news sources that support my own beliefs”). But does confirmation bias belong only to MAGA voters? Hell, no! A MAGA voter listens to Truth Social and Fox News, but a liberal voter listens to MSNBC and late night talk TV. Not only is confirmation bias not restricted to MAGA voters, but it seems to be universal among humans. So, maybe we are all kinda stupid, apparently no one likes admitting he was wrong! Or likes to THINK, rather than react!
