The long and short answer is: there has been a terrible collapse in the intellectual life of the average American person. Note that "education" is not a prereq

The long and short answer is: there has been a terrible collapse in the intellectual life of the average American person. Note that "education" is not a prerequisite for a rich intellectual life. In the pre-industrial era, yeoman craftsmen (think Paul Revere) would hire a person to read them history and literature while they worked. In the early industrial era, factory workers imitated this tradition and also published/read dozens of leaflets we might call newspapers. Because this active intellectual life produced crazy ideas like "maybe let's do a union", it was quietly eliminated. As time passes, we are increasingly conditioned to respond only to "expert" opinion (always conclusory, never persuasive), or emotionally potent oversimplifications intended to manipulate opinion in a particular direction. When you condition a population to respond to propaganda, and only propaganda, you get predicable consequences. The remedy is to encourage critical thought by socially rewarding activities like reading and reasoned dissent. Reasoned dissent is particularly unwelcome in communities of highly credentialed "intellectuals". Could you imagine the Federalist / Anti-Federalist debate playing out today? It's unthinkable.