Honestly I thought you were aiming for the more notable criticism: if you consider yourself a smart person but then say you "don't know how the government works

Honestly I thought you were aiming for the more notable criticism: if you consider yourself a smart person but then say you "don't know how the government works" then you're just too lazy to find out (or uninterested in challenging your pre-conceptions). It is possible, to an enormous level of detail because none of it is secret, to understand how the apparatus of state works - very little of the whole is actually off-limits.