Discussion on how smart people / people with high IQ get brainwashed

Short version: discuss thoughts on how/why highly intelligent people wind up brainwashed, vaxxtatds, sheeple, etc

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So I just visited with a friend I grew up with. She was in the gifted and talented program with me and I can attest that she is exceptionally intelligent. She is a doctor (psychiatrist). She was talking about how "Trump gave her PTSD"

I can see the media manipulation, propaganda and brainwashing from a fucking mile away. I do grasp that most people seem to prefer not to think for themselves, but I just don't get how so many people, especially highly intelligent people, can be so easily bamboozled.

I say this knowing that I am basically "among my people" ... I know that MOST of you, like me, can see through the bullshit. So I'm not trying to brag here, but genuinely in the interest of hearing your thoughts on why people who possess the intelligence to theoretically be able to see the world for what it is, instead fall into the same trap that seems to me should be reserved for retards only.


I have noticed that REBELLIOUS people tend to be the group who most consistently seemed to know to avoid the vax, to question authority, to recognize that the mainstream media is pure propaganda. So my theory is that there is a segment of society which is effectively "immune" from the brainwashing, but that this occurs mainly because these people, somewhere along the line made a conscious choice to think for themselves, to not blindly follow the heard and to do what is right/logical even if that is not what is EASY.

I will also add that almost to the T, every highly intelligent sheeple that I have encounter has been a hardcore liberal, and live surrounded by liberals, have liberal families, etc. So this would point towards a peer pressure explanation.

My thoughts on the brainwashed smart people is that these are the people the learned to play the game, do their homework, kiss up to the teacher, etc because generally life rewards those traits, and somewhere along the line those behavioral patterns overtook their natural intelligence to the point where individual that is (generally) not rewarded by our society, OBEDIENCE is, and like a lab test monkey that will push the morphine button until it dies because the reward system has over-ridden their common sense and survival instincts.


Thanks for reading, if you have thoughts on the topic I would love to these them. This is a topic I find fascinating. I do "get" why these people get bamboozled, but there is also a part of me that is just flabbergasted at how stupid our society is and as a result how people who have relatively or even exceptionally high IQ can still be manipulated by something that seems to me (and probably to you) to be painfully obvious.