STUPIDITY AND IGNORANCE

August 2026

Yes, we're talking about Trump's voters. A lot of analysts keep saying he is losing support over this or that issue, but you shouldn't believe it. When the election comes the Republicans will vote and it will be for him - for who and what he wants.

Why does he have a bedrock block of approval nation-wide in the high thirties? Why does this never drop? Indeed, given who he is and what he has done, why hasn't this fallen to single digits?

We're talking millions of people who support him, so there must be a lot of reasons. But the explanations given most often are stupidity, and ignorance.

It is easy to conflate these but they are actually quite different. For a proper appraisal of Trump's voters we have to start with this.

Stupidity (more politely, less mentally capable) is when you simply cannot understand a subject. Ignorance is when you don't grasp it because you have never learned it, but if you had received the correct education you would understand.

There are different types of intelligence but for cognition, using the prefrontal cortex, most people from average IQ on up should be able to understand most things. Humans are smart. The number of people who have real intellectual difficulties is small.

Ignorance, on the other hand, applies to everyone. There are so many things to learn that there simply isn't enough time. As a result, we - even the geniuses - are ignorant of - uninformed about - many different things.

Most Trump voters are likely at or just below average intelligence. But they should be smart enough to recognize his lies. That they don't reflects ignorance, indeed, different types of ignorance, and the factors which underlie them.

It is well documented that the bulk of Trump's voters are not well-educated. They did not receive proper schooling, so they did not learn how things work and also how to decipher the world on their own. This in turn is linked to the fact that for many of them their parents also were poorly educated. So they were raised in uninformed households and where the information vacuum was filled with mis- and disinformation by their family and friends (peer pressure); organized institutions, notably the government and religion; and the media.

It is a triple whammy. The ignorance is not only a consequence of background, it is enforced by social leaders, not the least of which is Fox News (and the modern Internet equivalents). Fox is designed to hold its viewers' attention and then to reinforce their weak and poorly developed intelligence by presenting a never-ending stream of lies. It is no wonder few people can escape. The pressure to believe from all these sources is enormous.

Finally, this is all tied together in the message that this is "who we are"; "who you are." To see through the smoke and mirrors you have to accept that you and the people who told you what to believe were wrong. You have to leave your social network behind. But the next barrier is that you can't replace your family and in many instances your friends. So you either keep believing the lies or you go to their social occasions but bite your tongue.

This is it: the condition of the core Trump voter. They are not abnormally stupid but the intelligence they do have has been degraded through a lifetime of negative social indoctrination. And this reinforces one thing above all others: tribal identity. We are "us" and everyone else is "them," and "they" are the enemy.

What we are looking at is the fundamental structure of a cult, and which only required a leader to be complete. Donald Trump, conman and criminal extraordinaire, possibly the very worst American ever, fit the bill.

Cult members know they are cult members, and they have been brainwashed to be proud of it. They know they are ignorant and they are proud of that, too. The most important thing for them is the tribe, belonging to their group. They will sacrifice anything for that: their lives; their money; their children; and their family members who learn the truth. So when you ask will they tick a box in an election to back their leader the answer is, without hesitation. Even when they have realized he is a terrible person, a monster, and a demented monster at that. But they will still vote for or with him, because he is their monster.

Personally, I feel sorry for them. They live in fear, of other people, of change, and of the future. Fear is a terrible thing, and to have it dominate your life must be a living hell. Nonetheless, they are destroying our country and unlike say the Hungarians they refuse to wake up. Or, perhaps in some cases they are awake, and they know how bad their leaders are, but they like them precisely because of this. Fox taught them to be afraid and angry and full of hate, and now they love it - the hate. They will back anyone who validates their hate. For the individuals in this category, they aren't stupid or ignorant. They're evil.