The thing is, these people aren’t all dumb, its just that fear is sometimes a more powerful motivator for education. In highschool I wrote a paper on vaccines and played devil’s advocate in order to get a much better grade. I figured my “facts” wouldn’t suffice and intellect (in a school with a high gpa requirement) would shine through, but to my horror I had actually convinced about the whole class that vaccines were bad. We watched a documentary on it and I explained that I used fear to convince them and only after myself and the teacher explained as much as we could did We undo the damage. Fear is a powerful tool that can shake the very foundation of one’s intellect. Do not underestimate it.