I see this idea everywhere, that people who fall for fascism or MAGA must not be intelligent enough because no intelligent person could fall for that. This goes beyond just wanting to call MAGA dumb, which is not the issue.

This is effectively a thought terminating cliche, because we are lead to assume that nothing can be done about a person’s intelligence.

There are all kinds of people in the MAGA movement. The commonality between them all is a refusal to use their critical thinking skills or in some cases a lack of those skills altogether.

Anyone can learn to think critically. We need to examine our neoliberal society to understand why people haven’t or more often than not are refusing to think critically. And we need to encourage others to do the same.