When I was in college I worked at a fedex print center for a few months. There was a lady that had worked there forever. Middle aged, less than 5’ tall, obese, chain smoker. She told me that she had recently had her 4th heart attack and her doctor told her she needed to quit smoking, but her mother smoked her whole life and was fine, and that was evidence enough for her that the doctor was wrong about her needing to quit.
We had a scale for adding up the change in the registers. You just put your coins on it and it told you the value. It died and was replaced with a centrifugal change counter/sorter. The first night that I was closing up after we got the new counter I suddenly hear banging and screaming in the back. I run back and this lady is screaming that something is wrong with the change counter. I look at it and she had not only put her loose change in it, but also all of the rolled coins as well, which had obviously banged around in the machine, some flung out, some split open. I said Mary you’re just supposed to put the loose change in there, not the rolls. And her immediate reaction was that I was wrong because Sue told her to put in all of her change.
That was the first time I remember being dumbstruck by just how fucking stupid people can be, just completely unable to comprehend basic life and unable to accept someone challenging something they believe.
That woman is probably closer to the average intelligence of our electorate than most assume. A massive segment of the voters in this country have absolutely zero capacity to make informed decisions about politics.