Peter Thiel explicitly sided with Sauron in an interview, because “things work in Mordor, while outside Mordor it's all wishy-washy and environmental”.

I wonder if this is a “Star Trek is a conservative show” sort of thing. Like he’s genuinely not smart enough to actually understand what is right in front of him.

That is exactly what this is, conservatives pride themselves on having a toddler's sense of media literacy, especially the men.

It is a reoccuring pattern enough that I have seen multiple video essays on the general topic that try to unpack the different reasons because it is so confounding from the perspective of being a normal well adjusted adult.

I think it is a part of the same core thing as conservative humor being embarassingly bad, formulaic, weirdly cruel to specific groups and just plain not funny almost as a rule.