They did a really good job on ads. Don’t look up how much they spent just on fooling the population.
people are really stupid
Wrong. People are generally intelligent.
Propaganda is just very effective, even against intelligent people, and most people don't have the extra time/energy or desire to investigate each prop. Which is a structural failure to not prioritize it, but that's the point. There are systems in place to make political research feel both not important and also very exhausting. You live in a society full of very intelligent people, a slice of those intelligent people use their positions of power to add layers upon layers of friction to the political system so that they can retain their power.
You are not surrounded by idiots, but, you ARE ruled by criminals.