Being dumb or not is completely irrelevant here. Capitalist countries governments are merely the comittees to organise the bourgeoise state, and capitalism run on one and only one principle: more profit.
You don’t have to be an idiot or insane to be fooled by effective messaging ...
i'm convinced that this is the weakest point of any leftist message; when you tell people that they've succumbed to propanganda, they hear: "you're so stupid that propaganda works on you" and it incenses them against listening to anything further.