This was never an intelligence issue. This is a trust issue. By design and evolution, most humans will believe what they are told by the people closest to them. This is an imperative survival tactic that has been hacked and exploited by the current regime. This entire issue has been politicized into a very effective divide and conquer tactic.
Consider for a moment that the only reason you find yourself in your current position is by way of pure chance. If every single person you trusted was spinning another story this whole simulation could have played out quite differently. Most people are trusting followers by design. It's not a flaw, it's a feature.
No it isn't - morons believe whatever shit they are told... that is an intelligence issue.
Or even in the middle ground, delegate too much authority to some trusted people without a healthy balance of exercising their own thinking and discernment.
All fair points. Though still, is it not a question of intelligence to blindly trust people rather than investing the time in digging for a full spectrum of perspectives and using your capacities for deriving conclusions based on a balance of trust and one innate’s guidance reinforced through what’s found in unbiased due diligence of one’s own?