Humans were never rational actors. It is a fallacy to expect to reason with us.
We can be trained and conditioned to operate that way, but it goes against our feral animal nature.
Propaganda wins because there are people who want to believe it. At a base level, they do not care if their ideas are real. They only want it to feel real. They want to be lied to.
Give them access to 24/7 news, and then social media. Most the public’s brains are straight up cooked. Team sports dialed to 11.