most people are too dumb to not be force fed auch tropes.

It has nothing to do with intelligence. We all eat from the trough of propaganda and we all have our biases. Even (perhaps especially) those of us who think we’re above it.

Call me elitist if you’d like.

I’d call you naive. At some point, we have the information we’re given and we can only make decisions based on that much.

Garbage in, garage out, no matter how clever you are.