The rhetoric that politicians are idiots and they don't know what they're doing is also damaging, because it makes people assume stupidity rather than malice.

But it is malice. The incompetence is real, make no mistake, but malice is in fact the end goal.

Never believe that anti-Semites [read: fascists] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

I'd say educational system, or better, it's downfall through decades, plays a significant role in making population dumb enough to not see through these constant lies.