I know what you mean because my skin crawls every time I see intelligent people studying how to actually get through to stupid people. There has been a movement among science educators to figure this out, sparked by the realization that “just showing people the data doesn’t work.”

Unfortunately, some have really self-flagellated on this, saying it’s an arrogant approach: “the only reason you don’t agree with me is you don’t have enough information.”

I have trouble feeling bad for giving people information.

But I do applaud the effort to figure out what will work here. We can’t be squeamish about tricks and framing devices when the forces of evil are more than willing to firehose the public with emotional propaganda.

I guess the news here isn’t that propaganda works, but that propaganda works for the truth, too.