News From Barbaria: John Stuart Mill's Singular Epiphany: In Our Public Discourse, It Is High Time To Acknowledge That Stupid (And/Or Ignorant) People Are A Real -- And Powerful -- Political Constituency. (As A Sequel To Mill's Insight, I Direct You To The Pioneering Work Of Spanish Philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset... Who Earned Bob Dylan's Praise)

Alan Archibald

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American right-wingers have become ideological contortionists who routinely use cherry-picked shards of decontextualized truth to tell ENORMOUS LIES. 

As always happens when contemplating America's Idiocracy, I recall John Stuart Mills' observation: "While it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives."

Most American conservatives, and virtually all Trump cultists DO NOT WANT TO LEARN.

Nor do they want to engage education and learning in any open-handed way.

Rather, to the limited extent that conservatives use data, they use carefully chosen "bits of truth" for the primary purpose of confirming their prejudices, 

They are - emphatically - NOT making a bona fide attempt to discover "the fullness of Truth."
The Incipient Unraveling Of The Western World As Seen By Visionary Spanish Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1929)https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-incipient-unraveling-of-western.html

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Alan Archibald

Here is John Stuart Mill's fully contextualized quotation concerning stupid people's nearly universal inclination to be adherents of political conservatism (with a bit of introduction):

After describing Mill’s great virtues and accomplishments, including gaining the admiration of William E. Gladstone, often an opponent, Marshall Cohen, continues: —

In reply to an attack made upon him by Sir John Pakington for calling the Conservative party “the stupid party,” Mill, admitting the phrase to occur in his Representative Government, went on to say, “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. (N.B. Definition of Sciolism: The practice of expressing opinions on something which one knows only superficially or has little real understanding of; also, shallow or superficial knowledge; (countable) an instance of this. Sciolism - Wiktionary) Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power” [xxxiii/xxxiv].

Bibliography

Mill, John Stuart. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill: Ethical, Political and Religious. Marshall Cohen, ed. New York: Modern Library, 1961.