Agreed. If we're using education and related achievements as a barometer for "not idiots", the American ruling class are hardly uneducated dimwits. Those at the highest rungs of power in politics, academia and the mass media are almost without exception highly educated graduates of top institutes. If they fail, that's clearly on them, and not the "idiot tribe".

They are all victims. Nonetheless, the unfortunate reality is that the state persists precisely because this idiocy broadly holds.