There in lies the issue. Democracy is a numbers game. And the smarts seem to be outnumbered. If Trump doesn’t kill us, climate change will. Despite an abundance of frank, clear, damning information about the dangers of both. As for increasing the smarts ranks; the American people chose the guy who wants to dismantle the department of education over the guy who wanted student loan debt forgiveness. Meanwhile, we’re using what precious remaining time we have left to act on preventing global cataclysm to argue about what bathroom people use.

The paradox is that less intelligent people are more excitable. So what we get is smart, civilized peope with no balls, and dumb energetic people willing to kamikaze. You can’t reason with unreasonable people, and unreasonable people see no reason to reflect on their actions. It’s a dangerous feedback loop that has put us on a collision course with collapse.

Edit: long story short, hot take, the smart people need to figure out a way to attract more dumb people.