Actually, I think that most people are not stupid...and that's true everywhere...but if they simply don't have adequate information or if they are provided with a steady flow of misleading or false information...then they become ignorant. "Ignorant" does not mean "stupid". It just means you don't know something you need to know, that's all.

The American public is kept ignorant by their politicians and their mass media, and that's all that is required in order to effectively control a people. Just keep them ignorant, control the flow of information to maintain that degree of ignorance, and you can shape public opinion any way you want to shape it.

You can get a majority of the people to enthusiastically support policies that are directly opposed to their own real interests...if they don't understand the situation, due to ignorance of what is actually going on and ignorance of the possible alternatives.