Actually we do know. It’s safe to say that conspiracies involving a lot of actors are mathematically impossible.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Statistically improbable is different from mathematically impossible. It’s also much less improbable when the people involved have to join through rituals like government classification designations.
Again, government programs regularly involve much more than a 1000 people and are known to be kept secret for decades. These programs are clearly conspiracies.
You can believe what you want of course, but from my POV when the discussion ends up in non-falsifiability land, you might as well talk about the existence of God or Santa Claus, an interesting discussion for sure, but not one that can yield any useful insight.
But to be honest, a conspiracy of some kind could be an explanation, who knows.
For some people, there are substantial tangible, material benefits to dumbing down society.
For example, the "gangster rapper" stereotype is pushed aggresively by the music industry. The popularity of "gangster rap" results in "gangster" aesthetics becoming fashionable, even among law abiding people who are not gangsters. However, when people see a person that resembles the "gangster" stereotype (purely based on their attire) pushed by the entertainment industry, they will be more likely to call 911, eventually resulting in an innocent person being killed for no valid reason. Is this a racist conspiracy? who knows.
Likewise, oversexualization results in people having unplanned kids, causing them to ultimately become poor, and more susceptible to predatory loans, low wages, political manipulation and all the machinery that exists only to abuse the poor. Similar to anti-intellectualism.
And then, glorification of violence, competition, non-compliance, etc... this just makes people very divisive, and in order to dominate a large population you want them to be as divided as possible, and constantly distracted with immaterial disputes while you lobby the government.
So, yeah... it could be a conspiracy. It is very profitable to make people vulnerable and susceptible to manipulation and abuse. Especially political manipulation, which is already prominent in American journalism.
It kind of resembles the psychological warfare techniques used by the Soviets (i.e.: ideological subversion). https://youtu.be/IQPsKvG6WMI?t=60