It's not that people are unable to understand, it's that understanding isn't part of the game. It's about group membership and a lot of that is about knowing the "phrases" that make you seem like a member.

Easy bad ideas make for catchy phrases. The kinds of thoughts that are spreading across the US today would have been stopped by editorial accountability in an earlier era. I'm not sure education is the way to reduce the impact of easy bad ideas, because group members take on the catch phrases without thinking them through.