Reading the comments, it seems that the take on this in a lot of highly voted comments is the highly simplistic "some people are stupid, others are not".

Let me make one thing clear: Intelligence is NOT Wisdom, and whilst the former might make it easier the get the latter, to begin down the path of growing the latter requires an ability to recognize one's lack of it and such ability is dependent on things like self-confidence, self-criticism, ability to practice introspection and possibly a reasonably varied life-experience, most of which barelly correlate with intelligence (and in some cases the correlation is actually negative).

Yes, it's emotionally satisfying for people who see themselves as intelligent (yet can't even recognize the limits of intelligence) to think their greatest quality (worse, one they're born with rather than acquired) makes them immune to that problem, which they thing is because "most people are stupid".

(Funnily enough, more intelligent people are apparently more likely to fall for scams, which would make sense if one they tended to overestimates the power of mere intelligence)

However emotionally satisfying doesn't mean right and a wise person would suspect such self-serving "I'm great because I have this characteristic and it's those who don't have it who are the problem" 'conclusions'.

Personally I think a lot of the manipulation going on nowadays is at an emotional level (just go learn about modern marketing and start playing attention at how branding in TV is mostly creating associations between the brand and certain emotional urges and impulses, for example perfumes with sex and cars with freedom) and an "indoctrinated" subconscious definitelly bypasses intelligence no mater how extraordinary (Hollywood's typical portrayal of exceptional genious is an almst superhumanly wise person - or alternativelly, nutty professor - all very unrealistic).

Also I've known some highly intelligent people who were so unable to accept that even they were non-omiscient humans who made mistakes, that they migt as well be morons (these people are rare though).