Humans are notoriously great at pattern matching, and seeing things that aren't there simply based on a prior mental model. Stereotypes of all kinds are a result of this.
Evolution tends to select for short-term survival over long-term viability. It's absolutely a mistake to believe the two are aligned.
The reality is that humans are (probably) the first Earth species to be capable of abstract non-physical modelling of the future. But we have a huge amount of behavioural baggage which guarantees that we tend to ignore long-term warning signals in pursuit of short-term gains motivated by evolutionary heuristics.
The heuristics work fine until they don't. Species discover this the hard way all the time.
It would be nice to think we're not one of those species, but the jury is still out on that.
we can see this most clearly in our politicians' insistence on their particular model of the economy as their priority, rather than the actual concerns of the citizens they are responsible to.
They don't.
Or at least, I'd be highly amused to see someone attempt to square the Trump platform with Burkean thought, and that's a relatively smallish difference, both evolutionarily and intellectually speaking, compared to others.