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In my experience, "independent thinkers" are always the ones most susceptible to manipulation, because they believe themselves smarter than everyone else, which makes them perfect targets for propaganda.

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As an extreme example, you would consider Einstein to be easily manipulated? He was certainly one of the greatest independent thinkers.

I think you're talking about the people that go against the mainstream ideas and authorities. It's very difficult to create an opinion about these people, because they might be right or they might be wrong or might be right/wrong 50% of the time. I cant really tell, and it changes all the time and also depends in which country/society you live.

All i can say is, questioning authorities is a good thing. As Einstein said: blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth

Quite, but the point still stands. Democracy gives 100% of power to the person who can convince 51% of the public. In reality in the US sometimes you just need to move the needle by a few thousand votes to make a difference, certainly changing 5% of the public views (either to flip or to stay at home or not stay at home) will settle it in your favour.

We have a trillion dollar industry designed to manipulate peoples views. Nobody is smarter than that.

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