One of the most common refrains in political discourse is that those with opposing views are “misinformed”.
Misinformed is often a polite way of saying stupid or uneducated.
The implication is that if everyone had the same knowledge of the facts as I did they would agree with me.
At the very least this refrain presupposes some sort of objective world where it would theoretically be possible for everyone to agree.
Why don’t they understand then? It always boils down to one of two things:
A character defect: the person is evil or lazy. They simply don’t want to understand. Even if you showed them, they wouldn’t accept it. Or they just can’t be bothered. They are just born bigots.
Alternatively they have been purposefully misinformed by the “system”. This typically comes in the guise of billionaires pumping out knowingly false information to further their personal goals (typically to sell them something). But it can also be any means of cultural production e.g. education.
The latter is essentially the cornerstone of neo-Marxism: It attempts to explain why the masses seem happy with Capitalism even though socialism is “better” for them. The answer of course is they have been brainwashed. A lifetime of advertising selling them Porsches and McDonalds have convinced them that will make them happy, obscuring from them that true happiness can only be reached through collective farming.1
In conclusion your opponent is always either wilfully evil or lacking in agency (i.e. is a sheep). A bad person or a victim.
They are never well meaning and free thinking.
Footnotes
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Herbert Marcuse - One Dimensional Man ↩