Kind of like their religions.

And like their religions the rationality, consistency, or practicality of their positions doesn't really come into the picture.

We already established in polls that our advanced technological society seems to function quite well with a large segment of its citizens believing in some form of creationism.

That part of their head is kept happily separate from the part that has to sit down at work and rationally deal with complex intellectual problems.

Same for politics. It's why you have multi-millionaire Marxists. The basic intellectual connections are simply never made in their heads, so the inconsistencies and glaring errors never register. Like creationist paleontologists, people can agree with almost the entire agenda of the American Communist Party yet honestly consider themselves somewhere in the "middle" of politics.

So people go through their whole lives happily believing six impossible things before breakfast because it never actually affects them. It doesn't affect others either. Until elections come around.

You haven't really thought your politics through. Few people have, even very intelligent ones. It's not necessary for a normal life, any more than the table of elements or atomic and chemical theory was necessary for people to do simple chemistry or metallurgy.

But now we're in an age where it isn't about an old guy in a lab playing with mercury and cinnebar, or talking about phlogiston and humours. We're in the age of the political equivalent of nuclear reactors, supersonic aircraft, and petroleum cracking plants. We don't elect representatives any more. We elect people we have given the power of emperors or pharaohs. Or gods. It's long past time to start dealing with how things actually work.