I have no faith in democracy to solve problems, but I do have faith in the resiliency of the human mind. Yes, brainwashing works. That's the bad news. The good news is that it doesn't work forever. Everybody believes something that they later find out to be incorrect, people do change their minds. Look at Pat Robertson for example. Many people have been resolutely against weed until they got cancer.I think the majority of problems in our society aren't at the individual level, where they can be solved by changing minds, education. Most of our problems are structural, where perverse alignments of self interest exist, or there are incentives to enforce illogical behavior. Some of our military spending, and most of our national debt, and worse yet, our personal private consumer debt, fits into such a category.