assume that humans are inherently irrational and can be emotionally incepted/brainwashed, then there’s no point in educating people at all because the empire will always have more resources than us and just pump out funny memes associating that “good feeling” with empire. Even worse, if people can just gobble up stuff based on vibes, why should the working class rule at all?

The answer to this problem is that humans don't generally believe things because they are bombarded with extreme amounts of high quality propaganda, rather they accept (and seek out) the information that gives them license to feel good about themselves and the situation they are in and ignore facts that don't fit this narrative. I'd say almost all racist/colonial narratives work by this mechanism. It's not that people turn racist because the media paints e.g. Africans/Asians as barbarians or whatever, rather people need to justify why the Global South is still impoverished and thinking of them as inferior (a racist trope) solves the contradiction. The truth of imperial plunder leads to dangerous conclusions: "I can't keep my cheap stuff!", "We'll be poor like them!"