In Reply to: Which is why the argument needs to be reframed posted by amadbruin on April 30, 2026 at 07:00:20
In the 1860s, a bunch of Russian revolutionaries had a campaign called "going to the people". They were to go out to rural Russia to bring them into the movement. The peasants were, of course, having none of that because these city folks were so far removed from their realty that they looked at them like they were martians. They turned a bunch of them into the police, or otherwise either made fun of them of completely ignored them. I think someone somewhere commented that "we went to the people and the people sent us back".
So this is an endemic issue with the left. At some point I remember commenting (i think it was a response to the Brexit vote) that the left's original sin is to insist that "we're smarter than you, we're more educated than you, so you need to listen to us".
It's not a one way conversation. Those Narodniks didn't go to the people to listen or to have a conversation, they went there to proselytize. And I think we know how well that goes.
(I think sarcasm is ok, and the folks out there would get it, except sarcasm works best off of shared values and assumptions. It falls flat on its face when the part that you don't think need to be said out loud turns out to be something the audience is not taking as a given. Again a victim of the propensity to engage in a one way conversation.)