I'm trying to read it ("Common Sense") and, it's making me feel pretty dumb. I'm only a couple of paragraphs in, and my eyes are already glazing over, and I can't follow what he's talking about.

The Wikipedia page says it's the highest selling book in American history, or something. And, people read this at taverns, apparently.

It certainly takes a moment to get accustomed to it. More than 200 years separate us from his time and way of writing. I do think if you stick with it you will adapt to it. It’s not unlike reading a new coding language in that sense :)

There's a modern rhetorical trend where the phrase "common sense" just means "whatever I personally think to be obviously right", so that's given me a pretty strong distaste for anything/anyone using it.

But I maybe shouldn't make the assumption that that's how it's used here.

Also, adding to my comment , this is the first paragraph: >Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

The work referenced here is an argument distributed as a pamphlet by Thomas Paine before the American separation from Great Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

Whether that corresponds to your modern rhetorical trend is, I suppose, up to you.

Yeah, a semantic shift might have occurred. Remember we live in a hyper individual society compared to the time of Thomas.

It’s more about an appeal to our common humanity, if that makes sense :)

I tried looking up things like "Thomas Payne" and "Common Sense" but nothing quite matched what you seem to be driving at. Is there something obvious I'm missing, or do you have a link for where to start looking further?

Common Sense by Thomas Paine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

Thanks! Ah, it's the spelling. I took "Payne" too literally.