>> Usually the more desperately you find yourself wishing things like “if only those idiots would see the light then of course we could Solve Everything!!”, the less solid the ground becomes.

> you have me except for the last paragraph. sometimes there really are misguided groups that need to be shown the way. flat earthers are a good example.

Are they though? Isn't some giant fraction of flat-eartherism self-consciously unserious (e.g. taken up as a joke for fun as a troll), and that that isn't is tiny and utterly marginalized?

That last paragraph you responded to is quite apt for very large numbers of people in the political mainstream that are in no way like the semi-mythical flat-eathers.