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I agree with the comments positing that persuasion is clearly alive and well, given the enthusiasm of today's e.g. demonstrations. I believe the author's point, however, is that persuasion can (should?) engage the conscious, rational mind, rather than just fear-based, tribal instincts leveraged today.

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I'll take the counterpoint. Tribal instincts exist because it is impossible to have rational/conscious debate about most things. It's basically over engineering the problem.

How would you convince an entire lakeside community to site a water treatment plant somewhere else? How many man-years of training would be required for them to have enough fundamental understanding to even enter a rational/informed debate? And what other topics are competing for that time? vs. "Chris is the expert and I trust Chris, so we'll do what Chris says"

Maybe it can or should but when the ends justify the means and the goal is to scale your persuasion as far and wide as possible it seems to be tough to beat "us vs them" fear-based persuasion.

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