Those arguments which I can but won't make here are important, but NOT because they will persuade the general public. An argument that is not heard will not persuade anyone.
I quit this list for a week because s everal people on it wanted to do just exactly what the media did. They wanted to inquire into the private motives of the protesters instead of looking at the arguments of the protests, the politics of them. And Chuck even wants to look at his own motivesd for recognizing the truth! Instead of exulting in recognizing the lies he worries about just what it was that caused him to recognize the lies.
The General public never heard Chomsky. They never heard any of the painstaking arguments that we made against a criminal war or segregated housing or .... The issue was made an issue. The question wasn't the war in Vietnam; the question was who could debate it and how. The issue was the behavior of the protesters (even if it wasn't the protesters but FBI provocateurs who provided the behavior.
The trigger for my quitting the Marxism list was a silly irrelevant remark by the moderator. But I had stopped paying any attention to anything posters had to say months before when the assholes thought the most important thing about the Panthers was some film of doubtful lineage that showed Panthers (maybe they were Panthers) chanting Off the Pigs. Such willed stupidity and anti-working class nonsense is intolerable from those who call themselves leftists.
I'm still the pessimist; but there seems just a gleam of hope showing. Maybe. And we can't build that hope by arguments because the media won't let anyone hear the arguments. So those who call themselves intellectuals need to think of how it is possible to reach people who won't be able to hear what we say.
It is possible, but it requires a political and not an academic (ie., "disinterested") perspective.
Carrol