This is not Rufo just aimlessly trying to be a dick. he is attempting to show that the methods of the Elizabeth Corey types have failed because they don't understand that the problem is not a matter of communication or persuasion. The right is having power politics done to them by the left, and Rufo's point is that you can't fight power politics with persuasion. It is impossible to reason with power politics for the exact same reason that it is impossible to reason with a punch in the face. You cannot appeal to the better nature and intellectual honesty of a person who thinks that all intellectual engagement is merely masks for power and all justifications are merely rhetorical moves in a discursive struggle for political position. Again, academics simply refuse to engage with Rufo's theory of change, what he is trying to do intellectually and politically, or his normative and strategic justifications for doing so. If academics want understanding, perhaps they could, you know, ask him (or me! we worked and work together!) about what is being done, why it is being done, and what the normative and strategic justifications for doing so are.
