“It all has to do with the sociology of opinions. In espousing views, people are often motivated by non-rational, emotional considerations — prestige, self-image, group-membership being prominent among them. This is one of Wolfe’s longtime insights, and it’s a major theme of The Kingdom of Speech. Thus not just anyone can successfully get an argument across. There must be a match between speaker and hearer that turns a key. It takes a special personality to open the lock that holds minds in prison. To switch metaphors, intellectual engagements aren’t won just by an exchange of colorless data launched from canons arranged on opposite sides of a battlefield.”