I feel like the writer went to a great effort to re explain what sophistry is, expressing it's own hatred towards the phenomena while doing it.
From the top of my mind, Aleister Crowley formally and explicitly asked not to be resurrected, assuming the plausible possibility of that happening ahead of his time.
I've recently traveled to a country area where I live in Brazil and I witnessed a politician in the television trying to explain a reporters' claim that there was a public perception that government didn't do everything in it's power to prevent loss of life and private property during several days of rain that would flood cities and cause major damage.
That politician then proceeded to explain that the main problem is that people don't trust the weather forecast anymore and they also don't trust the public service announcement when they warn everyone to leave their homes and prepare for heavy rain and a high percentage of chance of flooding.
It is a provable fact that many public workers are involved in corruption and / or incompetence / bad decisions, and it is also true that there's a lot of people in country areas which actively spread discredit towards public service and weather forecast. But the fact that this politician pulled that card in the television means that we're in another level of post truth. Because now there's just no way to find what and whose mistake is the ultimate responsible for the damage that has been done and which could be avoided. It's probably at the point that there's no way to know if any damage could be avoided and how much damage did get avoided.
One would thought everyone would unite efforts to study climate patterns and make good use of that information for urban planning and natural disaster response, but the reality is that all of that is irrelevant and what we are really trying to do is having our voice heard more than others and attempt to get economic advantage (strictly as a means to have more power than others, or the feeling of more power). And while it would be sane and healthy to admit that and deal with that phenomena, we also need to throw all that bad attitude to the ones we can blame for the consequences of our actions. Because I don't want to deal with the part that I'll feel I'm doing something wrong, so I'd skip all the blame part and just put it on someone else.