I still remember back some 40 years ago, the older secretary at our office who saved for years to be able to afford a trip to see, as she called it, “Kipling’s India.” She had a romantic vision of the country in her head but when she returned from her two week vacation there, all she could talk about was how filthy dirty the country was. She said that she had no idea it would be like that before her trip. She was utterly appalled at the conditions there.
That "romantic vision" of a socialist paradise is what the general public has bought into, but they do not see the reality it will lead to.