Just to be clear, then that’s TWO conservatives who used the word “masses”? Just checking?
In this work, Ortega traces the genesis of the "mass-man" and analyzes his constitution en route to describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are made up, contrasting "noble life and common life" and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man. He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the English-speaking world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specific target is the bourgeois educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied young man or Mr. Satisfied), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the command he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them.Except in Barry's case, he has no command of anything special except puerile notions of Marxism he has wedded to Alinsky. He's managed, though, to eff things up as thoroughly as people far better educated with far more noble intentions have by trying to substitute their limited, person experience for society as a whole.