Learn English – Meaning of today in: How to help you, today

I'll take a crack at this, although I agree with chrylis that it's a little hard to figure out for sure what you are asking.

"Always the same, isn't it? 'Poor old Cuthbert, doesn't listen to a word you say...head in the clouds again...always gets the wrong end of the stick.' And on and on and on and on and on!" ranted Cuthbert.

Okay, forget about the airport and the context of the story. You have a group of people together, and one of them feels like the others think he's foolish. So he starts a rant:

Always the same, isn't it?

That means: No matter what we're doing, you think the same thing of me.

'Poor old Cuthbert, doesn't listen to a word you say...

Cuthbert is talking here, so he is saying what he thinks everyone else is thinking about him: namely, that he doesn't listen.

...head in the clouds again...always gets the wrong end of the stick.'

means: Cuthbert doesn't pay attention to what's going on around him; Cuthbert always finds himself confused in life.

And on and on and on and on and on!" ranted Cuthbert.

Means that he could keep going with his grumbling rant, if he wanted to, adding things like: Cuthbert always has his head up his ass, Cuthbert never does anything right, Cuthbert couldn't find his way home if you gave him a map and paid for his taxi fare, etc.

_{If I've not answered your question correctly, let me know, I'll delete my answer.}

This is a confusion of two different expressions:

1. as seen, which has a variety of uses:

   Chopin, as seen by his pupils ... = how his pupils saw Chopin
   Professor Hunt discusses Keats' relation as a poet to his Elizabethan forerunners, as seen in his love of nature ... = which may be discerned in his love of nature
   As seen on television ... = the same one or of the sort you see on television

2. to be seen, which as used here means approximately which may be seen

   Uccello's violent one-point perspective, to be seen in his Battle of Romano series.

The author of this passage was not a native speaker; but he was highly educated and a very literate writer. I think his mistake arose because he was trying to say two things at once: that in Marx' day feudalism as a living form was to be seen only in Japan, and that Marx was inviting his readers to examine feudalism of the sort you see in Japan.

By the way: I think you can ignore that Ngram. I glanced at fifty or so the hits and they were all components of different constructions, mostly so as to be = in order to be or so ADJ as to be = so ADJ that it was.