You probably think this post is about you
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A couple of days ago a Georgetown University law student Billy Berns confronted Lyin’ Ted Cruz about the blatant hypocrisy of GOP opposition to legislation to expand the Supreme Court, by pointing out that Republicans had engaged in norm-shattering manipulation of the nomination process to get their current 6-3 advantage (By the way Stephen Breyer still hasn’t said a word about retiring).
Cruz’s response was a bunch of mendacious garbage about how “Court packing” [sic] is “different” than the norm-shattering bullshit the GOP pulled with Merrick Garland and RBG.
This little interchange has led naturally to a bunch of right wingers screeching about how Georgetown’s law school is spending so much time indoctrinating students with leftist dogma that they don’t even know the difference between blocking a nomination (legal) and expanding the Supreme Court’s size (illegal).
This is the Internet, or more precisely this particular aspect of the Internet, in a nutshell: stupid and/or dishonest people making stupid and/or dishonest arguments, to score imaginary debating points with other people who are as stupid and/or dishonest as they are.
To be clear, I think what Berns did when he confronted Cruz and tweeted out the video of the exchange was a good thing to do, because it nicely illustrated Cruz’s shamelessness. But anybody who either pretends not to understand or actually doesn’t understand why Cruz is being shamelessly hypocritical isn’t worth arguing with, because there’s no point in arguing with liars and idiots.
This is all related to something else I’ve been thinking about, i.e., the Internet Narcissist. The Internet Narcissist is a particular social type whose pathologies have been exacerbated by the cyberworld in general and social media in particular. These include:
(1) An extreme obsession with getting attention for himself — the Internet Narcissist is almost always a man — even when that attention is purely negative.
(2) A related obsession with social rankings of all types, especially those related to how much attention people are getting, and in particular himself.
(3) An obsession with score-settling. The Internet Narcissist can never let go of an argument, even it’s a years-old topic that nobody else on the planet cares about any more, if they ever did.
(4) A compulsive need to claim that other people are “failures,” “fourth-rate,” “not important enough to argue with” etc. etc.
(5) Compulsive sock puppeting.
Donald Trump aka John Barron/John Miller/David Dennison is of course the most prominent example, but there are little Donalds everywhere if you look for them, and even if you don’t.