Chris Jackson, over at everyone’s favorite radical Catholic reactionary site, The Remnant, decided to “prove” that I’m an irrelevant “neo-Catholic” dinosaur (“Tonight I’m Gonna Blog It Like It’s 1999”).
It was highly entertaining fun on a Saturday morning. Here’s the heart of it:
Then I noticed a name I had not heard in quite some time. The verbose Neo-Catholic apologist “Cowboy” Dave Armstrong. Cowboy Dave is best known for the encyclopedic stream of consciousness rambling tomes he used to post on his now defunct website and now posts on Facebook. On his old website, which looks like it may have been hosted by Geocities, Dave devoted an entire webpage full of linked articles railing against every aspect of Traditionalism. We are proud to say that The Remnant alone comprises two of the links which take up almost 200KB of pure text.
[Footnote]: If you’d like to do penance experience Dave’s style of apologetics [sic], please check to see his response to this article. I predict it will consist of no less than 2,000 words, including Dave meticulously defining terms used in hyperbole in order to prove I exaggerated. I get bonus points if he name drops Fr. James [sic; it’s John] Hardon, SJ.
It’s merely mocking “hyperbole” (though one never knows when these clowns are actually being serious: it reads almost exactly the same), but just for the record, my original website (on ic.net) ran from 1997-2006. My blog at Blogspot ran from 2004-2015, at which time I moved over to Patheos. I also joined Facebook in 2011.
Remnant guru Michael Matt was the last to do the mockery / pathetically incompetent satire routine about me, in a Remnant article dated 2-17-16. There I was “Super Dave”; now I’m “Cowboy Dave” [a fedora is not a cowboy hat, by the way]. I virtually never wear the hat, anyway, except in photos. Occasionally to dress-up occasions or when it is rainy on Sundays, going to church. But when someone’s desperate to mock me, they invariably go after the hat. Shows how little imagination (let alone actual material) my critics have.
There is good satire and bad satire. “Super Dave” and “Cowboy Dave” and dumb claims that “nobody” reads my writing hardly elicit gut-splitting belly laughs in anyone but fellow stupefied reactionaries. These guys need some new nicknames and a new schtick. Reactionaries are not renowned for their humorous abilities, and these two articles certainly do nothing to convince anyone otherwise. They’re about as funny as root canal surgery.
Their big “argument” regarding me is that “nobody” reads what I write, anyway. That was Matt’s contention, along with fellow reactionary Chris Ferrara, who informed everyone that he had no time to debate someone who ran an “obscure website, ranked four millionth in the world.” See the gory details.
Somehow I have managed to survive now almost 16 years as a full-time Catholic apologist, even though “nobody” reads me! Quite a feat! Somehow my blog at Patheos has received almost a million page views in the last two years [just passed two million in June 2019].
Jackson cites my old page on the reactionaries, from 4 March 2000 (how funny!), as if I’ve written nothing since then. The same page (all those who never read me will be shocked to know!) has actually survived to the present time!
But this is the game over there: simply mock away and make out that I’m so irrelevant that no one has read my “encyclopedic rambling tomes” since 1999-2000. This is what passes for “argument”: the furthest thing imaginable from rational interaction.
Of course, the article also features the same old anti-Francis rubbish. For example: “I honestly think he is so emboldened at this point that he feels he can do whatever he wants with absolutely zero consequence. For if tomorrow he denied Christ rose from the dead, would anyone care?” Then in a footnote, in classic reactionary style, Jackson attacks Pope Benedict as well: “Some argue Benedict XVI denied the dogma of the Resurrection in his book Jesus of Nazareth. Thus Francis declaring it openly is not that far-fetched.”
Obviously, the man is far beyond rationality, and so I cite his garbage simply for its comedic value. It’s self-refuting, as far as that goes. These clowns almost always are. Perhaps if he makes an actual argument one day, then I’ll devote more than “2,000 words” to it. Hope springs eternal . ..
As it is, this article (including title) is a mere 851 words. Sorry to disappoint, Chris!
The Remnant sort of like a bad accident on the side of the road of life. No one wants to look at them, but nevertheless one does out of morbid curiosity . . . I knew exactly what this article would be like before I read it, and sure enough . . .
I’ve written exactly seven articles (including this one) about The Remnant in 18 years, whereas they have now written about me twice in two years. So I guess they think I am a lot more important than I think they are. :-) Otherwise, they’d utterly ignore me, seeing that they believe “nobody” reads my stuff anyway. Why bother with someone you think is an irrelevant nobody?
***
(originally 9-9-17 on Facebook)
***
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In