“The Collapse of Dave Armstrong.”

orgive my title; they’re not my words, but David Grif­fey’s. At his blog, the apt­ly-named Daf­fey Thoughts, he men­tions “the col­lapse of Dave Arm­strong” so casu­al­ly, in pass­ing, that I real­ly did think it must be a well-known event. And I won­dered with great won­der­ment what I had missed.

Now to give you a sense of how cred­i­ble Mr. Grif­fey is when he reports on such things, I can tell you that on June 28, 2022, he wrote this post to inform his audi­ence that I had “respond[ed] to the Roe deci­sion” [Dobbs v. Jack­son]. He, Grif­fey, did not like my response, and logged onto his blog so he could inform the world of his dis­plea­sure and his annoy­ance.

But fun­ny thing: The Court issued its deci­sion in Dobbs on June 24, 2022. And my tweet—the one in which, accord­ing to Mr. Grif­fey, I had respond­ed to that deci­sion of June 24—was dat­ed June 23. The day before.

I’m so pre­scient that I respond­ed to Dobbs before there was a Dobbs to respond to!

Grif­fey’s blog arti­cle notwith­stand­ing, on June 23 I was respond­ing to the Court’s deci­sion, on June 23, to strike down New York’s con­cealed car­ry law. I was not respond­ing to Dobbs, which was still a day away; no, I was respond­ing to New York State Rifle & Pis­tol Asso­ci­a­tion v. Bru­en.

So that’s how cred­i­ble David Grif­fey is.

•••

But back to the col­lapse of Dave Arm­strong, as report­ed to us on Daf­fey Thoughts. In his post on Jan­u­ary 9, Mr. Grif­fey tells us that it’s a new year, and in this new year he’s grown tired of blog­ging about issues and pol­i­tics. He, Mr. Grif­fey, is “no writer,” he says. He’s not “invest­ed” in it. But Mark Shea, once upon a time before he became a mean and angry heretic, sug­gest­ed that Grif­fey start a blog; and Grif­fey did; and his blog took off, even though it involved a lot of hit­ting his head against a brick wall. He want­ed to quit many times, but polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy drew him back in—and a pity too, because polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy amounts to noth­ing more than peo­ple call­ing each oth­er Hitler. And after explain­ing all this to us in a remark­able ram­ble, Grif­fey final­ly gets around to talk­ing about—who else?—Dave Arm­strong!

I think it was see­ing the col­lapse of Dave Arm­strong that con­vinced me some­thing has to change. I like Dave. We usu­al­ly agreed more often than not. Often we would ban­ter about com­mon inter­ests like The Bea­t­les (we’re both fans, and we debat­ed the exact degree of influ­ence that their man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein had on their cre­ative out­put). We could do so because Dave, like me, was for­ev­er against the grow­ing “I have spo­ken, now obey or be damned” approach to the social media/punditry age. Yet look what hap­pened.

See how Mr. Grif­fey just drops that in there as though it’s a fact that has entered the realm of com­mon knowl­edge? “The col­lapse of Dave Arm­strong,” why every­one knows about the col­lapse of Dave Arm­strong. All of St. Blog’s, good watch­men all, wit­nessed it as it hap­pened. How could I have missed the col­lapse of Dave Arm­strong? Behold, he had col­lapsed like a thief in the night, and I was sleep­ing.

So I went back to Daf­fey Thoughts search­ing for answers, and I searched for any posts from Grif­fey as to when this col­lapse hap­pened and what it involved. And lo! There it was, in this post from Octo­ber 31. Grif­fey begins by talk­ing about Salem’s Lot and how he’s not much of a fan of “Steve King.” I don’t know why he calls Stephen King “Steve.” Maybe that’s part of not being a fan; I don’t know. Any­way, King’s nov­el about vam­pires some­how remind­ed Grif­fey of Dave Arm­strong’s col­lapse.

Arm­strong had writ­ten a post defend­ing Vat­i­can II against a crit­ic of the coun­cil named Oliveira Leonar­do. The kind of thing he would do. Grif­fey showed up in the com­box and said that it’s lic­it to dis­cuss whether or not some “screwy” things hap­pened in the Church because of Vat­i­can II. Arm­strong delet­ed Grif­fey’s com­ment. Grif­fey object­ed, and Arm­strong replied that he does­n’t allow “anti-Vat­i­can II rhetoric” in his com­box. It’s his com­box, he makes the rules. Grif­fey kept argu­ing and Arm­strong threat­ened to ban him for trolling.

•••

Now, I bring all this up because it’s an illus­tra­tive exam­ple of why not to trust what any blog­ger x says about any oth­er blog­ger y on the inter­net. At least 90% of the time it’s whol­ly imag­i­nary, espe­cial­ly when x treats it as com­mon knowl­edge. At least as often, x is moti­vat­ed by a desire to pro­mote their own brand on the sup­posed wreck that some­one else has made of him­self. So for Grif­fey, the myth­i­cal “col­lapse of Dave Arm­strong” becomes an instruc­tive moral les­son in what Grif­fey has Always Thought.

Oh, but Alt! Arm­strong was­n’t like this back in 1996! He was more tol­er­ant then!

Yeah? And 1996 was 27 years ago. 27 years ago Vat­i­can II bash­ers weren’t crawl­ing out of the wood­work try­ing to main­stream them­selves. It’s fair that Arm­strong is now so fed up with such peo­ple that he won’t give them debate space. It lends Vat­i­can II bash­ing a degree of cred­i­bil­i­ty to treat it as though it falls with­in the spec­trum of ideas you can tol­er­ate and ratio­nal­ly dis­cuss. Arm­strong’s refusal to play that game does not amount to a “col­lapse,” as though he’s wrecked his brand and now gazes upon the ruins.

It’s also no “col­lapse” to warn some­one you will ban them if they per­sist in debat­ing your rules. If your host wants you to take your shoes off, it’s bad man­ners to insist on the neces­si­ty of your shoes. Of course you risk get­ting kicked out. You can’t then talk about “the col­lapse of Mr. Jones next door. Jones was more lais­sez-faire about shoes three decades ago.” That’s absurd.

So there. I’ve defend­ed Dave Arm­strong. Any­thing’s pos­si­ble.