Some people, my grandpa would say, are just contrary. It matters not what position you hold, because they’ll always be agin it. What fires them up isn’t necessarily some great injustice, but arguing about it.

If Grandpa Grover were still alive today, he’d be shaking his head on a regular basis, trying to make sense of what’s happening now.

What sense can you make of people who always paint themselves as victims when they’re the ones generally victimizing others? They’re the ones refusing to play by the rules (rules are for other people, never them), making up stories about their opponents and ignoring (or wildly re-interpreting) all evidence that doesn’t fall their way. Everything is about winning with them … and yet they still claim victimhood.

Jason Whiting, a professor at Brigham Young University, wrote in Psychology Today in 2020: “As emotional and social creatures, we form our opinions based on our feelings and seek communion with others who feel the same. This helps us hold on tightly to our views and swat away threats to changing them. Scholars have found that when people are presented information on complex topics, they agree with the points that support their existing position and dismiss things that contradict it.

“The least informed are often the most zealous about how right they are, and they gain pleasure from their supposed moral superiority. Heated debates only convince the already converted, and further entrench the opposition. … This is why political arguments are nearly futile, as are other fights about loaded and ambiguous subjects. There are always fast-moving data points to cherry-pick, and exaggerations and distortions aplenty.”

It’s like he’s looking at the Internet today in places like Quora, Reddit, and newspaper comment boards. Well, except for his closing thought: “The next time you get into an argument on social media or around the family dinner table, remember that aggressively pushing ‘facts’ and accusations will not win anyone over. Instead, try to understand the underlying motivations and issues at stake, which is more helpful than arguing each other into deeper divides.”

The contrary people will never try to understand. They’ve staked out their position, which is opposing everyone who doesn’t agree with them. Arguing, not logic, is the whole point.

Statistician and writer Nate Silver talked about the types of people who argue on the Internet in his Substack Silver Bulletin in January. He classified them thusly:

💻 Somebody is wrong on the Internet (after one of my favorite XKCD Web toons). “There are some people who just can’t stand to let bull- – – – go unrefuted, just like there are some people who just can’t stand to see a crooked painting on a gallery wall.” Silver said there’s an element of sport in this type, who like to be proven right.

🧑‍⚖️ Country lawyers. This would be people, like high school debaters, who stake out a position and then try to make the best of arguing that position, even if it lacks merit. (One of the reasons I hated debate; that and expecting me to speak extemporaneously with authority with a mouth and brain that don’t always work in concert is just asking for disaster.) Conceding a point is unheard of, Silver wrote, as “an unrefuted argument, however silly, was presumed to be true. This is a terrible way to go about arguing in real life and creates all types of distorted incentives.”

And when an opponent unleashes a Gish Gallop, the country lawyer is going to be overwhelmed.

🏳️ Flag-wavers. Flag-wavers are those who argue about politics on the Internet because it’s fun for them. “Many people — probably the majority of people who argue about politics on the Internet on any given day, although not necessarily the majority of influential ones — are doing so primarily for recreational or hobbyist reasons, especially when it comes to minor, C-block on MSNBC controversies like the [Lauren] Boebert scandal,” Silver wrote. “They are trying to have fun and signal to their tribe that they’re one of the Good Guys. Some of them are capable of serious political thought on more important issues, or at least have reasonably well-articulated priors, although others don’t.

“But they’re not really trying to win arguments.”

🙋 #Engagement baiters. These people seek clicks more than anything else, and have a lot of time on their hands. “[P]eople who seek #Engagement above all else are out there,” Silver wrote. “Telltale signs: they have a screencap of themselves on TV as their Twitter profile; they end every thread with ‘please buy my book!’; they often pick fights with more prominent accounts. The best #Engagement Baiters are skilled trolls, but others have carved out a more specialized ecological niche, including being willing to be primarily publicly identified as a hater of some more accomplished person.”

💩 Certifiable outright lunatics. Now we get to it, and I deal with at least a few of these.

“Did you know that some people are literally crazy? OK, that’s not a medically precise term. But there’s a lot of profoundly unhappy people in the United States,” Silver wrote. “And then there are people who are not merely unhappy but have some sort of unresolved trauma. It’s somewhat taboo to talk about … but arguing on politics on the Internet is potentially a dangerous thing for people like this. It can aid and abet narcissism or a persecution complex, and it can provide a veneer of Fighting The Good Fight to rationalize compulsive or antisocial behavior. …

“You just have to understand that if you argue on the Internet, you’re going to encounter crazy people—again, not a medically precise term—not just occasionally but often. Certifiable outright lunatics often band together, too; misery loves company.”

Silver believes as I have come to about these people: You not only don’t want to argue against them, but you should avoid arguing with them. “[Y]ou do not want to amplify a certifiable outright lunatic even if they’re on your side on a particular issue. They are the most prone of any of the typologies to suddenly switch sides, but the crazy never goes away. Block, mute, ignore, and hope they have some people in their lives who love them.”

Ignoring them completely isn’t my style because, hey, sometimes a good column will come out of what nonsense they proclaim, but I don’t have to respond to them on the comment board. I might shame them on Facebook for especially egregious posts, but other than that …

Still it’s awfully funny to me, someone who has trouble reading social cues in real life, that they’re so entrenched in their contrariness that they can’t see the wide swath of the center (yes, wide, because it includes not only the absolute center, but the center left and the center right, neither of which have much to do with the main political parties) for what it is: People who are tired of the nonsense in the fringes of both major parties, and who are doubly tired of those who refuse to debate honestly.

Who has time for that? Not me.

✍️✍️✍️✍️✍️

So the state attorney general got a little worked up by my column last week (I’m not the only one who wrote about the fracas over the abortion amendment, but I guess he saw me as easier pickins). Here’s the letter as it appears in the Wednesday edition this week, just under my column.

On armchair justices

An assistant editor recently used her platform here to disparage the Arkansas Supreme Court’s abortion-amendment decision as purely partisan. Her disparagement demands a response. She doesn’t seem to recall that laws are made by the Legislature, enforced by the executive branch, and interpreted by the judiciary. All three branches did their jobs faithfully here.

In 2013, the Legislature passed Act 1413, co-sponsored by Democrats, signed into law by a Democrat governor, and defended in the Arkansas Supreme Court by a Democrat attorney general. That law provides: “A person filing a statewide initiative petition … shall also submit … [a] statement signed by the sponsor indicating that the sponsor” provided required training “to each paid canvasser before the paid canvasser solicited signatures.”

Nearly 10 years later, when a sponsor failed to comply with that law, the secretary of state had to enforce it. The abortion-amendment sponsor did not submit the required statement with its petitions. That’s undisputed. The Arkansas Supreme Court interpreted the law just as it is written. The sponsor “shall” submit the statement. Because the sponsor didn’t submit it, the secretary of state could not count the signatures collected by paid canvassers. So why is this assistant editor so enraged?

Having “a government of laws and not of men” means we’re bound by the law, even if we wish it were different. But she apparently disagrees, saying that the court “could have offered a cure period to at least give the appearance of fairness.” But the law doesn’t allow a cure under these circumstances, so allowing one here would be making it from whole cloth. Granting the assistant editor’s wish would have made the court culpable of the very insults she (wrongly) hurls: courts rewriting the law as they will, no matter what the Legislature had done. But courts cannot legislate. We’re bound by the law until it is properly changed. Thankfully, the Arkansas Supreme Court understands this even if some armchair justices don’t.

TIM GRIFFIN

Little Rock

Tim Griffin is the Arkansas attorney general.

😑😑😑😑😑

Except … there’s an awful lot the attorney general is leaving out (not least is my name) and framing it as a simply binary decision (which it really wasn’t). Let’s look at one of the dissenting opinions in the rejection of the abortion amendment for the November ballot:

From Associate Justice Karen Baker (joined by Associate Justice Courtney Hudson):

“The respondent primarily relies on three arguments in support of the premise that the petitioners failed to comply with Arkansas Code Annotated section 7-9-111(f)(2)(B) (Supp. 2023). According to the respondent, ‘a statement under that section must (1) be signed by ‘the sponsor’; (2) indicate that the sponsor gave the required information and documentation to all paid canvassers who collected signatures; and (3) be submitted with the petition.’
“Regarding the paid canvasser training certification, the majority concludes that the petitioners failed to provide the respondent with ‘one single statement at one specific point in time” that covers ‘each paid canvasser,’ not some of the paid canvassers.’ I disagree. In my view, the majority has reconfigured the relevant statute in order to cater the initiative process to the preference of the respondent while this process is the first power reserved for the people. In fact, despite the majority’s acknowledgment that ‘[t]his court cannot rewrite the statute[,]’ the majority has done just that multiple times to achieve a particular result.”

The law, Baker wrote, doesn’t require that documents be turned in at the same time, just as long as it’s by the deadline. The certification documents for the paid canvassers were being submitted in batches before the deadline. Apparently only the last batch didn’t get filed.

“The fact that the petitioners did not file a certification contemporaneously with the petition is of no moment. To be clear, nothing in the statute requires that the certification and the petition be filed simultaneously. On the contrary, this requirement was made up out of whole cloth by the respondent and inexplicably ratified by the majority of this court.”

So yeah, Griffin used the whole cloth argument, unoriginally. Sigh. And no refutation of Baker’s comment that “nothing in the statute justifies the exclusion of the signatures collected by the paid canvassers included with the June 27 certification.” The secretary of state rejected the abortion amendment petitions, among other reasons, because the certification was signed by an agent of the campaign rather than the sponsor. However, other petitions accepted (specifically the anti-casino amendment and the medical marijuana amendment) had the same paperwork issue.

But sure, tell us another one. Those in power in Arkansas government have made very clear how they feel about the idea of the people actually having a say in how they’re governed.

Maybe they’ll make it even more clear by changing the state motto from Regnat populus (the people rule) to Populus tremunt (the people cower). (OK, I’m no Latin expert, so please feel free to correct what I found online.)