In most instances, Twitter is a waste of time outside of gathering news items. But there are those rare occasions when someone gets so burned that it’s worth all the other nonsense permeating my feed. This is one of those occasions.

Enter Tom Nichols, self-proclaimed expert in all things, but whose actual record of prognostication and consultation is littered with failures. He decided to jump in and try to go after the cadets who got caught playing the circle game at the Army-Navy game on Saturday. Because everything must be stupid, they’ve been maligned as white supremacists and summarily trashed by the blue-check mark brigade.

I'm going to go with the 3-star Army general on this one, rather than you two guys. It's the expert thing to do.https://t.co/RN73qSasxq

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 15, 2019

So much experting.

And to be clear, the okay symbol is not actually how white supremacists troll people “who don’t know it’s a racist symbol” because, shockingly, it’s not a racist symbol. It’s a hoax that was perpetrated on 4chan to get idiots like Nichols to push the idea that racists are secretly signaling with the okay sign. It’s a power play that the race-obsessed media were more than happy to fall for.

Luckily, Nichols concedes that the cadets may just be stupid and playing a kid’s game, you know, because it’s totally inappropriate for college students to joke around at college football games or something. We can’t all be sophisticated enough to post shirtless tanning pics on Twitter like Nichols.

Anyway, it’s at this point that things got interesting.

That's not what "an appeal to authority" means.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 15, 2019

Oddly enough, that’s exactly what an appeal to authority means. Nichols, who has assured us he’s an expert on all things, should probably know that.

Eventually, another poster jumps in and provides the definition. The following exchange ensues.

Or – and stay with me here – when four people are involved in a discussion of a field of expertise, and only one of them has actual expertise in that field, you defer to that person. If four people have a view on how to be a doctor and one of them is a doctor, you start there.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 15, 2019

Sure, Cadet Jan

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 15, 2019

Then the hammer got dropped.

https://twitter.com/ChuckEChaves/status/1206055390905020421

Holy crap…

Nichols, who for the record has never served a day in his life, tried to accuse someone of stolen valor for correcting his idiocy. His reward was getting absolutely roasted by an actual veteran who knows what he’s talking about.

The beltway is full of clowns like Nichols. Self-important know-nothings who’ve made a living grifting off the think tank scene and writing bad articles. Watching him get owned is a true chef’s kiss moment.