Like many people of a certain age, when someone says “bully,” I picture the old Charles Atlas ad in the back of comic books, where the muscular clod kicks sand in the face of the 98 pound weakling. What made him a bully was that he behaved that way and there was nothing the 98 pound weakling could do about it.

Today’s bully is the 98 pound weakling with a twitter account.

A critic – even a forceful one – does business in the proper currency of intellectual discourse: presenting evidence, providing reasons, making arguments; a bully questions people’s motives and calls them names.

A critic wants to discuss an issue—to try to persuade you to change your mind or see things in a different light; a bully wants to shut down discussion.

A critic appeals to reason—your mind and conscience; a bully tries to induce fear–resorting to threats and shaming to frighten you into submission.

A critic permits you to make your case in the terms you believe appropriate, and doesn’t try to win arguments by dictating the language of the discussion in ways that beg the question; a bully does precisely the opposite.

Robert George’s purpose is to differentiate legitimate criticism from the use of clout to impose orthodoxy. The former is the critic. The latter is the bully. While his point is well taken, the characterization of the grievance committee as bullies strikes me as wrong, a concession to greater “strength” than they possess, to greater power than they possess.

The “bullies” can’t make anyone do anything. Sure, they swarm like gnats on their latest target, creating the appearance of a force to be reckoned with. But they’re still just gnats, tiny creatures of no power or significance. Alone you can just swat them away or, if they happen to find themselves between your closing fingers, crush them.

But when it’s a thousand gnats, a million gnats, are they suddenly more powerful? Only if you let them be.

It’s hard to know how many of the gnats are real, emotionally and intellectually stunted gnats desperately trying to be good workers for their swarm. There may well be a percentage of gnats trying to appear to be part of the swarm whether to keep the swarm from turning on the heretic gnats or just trying to find community or a tummy rub or two for being a good little woke gnat. Maybe they all believe, begging to fly protectively around whatever identity their priestesses point at.

They certainly have had their impact, on entertainment, sports, media and academia, all of which have become obedient servants of the gnats and put on ostentatious displays of obsequiousness to prove their devotion and deflect their ever-ready attack. Yet, what would happen if they just said no?

By calling them bullies, they are imbued with a greater power than they possess. They lack the strength to beat anyone into submission without the acquiescence of those who actually possess some clout to make it happen. The swarm can’t fire anyone, but if the person who has the power to fire fears the swarm, she will act upon it. If she said, instead, “nope, do whatever you want,” what would happen? Can the swarm destroy a business, like, say, Chick-fil-A?

If a scholarly journal publishes a heterodox study, would the ensuing outrage of the swarm turn it from respected source to a wasteland? Would prawfs stop submitting their articles to Yale Law Review if it published something that didn’t decry those partisan hacks of the right wing of the Supreme Court?

It’s undoubtedly true that people who haven’t dedicated their every breath to critical theory nonetheless self-censor because they don’t need the aggravation of a thousand little gnats screaming at them and calling them names. But can they beat you up? It’s not just that the swarm of gnats kick sand in your face, but that they can harm you if you do anything in response. Can they? Only if those with any real ability to make things happen cave in to their cries.

What’s missing here is the people with the actual ability to stop the swarm of gnats from mattering aren’t sure whether they’re on their own, left to the tender mercies of the swarm, or part of a far larger, far more powerful, far more significant group of adults who can’t understand how we’ve raised children of such pathetic intellectual deficits that they spend their days flying with the swarm rather than thinking independently. Or thinking at all.

Calling them “bullies” suggests that when they kick social justice sand in the face of anyone who strays from the orthodoxy of the moment, the mass of grownups lacks the clout to tell them to grow up and shut up. Grownups don’t tend to swarm like gnats, so they lack the presence of a swarm of gnats. But the swarm is still gnats. Swat them. Ignore them. They have no power unless we give it to them. I, for one, will not acquiesce to “bullies” or gnats.