It’s been a long time since I read Lakoff and Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By, but I was recently thinking the internet has surely added a lot of good material for some of its central themes. The the notion of argumentation as warfare comes to mind. In that book, they advanced the notion that a lot of the metaphors people use for argumentation are those associated with warfare and violence in general. This is certainly born out by a number of things you can see on the net.

To see what people say about argumentation on the internet, it would seem that the world of debate is tremendously violent. Everywhere one looks, one finds destruction in the wake of a rhetorical flourish. Case in point? “Pres Obama Brilliantly Destroys a Loaded FOXNews Question” in this clip. Go Bama! But wait a minute? Is that an accomplishment?…