He sounds very much like an acquaintance of mine, only the gimmick is different. What’s going on is a revolt against parental authority, by identifying the unanswerable authority over the parent, aligning oneself to it and using it to undercut the parent.
My acquaintance did it with religion. He had a domineering father. No way could he have survived that, psychologically. But his father was a church-going, God-fearing man. So he became super-religious. From his early teens he was the most devout, assiduous Catholic you ever saw. He became a deacon and a counselor, and he runs everything from picnics to parish office to parochial school, and he’s only 30-something but regarded as the venerable wise man in his parish. Nice fellow, yes, but horribly judgmental and an insufferable expert in all things godly; you talk with him ten minutes and you gather you know nothing and fall pathetically short. Why is he like this? Because this was the one authority his father acknowledged as above his own. So the son made himself untouchable, unimpeachable by going over Daddy’s head. You can’t touch me, I belong to my Heavenly Father and I listen to Him alone.
Needless to say his father can’t stand him, but still can’t argue with him or tell him anything. Nor can anyone else.
The mistake the enviro-whacko’s mom made was to give credence to environmental views in the first place. Once it was clear to the boy that she bowed her head to that, he knew where the high ground was and he headed there.
You’re post interests me in that you are describing pretty much the guy who Chris Christie told to sit down and shut up a year or so ago. That guy, who I knew personally, was the biggest, loudest self-satisfied liberal Catholic I have ever met!