Chelsea Clinton Got Into A Twitter Fight Over Hannah Arendt

Forward.com ^ | 7/30/2017 | Aiden Pink

[x]

But if you read his blog account, it is dripping with self-aggrandizement as he describes blow-by-blow how he destroyed her argument and how flabbergasted he was that "Chelsea read my tweet". The twitter exchange should have stood on its own. His recounting of the exchange on his blog reminded me of the commercial in which a fisherman describes his battle to land a huge ferocious fish, which turns out to be about the size of a sardine.

This is like an iceberg, 90% of which is below the waterline.

In the exchanges of 140 character tweets between Robin and Clinton, there's no real argument.

It's not clear what it's about.

They're just trading insults.

After Corey Robin explained his view at excruciating length, I could see that he was probably right about the use of the phrase, but just from the tweets alone, it was impossible to tell what the whole disagreement was actually about.

My takeaways:

1) Twitter is useless for serious discussion.

2) Corey Robin is obsessive, forever splitting picayune hairs, arrogant when he thinks he's right, and unwilling to admit that he may be wrong (all of which those who read his books may already have figured out).

3) There are people on the left who really hate Chelsea Clinton and her parents and wish Chelsea would just go away.

[aspasia]

It's not clear what it's about.

"Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence." Hannah Arendt

[Oztrich Boy]

Brooklyn College political science professor Corey Robin thought that Clinton had misunderstood the phrase. “This is what happens when you know something as a cliche or slogan rather than as an idea,” he tweeted at her. “Totally the opposite of what Arendt meant. Sidwell Friends, Stanford, Oxford, Columbia: all that money for fancy schools, and nowhere did you learn the meaning of this phrase?”

Strangely, that was my first thought about Chels missive.

[ResisTyr]

Corey Robin best sleep with a gun under his pillow.

[Oztrich Boy]

Well What I was led to conclude from Chels side of the twitting was that she thinks the Genderconfused are actually evil, not just mentally troubled.