CIVIL WAR ON THE LEFT, PART 45. THE BANALITY OF CHELSEA:

Chelsea tweeted a link to a story about an arson fire at an LGBT center in Arizona with her coda about how it is an example of “the banality of evil”—the phrase made famous in Hannah Arendt’s controversial book Eichmann in Jerusalem. [Prof. Corey Robin of Brooklyn College] thought this a gross misuse or misunderstanding of Arendt’s phrase, and naturally defaulted to the usual mode of progressives everywhere, hectoring Chelsea for her superficiality. And Chelsea responded!

There follows a lot of explication about Arendt’s phrase, but twice Robin describes Chelsea thus: “author of a best-selling book; vice chair of a powerful global foundation; former special correspondent to NBC; possible congressional candidate, with a net worth of $15 million; daughter of the former president of the United States; daughter of the former Secretary of State and almost-president of the United States,” adding that “We have in this country a really weird ruling class.”

Credentialed-but-not-educated – and the worst political class in American history, as Glenn likes to say.

Steve Hayward’s write-up of the exchange at Power Line is fun, but you really should read the full back and forth between Robin and Chelsea, plus Robin’s correct assessment of how Arendt coined her immortal phrase and what she intended it to mean.