September 4, 2017
Why Twitter is perfect for demagoguery
By Alan Keyes
For years now, the "gods" of style when it comes to the written word have encouraged educated people to be obsessed with simplicity in speech and writing. They worship at the altar of writers like Ernest Hemingway and Jack London, idols of the 20th century's obsession with what became the "journalistic style" of writing. The "Twitter culture" epitomizes the demands of this style. Its purported ruling principle is that no thought is allowed that cannot be expressed in 140 characters or less. Thus, the "Twitter brain" is supposed to subsist, as it were, on airlifted supplies, like a remote village in the Alaskan bush. No "trains of thought" (wicked or otherwise, Mr. Hobbes) are allowed. It even banishes truck convoys.
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/keyes/170904
