Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:04 pm
It is the kind of title that would get your paper returned to you by the teacher. But hey, it accurately captures the intellectual level of the campaign. Donald Trump is pretty pleased that fellow McCarthyite Ann Coulter has written a book about him, the title’s false premise and all: In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! It is not only untrue, it is bad Latin and English all at once.
“Out of Many Awesome”? Many what? Lies? Trump has no claim to a “many.” His movement is a cult of personality. And his “silent majority” has proven instead to be a very loud minority of white nationalists.
Naturally, Trump loves the book. He even tweeted about it. Not one of those angry, nasty tweets he devotes to people who question him. But a nice, comfortable tweet. A happy tweet:
He is especially happy because, as he tweeted an hour later,
It is no wonder Coulter loves Trump. They have…McCarthy…after all and the enshrinement of xenophobia as a virtue. Coulter writes,
“Liberals compulsively demand the importation of foreigners because of their seething hatred of the historic American nation. They won’t be happy until the DAR-eligible population is a tiny minority. Any culture that replaces American culture is an improvement, as far as they are concerned.”
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that the United States Constitution is itself a liberal document, the culmination of a liberal movement, the Enlightenment, this is still a remarkable statement. Coulter seems to assume that the only people who were ever supposed to live here are descendants of the people who fought in the Revolution, because as DAR will tell you, “Any woman is eligible for membership who is no less than 18 years of age and can prove lineal blood line descent from an ancestor who aided in achieving American independence.”
That leaves out most of America. It was nowhere suggested by the Founding Fathers that immigration should cease, or that only white European Christians need apply. Just as immigrants fought for both sides in the Revolution, they fought in the American Civil War for their new country. They fought in Iraq. And in Afghanistan.
Let’s take a dysfunctional premise, the premise of Coulter’s book. She writes:
Everything that seems like a disability with Trump always turns out to be an advantage. If we were in the laboratory, designing the perfect presidential candidate, it’s unlikely we would have produced a tasteless, publicity‐seeking, coarse, billionaire, reality TV star.
Ha! Look at how wrong we were. It turns out, that is exactly what we needed.
She even has a defense of Trump’s shabby treatment of…well, everyone:
Only someone who brags about his airline’s seatbelt buckles being made of solid gold would have the balls to do what Trump is doing. Being crude is an indispensable requirement. It gives him resistance to the opinion of Manhattan sophisticates.
You know, those New York City values. New York City, reliably red. Not a chance in nine hells of New York City voting Trump.
A one-man wrecking ball…that part, at least, is right. Not only the Republican Party has been wrecked, but if he gets a chance, the entire nation and all our nation’s friends, too.
Look, sorry Ann – and you too, Donald – saying things doesn’t make them true.
Lev, at Library Grape, writes about the rejection of empiricism, the theory that knowledge comes to us by way of sense experience, by both the mainstream media and by Trump (and by extension, this would obviously include people like Ann Coulter):
“The Republican Party rejected empiricism in large part because it conflicted with deeply emotionally-held beliefs…And the media rejected empiricism because they panicked when they lost so many customers to FOX and Rush, and have not stopped trying to get them back.”
That sure nails CNN’s “hiring” of Corey Lewandowski.
It also explains Coulter’s book, which is a slick, heavily commercialized work of fantasy rather than fact, a book full of hurt feelings enshrined in gloss to be read alongside Trump’s endless, immature whine.
Read his twitter feed. Then read Coulter assure us in her book that “He has no nerve endings for peer pressure.” Maybe not, but he sure has nerve endings for criticism, lashing out like a petulant child at every slight real or imagined.
She says “Trump is like a Shakespearean ‘fool’: he seems crass because he speaks the truth.”
No, he seems crass – lacking in refinement and sensitivity – because he is crass. It is a mistake to confuse speaking your mind with honesty, especially when the facts demonstrate that nine out of ten things leaving Trump’s mouth are not the truth.
Everything about Trump – and Coulter’s book – has the odor of falsity about it. His entire movement defines crass, as in his movement is crass commercialism more than a viable political ideology.
And Coulter’s book just crassly cashes in on Trump’s already crass commercialism. Coulter laughs all the way to the bank, either way, win or lose. Trump will laugh if he gets to sit down in the oval office and say “You’re Fired!” to half the world.
It’s all the rest of us who will suffer as a result of a false premise in this hero-worshiping work of rank apologia for everything that is wrong with Trump.
Disclaimer: I was not provided with a free copy of this book to review; to my knowledge, nobody hates me that much.
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