The Coulter Troll

In 2016 my friend wanted me to start a podcast with her. She picked the first book, In Trump We Trust by Ann Coulter. I thoroughly read the book, I checked sources, I considered talking points, I took tedious angry little notes all over that stupid, stupid book. I 100% read that book so you do n ot have to.

Before digging into the content. I have to say what sincerely irks me about Coulter. She grew up in a wealthy east coast community and had the world at her fingertips. She berates the progress of women and immigrants and BIPOC, and yet she benefited from her own wealth and the blood sweat and tears of social justice warriors she also finds to be unworthy or un-American. For me, this detail is the lens I see everything she says through. Even if she leans into something I think is relevant I always know she only means that a specific subgroup is worthy. I never allow myself to lose sight of that, doing so would be a dangerous cognitive slope to crash down.

Coulter attended the Cornell for her undergraduate degree, and the University of Michigan for law school, 2 of the earliest universities to admit women. Instead of recognizing that she had seats that were so rare and unattainable to many and that maybe she herself wasnt special but just lucky, Coulter digs in and tells us she has no self reflection. Whether it be that she is agreeing women shouldn't make more, or dancing around at the border hoping drones kill people crossing, or ranting about the seat she didnt get on plane, or the policy her candidate isnt giving her. Coulter is the Phyllis Schlafly of our time, and hopefully she becomes just as obscure. Even in facing debates about whether she is trans, or discussions about never being married, she cant seem to leap over the hurdle that sexism and gender inequality are real problems.

The other glaring detail that I took away from what Criminal Minds might call a “deep dive” was that I looked at the sources she cited, now this is something I can not emphasize enough, as someone who has written college essays, and mediocre ones that could give her book a run for its money. They did not lead anywhere, the citations were not in context with her statements. On page 4 she cited a source with “Actual quotes -I’m too busy to footnote.” Its lazy at best, at worst its manipulative and dishonest, like she doesnt want to contextualize her quote so shes brushing us off with self important bullshit. The thing is she probably knows that her readers are not looking at her footnotes, they are gobbling up her books, and articles and interviews without a thought to whether she, a presumed expert is being truthful, and she naturally is validating what they say, so she must be factually correct.

The book was slapped together and while she claims to care about “Americans” it seems she only actually cares about immigration. According to Coulter the only conservative policy that matters is the wall and eliminating illegal immigrants. Even if I did not feel both a boiling rage and hysterical laughter from sentence to sentence. I am incited to those sensations anyway by the fact that she got to go to law school and be this ridiculous, and lazy. You have to be some kind of unaware to not believe in privilege and write "I'm too busy to footnote" this is why she is circulating the talk show circuit and not practicing law. She doesnt want to contextualize and provide evidence for anything. I'm sorry I am so stuck on it, but I have never seen that before, in an article or a book, and its rule number one of informing your sources.

So, why do I troll her on Twitter you may wonder? One might think I am just petty and like to feel smarter than people. I wouldnt argue that those are some of my flaws. However I also feel like I am not going to leave these spaces, I am not going to abandon these people in their bubbles to toil away on their keyboards. Some of us who arent easily wounded and have some unfortunate personality similarities to Coulter need to stick it out for the sake of society. Maybe in a decade I will discover that I ushered in the apocalypse, but for now it feels like I ware them down until they have to retreat because they have nothing left rebut.

Aside from that one time her seat got moved on her Delta flight that made me want to fly Delta for the rest of my life, because she was so angry that they dared not save her the seat she specifically reserved with extra leg room. God forbid Coulter must be uncomfortable when she specifically asked not to be. Most of the things she says are gross and enraging, or if there is a piece of me that sees a fact in them, I remember they are tainted with intense racism you cant look at anything she says as not a reflection of her wider world view. When she posts a video of a black man, or an immigrant who commits a crime with sarcastic references to the best and brightest immigrants, or gentrification being bad, I remember why I follow her. Because even if its just me, all alone in a sea of people who think shes the smartest person in the room, and she gets likes and agreement for wrong statements, at least someone is correcting them.

This week she has been especially prevalent in annoying me. First she posted a video of a crime being committed, and basically saying that the people who committed the crime did so because they were black. Which she frequently feeds her audience, and its exactly what want, a story that validates their racism. I cannot just let people believe that I cannot just hang back and know that she is a person of privilege, and apparent success that people are looking to for information and decide she just gets to do that. I feel a deep responsibility to step in and say “hey, you know physical features don’t dictate morality” and then spend a good amount of time hashing this out with people who think race and IQ are scientifically linked, which is why race and crime are linked. I find myself just saying the same thing over and over and over again. I guess you could say I am using her established platform to reach out and hope that these are seeds. Its really not for her, its for everyone else.

The other recent thing that set me off was misrepresenting the idea of terrorism. Now what really irked me about this was that again she has a law degree, so I must assume she is being manipulative and not that she is an idiot. She posted about Merrick Garlands response to charging people with terrorism in his confirmation hearing. He explained that terrorism requires violence with the intent of stopping government or political processes. Therefore simply attacking a courthouse “at night” isn't terrorism by default, the intent has to be there, and has to be provable in a court of law. Of course, Coulter latched on the part that specified at night and took the entire thing out of context. The thing is that I did not go to law school, but I understood Garland, merely attacking a courthouse does not prove intent to stop its functioning for a specific purpose. The entire U.S. legal system is built on using evidence to prove intent. (no, I am not arguing that the legal system functions properly, just what it is on paper.) Not that any of it matters because they didn't understand, I kept simply repeating that they needed intent, the media calls it terrorism when it isnt and the intent has to be present.

'The argument I didn't realize I was actually having was an attempt at forgiveness for the Jan 6th attack on DC. They want to say that the attacks on the courthouse in Portland were not terrorism and the attack on the capitol is the same so to say one is terrorism and one wasn't is bias. Trouble is that Portland doesn't have as far as I know evidence that they were stopping something specific whereas DC does... and its all a moot point because as of now I don't think there have been charges of terrorism in either case, that is simply the media using a label and not a legal term. Which for me felt weird because I usually avoid denigrating the media to this particular group of people for good reason and they didn't even bite on that. Perhaps its because they don't hate the media, they hate the world not being a reflection of their perceptions.

At the end of the day I do not worship at her altar, and a lot of people do. They see Coulter as a strong informed conservative voice. But I see her as someone who uses her platform to stereotype people, or present out of context arguments that feed into the biases of people who buy her books. She is a good interviewer I guess, and outrageous, and puts on airs of not taking herself too seriously. Coulter and Trump are not the different, they are privileged wealthy white east coasters who know how to look the parts they play but aren't actually fully participating. Whether it be through lies, or openly admitting they are too busy to be accountable to their own facts. I beg conservatives to expect more of the people they are looking to for roadmaps to conservative thought.