Resistance Is Futile: Trump-Hating Left's Mindset for Political Debates

Good political rhetoric reminds us that argumentation is indefinitely deep. Like the tip of an iceberg, tweets can toss off teasers that hint at more substantial reasoning. Or, surveying from the waterline up, you can sketch out some of the direction of your arguments. But, you can’t really achieve argumentative success without delving into the massive and complex depths below. Ann Coulter’s Resistance is Futile demonstrates mastery of the tweet, the sketch, and the depths.This is my first of Ann Coulter’s books. Maybe I’d love Adios, America better, as some reviewers do, but for now I’m impressed with this one. Ann, come do a guest workshop in my freshman comp classes! —heck, you could teach seniors and a graduate research seminar! Here’s why:By every writing/research measuring stick—Ann Coulter gives us non-fiction argumentation that’s lively, accurate, and approachable for her favorite “normal” people. She offers good rhetoric in action—not the “mere” political, calculating kind--but the engine of free, dialogic speech in a democracy that has been the goal (not always achieved) for 2500 years. She lays out premises and conclusions to stimulate thought as a precursor to problem-solving. Whether we (or students) agree or despise her preferred solutions, that’s secondary: It’s meritorious how well she selects, words, orders her claims, and backs everything up with comparison to alternative views, so we can think for ourselves.Ann Coulter shows accuracy and ingenuity in something like the 3 strata of an iceberg. Her Tweets are the high and attention-getting. They display her summary ideas, theses, or conclusions, with startling sparkle, leaving the fleshing out of arguments to one’s imagination. Ann’s columns give us the above-water-line iceberg—well-focused claims and broadly supportive argument outlines. The book-length treatment reveals the full iceberg with formulations of intricate arguments. In-depth reasoning risks being tedious to “normal people,” but it’s absolutely necessary to good political rhetoric. Ann’s diligent diving for content in this book, and putting a coherent political view into clear and winsome form, deserves our scrutiny and respect.Here’s my short list of Ann’s commendable writing strategies to keep us seeing top, middle, and bottom strata:1. Titles and Subtitles = Terrific. Titles/subtitles reel busy readers in. She likes to startle us, often with hyperbole or planned overkill. The startle isn’t the end purpose, but a startling image stays in our memories and makes us ponder longer than 3 seconds.2. She spans a range of audiences, easily weaves in Bonanza’s theme music followed shortly by a French jibe about her obsessed opponents (“idee fixe”).3. Modeling Effective Argument: Experienced lawyer/author Ann acknowledges significant counterexamples and meticulously documents evidence.Like some reviewers on Amazon, I hated having my nose rubbed in the awfulness of democracy’s sausage-making. But Ann’s argument arc is positive. She’s sharply critical but not pessimistic. Look at the book title: a yuuugely recognizable reference to the assimilation mandate of the Borg story lines in Star Trek. The anti-Trump Resistance is futile, she declares. Good can win out, and she invites us to choose instead the anti-anti-Trump-Resistance path.4. Well-timed Images, Humor and Comic Catharsis: Buy this book instead of 3 lattes to get well-timed cathartic humor and ironic relief. She never dishes boring, contrived, 5-paragraph freshman writing—she makes points cleverly, always careful not to lose her “normal” audience.Coulter calls on vivid imagery: Russian collusion = a “changing kaleidoscope with the same glass panes appearing, disappearing, and then reappearing.” In a good way, you can’t unsee that. Her writing stays in our brain with smart, rhetorical choices.5. No argumentative essay is complete without research and honest management of significant foot or end notes. Ann has 30 pages of citations. I checked a few via the Kindle links, enough to make sure she wasn’t fudging—no padding of sources!I’ve been following Ann on Twitter, reading the weekly columns, and catching her some on tv since 2008. She doesn’t oversimplify complexities, but she connects the dots helpfully because she cares. Sure, I cringe at her verbal provocations sometimes. I struggled with a title like In Trump We Trust. But I enjoyed Resistance is Futile and have come to trust her motives and almost all her means. Our no-sugar-coating author gives us her best. She argues, in the open and exposed, and makes us sharper citizens.