Another Money Making Conspiracy Con by a Right Wing Huckster

In Dineesh D’Souza’s newest “psuedo-documentary”, on September 11, 1777  (yeah! 9/11) General George Washington is gunned down by a British assassin and in the next few moments we see the Statue of Liberty and the Faces of Mt. Rushmore crumble like dust into the air. This bit of alternative history serves as the starting point for D’Souza’s latest effort to half-bake history into a nice dessert for conservative audiences.

“America: Imagine the World without Her” has earned $4 million in two weeks showing in 1,105 theaters averaging $2,483 per theater putting it in 21st place among current films showing. That works out to about 310 people per theater.

It has a 11 percent “fresh” rating on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomato Meter BUT a 91 percent “liked it” review at the same site.

I am among those who did not like it. I am happy to say I did not pay to see it. I go to the same movie theater all the time.  Most Saturdays I join a group of friends there for a late afternoon film followed by dinner where part of our conversation is devoted to the film.

“America” was not on our list. Still I was curious. I had seen “2016: Obama’ America” D’Souza’s prior pitiful propaganda party. But I hated the idea of contributing a dime to anything he or his associates produce. So I did this time what I did last time- I snuck in. Actually, the manager gave me a pass because he was interested in my take on the show.

On the afternoon of July 6 I joined 75 or so others in a small theater. Most of them applauded several times. There were a lot of “uh huh’s” and “that’s right’s” from a number in the audience.  But the audience was not enthused and roused as they were by “2016: Obama’s America.”

I think that is because the arguments presented by the film are shabby ones and even those predisposed to believe in them found the effort half-hearted at best.

The opening “death of The Father of Our Country” is followed by a few more bits of psuedo-history which fail to even meet the low standards of the History Channel and seem tossed in to please folks who wear tri-cornered hats and wave Gadsden Flags.  The special effects are cut rate (a patriotic “Sharknado”?). The acting is amateurish and the casting laughable (catch a glimpse of D’Souza’s Lincoln below).

Much of the film present D’Souza as an apologist for America.

D’Souza’s contemporary villains are radical-minded professors like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky who have, through the techniques Saul Alinsky supposedly learned from Al Capone, succeeded in making millions of black Americans, Native Americans, poor Americans, and liberal Americans angry and ashamed of the darkest parts of American history.

D’Souza marvels that Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is “required reading” in hundreds of colleges (usually alongside other texts presenting other interpretive spins). He wags his finger at a “Good Will Hunting” clip in which Matt Damon endorses the book.  Zinn and company posit that slavery, the deaths of millions of Native Americans, income inequality, and the secret bombing of Cambodia are all bad things that should shade our understanding of American history. This apparently bothers D’Souza a lot. He caps off his presentation with Ward Churchill, a left leaning spinner of the fantastic, who suggests that it might be morally justifiable to nuke the USA.

D’Souza and several conservative pundits insist that anyone who still worries about American injustices fails to recognize that America is at heart a force of good in this world by and large faithful to the ideals set down in the Declaration of Independence.  In this light “the indictments of America,” in his words — really aren’t any big deal at all.

D’Souza points out that slavery was common, that there were even blacks who owned slaves and Frederic Douglas rejected the “Back to Africa” movement. He tries to make the case that it was really capitalism that ended slavery (or would have if not for “radical forces” that wanted to destroy the concept of states rights and launched an unnecesary war of Northern aggression).

He counters Noam Chomsky’s point that many Vietnamese do not regard the U.S. as a force for good. By showing scenes of American soldiers giving candy to Vietnamese kids and a reenactment of a fighter pilot being tortured in a Viet Cong prison camp.

His take on those who criticize unbridled capitalism by insisting that the hot dog vendors in Times Square are targets for anti-capitalists every bit as much as are the CEOs of NASDAQ companies. Then, in a baffling skit, D’Souza plays the proprietor of fast food joint called Delish Dinesh, chirping “Can I help you?” at customers in an Indian accent and then explaining to us that to make a hamburger at home would cost a consumer more than it would to buy a hamburger in a restaurant.

Over and over again, D’Souza comes back to that Lucifer inspired demon, Saul Alinsky who D’Souza says faithful followers Obama and Clinton serve. Clinton actually met him! She based her thesis on him! Their first meeting is actually re-enacted as if it were the centerpiece of a horror film, with scary music and sinister back lighting.

Which point to the one horror that D’Souza can not excuse; the one historical crime this nation’s founders could never live down is, of course, the radical, Alinskyite Barack Obama passing of the socialist health care plan

In the final minutes of the film, D’Souza gets personal admitting that he has been convicted of campaign finance fraud for acts that he says were an innocent mistake which his foes have transformed into a felony.  He implies that he is just the latest victim in an Obama effort to destroy his critics.

Here’s a quick look at the film trailer. Its appeal is obvious Dineesh vs. the Anti-American elites.