Now, I don't care for D'Souza, as might be evident by how I've written about him in the past. His claim that there is something un-American about being opposed to British colonialism, and selling that idea to people in tricorn hats waving stars and stripes, struck me as a tad incongruous and not without some racialist undertones when I first heard it, and I pretty much determined where his head was at when he quite recently made a tasteless tweet using a dead youth to malign the current president. His sensationalization of Barack Obama's "hidden" life and times in his wingnut welfare hit (job) movie aimed low and didn't miss hitting a low bar and stumbling right over, failing to actually be in any way a meaningful criticism of the President, even if a meaningful criticism based on policy from a conservative point of view could have potentially been made--but might not have been "sexy" enough for the president of a smallish Christian college who did not realize that not even being divorced from his current wife would look bad if he was kinda shacking up with some other lady.
But if anything, senationalist hot-button books and movies at least have some lucrative value, even if they don't live up to what an actual intellectual dissection of the target might mean in actual effect. But this indictment is talking about a mere $20k (is that--"That they can prove" or what?) laundered (to use a term of art) through straw contributors (they had to have consented, yes?) to a campaign that lost so very. very considerably. I mean it wasn't even close. Twenty large would have barely closed the deal on enough media time to make it remotely competitive. Not disrespecting whether he and the former Wendy Stone went way back--but what makes a guy risk jail time and at least four other
I get that some conspiracy-minded folks are saying this is a biased charge, but I find it hard to think there would be motion on this without any evidence at all. I'm thinking this is out there because the Feds are dead-to-rights on the 20G's they know about. Anything they shake out besides that is gravy. I just can't figure out why.
That's disappointing. What did he think he was doing there? For a public intellectual, he could be more smart.
4 comments:
His claim that there is something un-American about being opposed to British colonialism, and selling that idea to people in tricorn hats waving stars and stripes, struck me as a tad incongruous and not without some racialist undertones when I first heard it
Yeah, that was a real "WTF?" moment, and Newt Gingrich was also flogging that particular meme something hard in the 2012 primary season. You want anticolonialist rage? I got two words for ya, "Patrick Henry".
Hey BBBB --would that be the famous states' righter and opponent of the Constitution Patrick Henry who would totally have supported abolishing slavery if not for "the general inconvenience of living without them"? Certainly someone with whom one would expect Gingrich and D'Souza to feel a connection. Of course Gingrich wrote his dissertation on how great Belgian rule was for Congo. I thought it was pretty funny that the educational institution D'Souza headed was called "King's College" too.
Calling Mr. D'Souza an "intellectual" is problematic. How wrong, for how long, does one have to be, in order to shed that insult to real thinkers?
I saw this movie a year and a half ago and don't remember it too well. I believe the point was that early influences on Obama caused him to see the United States as a colonial power. This may have been why one of his first acts was to send the bust of Winston Churchill back to England. There was resentment by Kenyans because of colonialism.
The indictment may not be an act of intimidation directed at political opposition by the administration. We will have to wait and see.
It certainly would be common behavior if it were an attempt to punish opposition, as this has been going on from at least the Nixon administration. And I think just about every administration since has been in the game to some extent or another.
Regrettably, most often the corruption in our body politic causes it to be utterly bereft of morality, and often the supporters of an administration think it is fine to try and punish political opposition.
This is exceedingly dangerous, and more so for the party that prefers big government. Once the federal apparatus becomes so depraved that the loyal opposition must be punished lest they have some influence, we are treading toward totalitarianism.
--Formerly Amherst
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