Why was I not aware that seeing the 2016 movie, imperatively, was
the "critical action" I needed to be intelligently informed about my
most important decision in this election season? Even a local prominent auto
dealer, Chris Leith, placed an ad in the News & Observer admonishing people
to be informed: If you watch certain cable news, watch the opposite channel's
viewpoint, and lastly he said, go see 2016. Be informed America!
Since 2008 I have not been as distracted by a deluge of political e-rumors,
100% from the right. It appears that the new version of dubious, political
persuasion is taking on a new dimension, as several enthusiastic promoters of 2016,
some of which admit they have not seen the movie, insist on getting out their forthright
message. Respectfully, I have no doubt that these politicos are any less
serious in their convictions than others.
Dinesh D' Souza who made the movie, has discovered, or attempted
to create the suspicion, that the real
Obama can't be trusted in leading America. D'Souza's books (I haven't read.), The Roots of Obama's Rage, reportedly,
on which the movie is based and his latest, Obama's
America: Unmaking the American Dream, expose his foil. Mysteriously, among
other specious projections for those prone to buy into the obscurity of evil
connivance: Obama seeks decline, attempts to downsize America to the
shortest-lived super power in world history; Obama's vision for world peace
positions America as the real threat, not Iran or North Korea; Obama will use
debt as a weapon of mass destruction to downsize America, making Americans
second-class citizens in their own country; Obama will work to destroy Israel,
one of America's strongest allies, in favor of "The United States of
Islam."
In emails I've received promoting 2016, there has been a fundamental
parallel-religious facet, something akin to prophesying the demise of our
country. If you will, a conspiracy-theorem. Academically, for the theorist,
2016 in its attempted validation, I suppose would rise one level above the "birtherism"
claim. Obama, he's just not one of us. We must reclaim our country and get back
to America's Christian values. "Turn back to the Lord." "God
Who is the Giver and Sustainer of our freedom and of this country, and pray to
know His Truth. Pray also that any spirit of deception will be revealed and
that we can vote in Nov. knowing that it is a vote of confidence from our own
conscience and not from any party's persuasive smooth talk." Not bad
evangelical mantras. Right!
Ok, I love my church; I will faithfully apply Jesus' teachings to
the degree possible in making the right decisions for America's leadership. Although,
that exercise will not be based on Bible prophecy.
For whatever Dinesh D'Souza's motivations, religion,
money or sick-partisanship (probably all 3) in his presidential seat at The
King's College, NY, he is an unusually controversial
figure within conservative circles. This video says a lot: (Verifiable in print.) Bill
Kristal's Weekly Standard, the "standard bearer" for conservatives,
says the movie is filled with "misstatements of fact," "leaps in
logic" and "pointless elaborate argumentation." Conservative
David Frum says it's "a brazen outburst of race bating," and the
mainstream Columbia Journal Review, "a fact twisting error laden piece of
paranoia." (In one of D'Souza's books he wrote, "The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11
... the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the
non-profit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of
anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world." Bizarre!)
Empty detractions of election seasons leave vacuums for serious
debate. A debate on long-range-economic strategy is vital to grow through the
Great Recession. To enumerate a few of these essential discussions: Economic policy reform to enhance middleclass opportunity, by which the
economy may flourish again; The Affordable Care Act by which you,
your child or grandchild's healthcare is covered, insurance policies can't be
canceled or refused on precondition. Where in the past health-cost bankrupted 700,000
US families annually; it's a bankruptcy
does not occur in any other developed country of the world; Energy reform, green technology
whereby solar panel and wind-turbine production and additional oil --- and gas
by fracking done safely --- gives revolutionary technology the upper-hand for energy
independence; Education reform, Race
to the Top a dramatic expansion of early childhood education, to prepare
kids to compete in a global economy; Long-term deficit reduction, cutbacks
that depend largely on health reform, smart cuts and efficiency without
stalling the economy and, as important in the balance column, how to deal with the
Grover Norquist problem. All important to avoiding the "fiscal cliff"
and building pillars of prosperity. These, others and maybe some culture
issues, await the presidential debates. Also, they should be our debates. Not
2016! Entertainment, maybe, box office proven, but seriously, reality?
Deliberations for
what's best for our country are undermined by myth, conspiracy theorist and
much other misinformation, for example, such as the ill-conceived emotion of
one 2016 promoter: "Anyone knowledgeable of our history and where we are
headed now recognizes the progressive, socialist direction of our nation. Even
Obama's new slogan, FORWARD, has been the one word slogan of Marxism." (Sure
enough from the high-chief-theorist Allen West (R-Fla.).) Some of these
fears come from difficultly in understanding a fast changing world, which restrains
unilateralism for the U.S. militarily and economically. As Thomas Friedman writes:
"In this
increasingly interdependent world, your rivals can threaten you as much by
collapsing as by rising. Think of what would happen to U.S. markets and jobs if
China’s growth slowed to a crawl and there was internal instability there?
In this increasingly
interdependent world, we have few pure “enemies” anymore: Iran, North Korea,
Cuba, Al Qaeda, the Taliban. But we have many “frenemies,” or half friends/half
foes. While the Pentagon worries about a war with China, the Commerce
Department is trying to get China to buy more Boeing planes and every American
university worth its salt is opening a campus in Beijing; meanwhile, the
Chinese are investing in American companies left and right. President Hugo
Chávez of Venezuela is the biggest thorn in America’s side in Latin America and
a vital source of our imported oil. The U.S. and Russia are on opposing sides
in Syria, but the U.S. supported Russia joining the World Trade Organization
and American businesses are lobbying Congress to lift cold war trade
restrictions on Russia so they can take advantage of its more open market.
More
on the point Friedman writes today: Phillip
Brown and Hugh Lauder, in a recent essay on Eurozine.com, argued that a
big shift of the global labor market is under way, in which “many of the things
we thought could only be done in the West can now be done anywhere in the
world, not only more cheaply but sometimes better.”
The conservative Fareed
Zakaria makes the point of a change in roles the parties project: "Today
it is the Republican Party that often seems angry with America. ................ Reagan was said to be three
parts optimism and one part nostalgia. Recently, that formula has been
inverted. In 1996, Bob Dole gave an astonishing convention speech that attacked
those who believed the U.S. had improved over the past decades.
.................... The Tea Partyers love America, but it's an America that is
an abstraction or a memory. The nation of today--with its many immigrants,
liberated women, increasingly liberated gays, myriad government programs, open
trade and a Spanish-language option on every phone menu--seems to scare
them."
You
may safely bet, and rightly so, more governmental reforms are urgent to keep in
step with a changing world. It's essential for the health of our capitalist
market. It will be crucial to retooling/reordering American workers in an
innovative job-market as we go through the world's third-industrial revolution, Technology Revolution. And we best be well
informed.
But
that crucial information will not come from the movie 2016. Sorry Chris Leith,
D'Souza's intellectual integrity does not rise to a level sufficient to trigger
a "critical action" on my part, except to expose it for what it is, a
deception of the highest order.
-----------------------------------------------------
The
neoconservative/evangelical connection:
Excerpt: Romney was undoubtedly drawn to this evangelical view of America’s
purpose for political reasons. During the primaries, facing voters consumed
with fears about America’s moral decline, Romney invoked a full-throated
Americanism—witness his embarrassingly corny renditions of “America the
Beautiful”—to deflect conservatives’ concern about his commitment to their
social agenda. He also needed to silence the worry, particularly prevalent
among evangelicals, that his loyalties were not to flag and country, but to
Mormon elders in Utah. In the general election, Romney is using his call for an
American Century to draw a contrast with President Obama, whom he accuses of
apologizing for the United States and acquiescing in its decline. This was the
strategy successfully wielded by Ronald Reagan when he blamed Jimmy Carter for
fostering “malaise” and promised to restore America’s “place in the sun.”
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