'HILLARY's AMERICA': Singularly dumb

I would like to respond to the letter in the Aug. 10 edition of The Press regarding Dinesh D’Souza’s film “Hillary’s America.” Mr. D’Souza’s opening line is “This is a true story.” I wonder if the author of the letter, Vonda Kerr, bothered to verify the truthfulness of any of what followed. I wonder if Ms. Kerr bothered to check on the bona fides of Mr. D’Souza. I believe, and I’m sure Ms. Kerr would agree with me, that as responsible citizens we all have a duty to search out and respect the truth.

I agree with the writer that “Whether your [sic] Republican or Democrat you owe it to yourself to be completely informed…”. However, I find laughable the idea that, “if your [sic] still not sure, go to YouTube…”. Yes, there you can pick and choose your truths; there you can easily find plenty of people, just like you who believe what you believe. Just all the everyday down-to-earth folks who “know the truth.” But those are not “truths” any more than the revisionist and delusional history portrayed by Mr. D’Souza in this film is “truth.”

The Washington Post (July 21), U.S. News & World Report (Aug. 9), The New Republic (Aug. 5), the Christian Post (July 30), Hutchinson News (July 25), all reputable publications with many different points of view, are unanimous in condemning this movie’s “nuggets of truth…overshadowed by the mountains of over-exaggeration, blatant omissions and over-dramatization” and that it “falls flat, except for those wanting to underscore their already-set-in-concrete beliefs (my emphasis). Mr. D’Souza’s claims that nearly every terrible thing in the history of this country can be attributed to the “malevolent, thieving designs of the evil Democrats.” He fails to acknowledge that the Democratic party of 1810, of 1910, and of 2010 are clearly different animals.

While a credible argument can be made that the Clintons are corrupt, Mr. D’Souza feels it necessary to portray Hillary Clinton as evil, as the devil incarnate, involved in convoluted and nefarious conspiracies to sell America to foreign countries. How clever they must be and how unbelievably absurd! The real story is probably much more complicated and much more interesting. Peter Sobczynski, of rogerebert.com, calls this “the single dumbest documentary” he has ever seen. I say that calling this a documentary is also singularly dumb.

I’m interested in your “very [sic] informed friend who claims that when “they” take a poll, “they interview 100 Republicans and 150 Democrats” — ostensibly to make sure that the Democratic candidate comes out on top? Who is this “they?” Where did your “very [sic] informed friend” get this information? And then we come to the part about Trump: “he is honest” you say. Vote for the honest guy. The world is confronted daily with proof to the contrary. On national television, he equates the “sacrifices” he made as a businessman to the sacrifice of a son to war and then, again on national television, he denies having said that.

He claims that the “Clinton-Obama” anti-coal conspiracy has cost Michigan more than 50,000 jobs. PolitiFact, which fact-checks all the candidates, points out that Michigan is not even on the National Mining Association list of the 26 states currently producing coal, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that only between 5,000 and 7,000 workers in Michigan were involved in any type of mining ore in the last decade. Where did the 50,000 number come from?

PolitiFact’s ratings of Trump and Clinton so far this year are: On the “truth” meter: Trump 35 percent (4 percent true, 10 percent mostly true, 21 percent half true). On the “false” side: Trump 28 percent mostly false (Hillary 16 percent), 65 percent false (Hillary 15 percent) and 30 percent “Pants on Fire” (Hillary 1 percent). Is PolitiFact just one more deceitful arm of this conspiracy? Trump feels the need to tell the world that he is smart. Most smart people don’t do that. But, yes, he’s smart enough to have weaseled his way out of paying income taxes while people like you and me could never afford to hire the high priced tax attorneys that show him how to do that.

Yes, he’s smart enough to know that he can stiff the little guy on his construction projects because they can’t afford to spend $250,000 in a legal battle to recover $150,000 for work they’ve done (under signed contracts). He’s smart enough to know when to declare bankruptcy so that he loses no money and his investors and employees be damned. He’s smart enough to figure out what it is you want to hear and then convince you that he believes it too.

You say “DO YOUR RESEARCH.” I don’t believe you have done so. He is not on your side. He is a dangerous man.

JILL BLACKBURN

Hayden