America: Imagine the World without Her (FILM REVIEW)
America: Imagine the World without Her
Film Review
by Kam Williams
Revisionist Documentary Speculates about Alternative U.S. Reality
What would the U.S. look like today if the Minutemen had lost
the Revolutionary War to England?
That query is the launching pad of America: Imagine the World without Her, an unapologetically
right-wing documentary written, directed and narrated by Dinesh
D’Souza.
D’Souza, a political pundit who immigrated here as a teenager back in
the Seventies, proudly wears his patriotism on his sleeve, announcing at the
outset, “I love America!
I chose this country!” before launching into a full-frontal attack on such controversial
left-leaning leaders and public intellectuals as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Ward
Churchill, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Eric Dyson,
Bill Ayers, Howard Zinn, Saul Alinsky and Hillary Clinton.
But
he levels his most caustic remarks at Barack Obama whom he indicts as a liar by
playing a number of incriminating comments from “If you want to keep your
doctor, you can keep your doctor” to “Nobody is listening to your phone
calls.” D’Souza goes on to explain the
President’s behavior as merely part of a strategic socialist conspiracy to
destroy the capitalist system.
The
movie is basically an attempt to prove that the United States is a great nation
with no reason to be ashamed of its past, as suggested by its supposed
detractors like Reverend Wright who is heard again in his most notorious sound
bite, “No! No! No! Not God bless America… God damn America!” D’Souza brushes aside
shameful chapters in our history like slavery and the slaughter of the Indians
by arguing that there were just as many black slave owners as white ones, and
that Native Americans had fought with each other for millennia prior to the
arrival of European settlers.
His
goal is to inspire the masses to rise up and save the country before it’s too
late. I suspect that the picture will serve as red meat to arch-conservatives already
inclined to dismiss Obama and other progressives as communists in liberals’
clothing. Unfortunately, it also won’t do much to encourage civil discourse or
to bridge the intractable stalemate between Democratic and Republicans sitting on
opposite sides of the aisle.
Divisive D’Souza: Imagine an America without
him!
Fair (1.5 stars)
Rated PG-13
for violent images
Running time: 104 minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Films
To see a trailer for America:
Imagine the World without Her, visit:
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