The Somewhat Shorter Dinesh D’Souza
D’Souza on da mic: “Why is everybody always pickin’ on me?
‘Cause I’m from America, but got the-ocracy like Kho-mei-ni?”
- Geez, what’s the fuss? All I’m arguing is ‘Jihad vs. McWorld‘ except for that part where, cleverly, I’ve changed the definition of ‘McWorld’ to only mean ‘Western social liberalism,’ neener neener.
Extra stuff: Has D’Souza been treated unfairly? He’s irate, and feels obliged to justify his patriotism:
First, and I feel silly having to say it: I don’t hate America. […] the Daughters of the American Revolution offered to award me its annual “Patriot of the Year” prize — an honor that I presume is not typically bestowed upon people who hate America.
If I am a patriot, however, I am a rational patriot. I don’t believe in “my country right or wrong.” Mine is not the patriotism of David Warren, who says he tasted the dust of 9/11 and places my criticism of the American left in the same category as those who say “Death to America.” Rather, I uphold Edmund Burke’s view: “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”
Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t hate America. He really doesn’t — at least, not in the sense of the hate-America insult that’s so carelessly flung around these days. It’s just that his idea of a proper ‘America’ is analogous to the average Taliban fighter’s idea of a proper ‘Afghanistan’ — and (for that matter) to OBL’s idea of the ‘New Caliphate.’ What D’Souza hates is secularism, which he — like all wingnuts pig-ignorant of history and hopped up on religious goofballs — regards as an illegitimate and perverted version of America, wrought by evil, atheistic, libertine-liberals who’ve hijacked the ship of state and grossly deviated from the Founders’ course.
D’Souza wholly accepts the Leftist premise that Bush vs. the ‘Islamists’ is basically a struggle between fundie vs. fundie, but he dodges the consequences of this by alleging that we, the Left, say it in bad faith: His entire recent schtick amounts to admitting that the premise is true, putting himself proudly on the fundie side, but then saying that we Lefties only advance the argument because we want to lose Iraq — which is part-and-parcel of our general wickedness, since it was we who incited OBL to terrorism anyway, thus splitting the Muslim and Christian divisions of the World Wingnut Family.
D’Souza plainly misses those halcyon days of religious-wingnut ecumenicalism of a decade or so ago when Ayatollah-Assaholahs put a fatwah on Salman Rushdie, and a Wingnut President, a Pope, and many Rabbis and Preachers were at best evasive in defending the principles of the Enlightenment, and most often used such an opportunity to rail against the real evil in the Enlightened world, as they saw it: blasphemy. His justification for wanting to ‘win’ Iraq is to convince his religious-nut brethren there that they shouldn’t hate America because its ‘true’ nature is, like theirs, fundamentalist. Heal the wound; seal the breach. Theocrats of the world, unite!
Barber’s ‘Jihad vs. McWorld’ dialectic (linked above in its essay-length version) concerns a wide and complicated cultural and economic conflict. D’Souza’s dialectic, on the other hand, is strictly about religion: ‘Jihad vs Secularism’. D’Souza’s formula gets consumerism and global capital (the economic Imperium) neatly off the hook — a wingnut must-do — and also absolves right-wing foreign policy (the military and political Imperium) of any historical wrongdoing inre: the incitement of Muslims’ hatred. Nice trick. Deliciously dishonest. And it also nicely complements another of D’Souza’s aims: to remind Greater Wingnuttia that they too need to stop hatin’ the playas in a certain way. “Fellow Wingnuts,” the message goes, “Don’t hate on the Muslims too-too much. Yo, they hate fags and atheists, too, so they can’t be all bad!”
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
If everybody who writes about my book calls me an asshole, I MUST be correct!
Yeah, Dinesh. Being accused of hating America. Doesn’t feel too good, does it? Kinda annoying, right? Yeah.
huh-huh… Honors students…
The country would be a whole lot lovelier without this idiot in it.
This guy is certifiable.
Shorter D’Souza: If Osama bin Laden were here, he’d tell you liberals a thing or two! But since he’s not, I’ll misrepresent him to serve my own political purposes.
I hope D’Losah is enjoying the praise he’s getting for his book. Like this review:
that post totally nails it.
plus that photo. eeeeeeggh
what a face. my anal sphicter instintively gets all pinched up just lookin at it
Got a little project going here and I need some advice. I need at least 5,000 copies of Dinesh’s book. Should I just go ahead and make up 5,000 names and submit them for the Free copies being dumped or should I contact his publisher directly and get the Free copies that way? 5000 should be enough to finish lining an outhouse pit don’t you think?
5000 [copies] should be enough to finish lining an outhouse pit don’t you think?
You may want to think twice about this, Owlbear. Depending on where you live, five thousand copies of the Rishwain Scholar’s latest tome may be classified as hazardous waste materials, and you’d need a special building permit. Besides, outhouses are unpleasant enough without adding the outgassing odors from 5,000 pounds of Wingnut Wurlitzer Welfare Wanker stink.
D’Souza on da mic: “Why is everybody always pickin’ on me?
‘Cause I’m from America, but got the-ocracy like Kho-mei-ni?�
The riddle of the sphincter.
the Daughters of the American Revolution offered to award me its annual “Patriot of the Year� prize
Well, that’s a ringing endorsement. Crazy old elite WASP grandmothers think you’re fine?
And they offered it, but he didn’t accept? Sounds like even a square nutjob like D’Souzaphone realizes that would be a kiss of death.
I loved this book! Five stars. The only part I really hated was that he didn’t mention the U.S. presence in the Gulf, America’s connections with Tel Aviv, and that he said nothing about my desire to destroy India wholesale and turn the whole damn country over to Pakistan because of the naughty Bollywood movies. Otherwise, a fantastic work!
But the personal attacks have reached new heights with “The Enemy at Home.”
Just cause I call the libs the enemy, they get all hysterical and stuff!
P.S. President Bill Clinton’s failure to respond to Islamic attacks confirmed bin Laden’s perceptions of U.S. weakness and emboldened him to strike on 9/11.
Funny, anyone remember wag the dog? Clinton’s response to Islamic attacks was obviously just a maneuver to distract from the critically important blowjob investigation. And blaming Carter for the Ayatollah is just plain ignorant.
The riddle of the sphincter.
This is the most efficiently hilarious and brilliant thing I’ve read in some time.
“… I feel compelled to explain why I wrote this book…” Richard Mellon Scaife said I had to do something for my income and this way I get invited on TV to discuss my racist point of view before my new piece of kindling hits the bargain bins.
What’s up with his left eye? It’s twice the size of his right one. He looks like he’s about to scream “Clouseau!!”
As Edmund Burke would say of D’Souza today, “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. Therefore, would Dinesh D’Souza please put a bottle rocket up his ass and blast off!”
any second now, the withered old hag known as annie angel will come in here, squat over this very comments section, and, using Gavin’s name, shit out some bullshit screed about how we are all bitter, and all we do now is sit around and act bitter all the time.
please, spare us annie. really. please spare us.
by the way, ajay, d’nesh d’souza’s d’eye is d’squinted because he is trying d’hard to look d’inquisitive. or perhaps he thinks it looks like he is d’thinking d’hard.
D’Souza’s entire cultural left schtick isn’t left vs. right, it’s religious fundamentalism vs. secularism. And I hate to break it to him, but the majority of this country, i.e. the “enemy” at home, embraces just as many secular aspects of our culture as they do religious. In fact, a majority of even his own fellow Catholics supports contraception, legal abortion, and stem-cell research, in other words, most Catholics are a lot more like Nancy Pelosi than Dinesh D’Souza .
What makes his vapid anti-secularism especially disingenuous is that America’s secular culture is a product of D’Souza’s One True God: capitalism. Wall Street is about as irreligious an institution as one might find, and there is certainly nothing Christian about its activities, despite what T.E. Rogers might say about capital investment being akin to altruism. Yet you won’t hear D’Souza rail about bonuses for the fiduciary managers of our secular culture, only blame for its consumers, i.e. most of his fellow Americans.
To make matters worse, D’Souza constantly conflates his vaguely defined cultural left with the political left. Proof that he’s exactly the right wing hack he protests being is his ludicrous assertion that it’s the cultural left that is Congress’s bad angel whispering Cut off the funding. Block the increase in troops. Shut down Guantanamo Bay. Lose the war on terrorism — and blame Bush. With this crap, it’s clear that the “enemy” isn’t secularism, or a liberal culture at all. Like his soul-mate Ann Coulter, the enemy is simply anyone whose politics he disagrees with.
D’Souza is the guy who never got laid in high school and consequently hates everyone who did. He reminds me exactly of someone else in that way. Hum, let me think. Who could that be? Oh yeah, Sayyid Qutb, D’Souza’s theocon American hating nutcase bedfellow if ever there was one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb
Oh man, even Hugh Hewitt thinks D’Souza’s book is crap.
I found “The Enemy at Home� to be intellectually obtuse, poorly informed and, most importantly, an irresponsible exercise in putatively conservative bomb-throwing.
Interestingly, I came across that entry because I was looking for reviews that called D’Souza’s screed “dangerous” (something he claims is a common theme in the negative reviews he’s getting). I didn’t find anybody calling it “dangerous” — though I admit I didn’t come close to reading all the reviews out there — but Hewitt’s comes closest of the ones I did read, with the word “destructive.”
As far as I can tell, D’Souza contends that the “cultural left” is responsible for 9/11 because it has made American culture so obnoxious to Islamic fundamentalists that it drives them into a killing frenzy when the U.S. goes out and jams it down their throats. Suggesting that he thinks if American culture were more in line with Islamic fundamentalist views, then the radical clerics and their followers would cheerfully swallow American hegemony and ask for more.
How does he keep from screaming when the strupid burns so hot?
Er, the “stupid” burns so hot. Strupid is much more tepid. (Or maybe it’s teprid. I don’t know.)
Dinesh D’Souza doesn’t hate America.
Noooo, of course not, he just hates what makes America America. He likes the country the way it is except that he wishes it had a state religion, and fewer races, and a caste system, and a more militarized culture, and maybe a king instead of a president, and about that Constitution thing. . .
My favorite part of his column is when he whines that Stephen Colbert “tried” to make D’Souza admit that he agrees with Bin Laden. He neglects to mention that D’Souza did indeed admit this, explicitly, and it’s on tape for all of posterity.
Y’know . . . I don’t really like Dinesh D’Souza much.
Maybe it’s just me . . .
*snarf*
Somebody help me with this: from the articles I’ve read and interviews I’ve seen with D’snooza about his latest, his book says:
1. Liberals are basically allied with OBL
2. But OBL doesn’t like libs because libs are ho’s
3. So OBL attacked to stop the ho-ification because he hates libs
4. That places the blame for 9/11 squarely at the feet of secularism/liberalism/rationalism because it burns! it burns!
5. Good, Traditional America hates the burning too
6. So good, traditional America should actually team up with OBL to wipe out the liberals
7. Unlike the liberal alliance with OBL, which is evil because OBL is evil, a conservative alliance with OBL would be just and pure, because it would stop the ho-ification.
Is that about right?
” I am not, as [Wolcott] says, an unqualified right-wing hack. Rather, I am a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University…” I guess when you’re this far into wingnut welfare you can’t notice that Hoover Institution scholars are right-wing hacks.
But the real question is, do Wookies on Endor make sense?
D’Souza’s formula gets consumerism and global capital (the economic Imperium) neatly off the hook — a wingnut must-do — and also absolves right-wing foreign policy (the military and political Imperium) of any historical wrongdoing inre: the incitement of Muslims’ hatred.
Yeah, ‘cos if it didn’t, he’d be Ward Freaking Churchill.