{"id":1451,"date":"2014-07-24T15:56:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T22:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=1451"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:55:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:55:31","slug":"recent-links-and-comments-dinesh-dsouza-pz-myers-john-c-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/07\/24\/recent-links-and-comments-dinesh-dsouza-pz-myers-john-c-wright\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Links and Comments: Dinesh D’Souza, PZ Myers, John C. Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slate: A Congressman Signs Up for the Dinesh D\u2019Souza Tantrum Tour<\/a><\/p>\n

This reflects, it seems to be, the popular jingoistic notion that one’s own country — or state, or city, or sports team — can never be wrong, must always be supported. Tribalistic thinking.<\/p>\n

Another. Here is a review of his movie by someone not within his right-wing bubble.<\/p>\n

Salon: Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig: Dinesh D\u2019Souza\u2019s laughable embarrassment: A review of \u201cAmerica: Imagine the World Without Her\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems that D’Souza (convicted for making illegal political contributions in 2012, not that there’s anything wrong with that) is responding in this film to the revisionist history of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States<\/b>, a book published way back in 1980.<\/p>\n

Realize: history is written by the winners. Zinn’s history, though controversial and not completely endorsed by academic historians, attempts to be a corrective to that tendency. D’Souza, in contrast, apparently is a vast apologetic for slavery, and Jim Crow.<\/p>\n

\nThe lies D\u2019Souza must disabuse us of, in order: First, that the genocide of Native Americans happened in relation to the conquest of their land; second, that African slave labor was exploited to build the American economy; third, that Mexican territories were conquered to form the U.S. Southwest; fourth, that U.S. wars abroad have involved imperial motives; fifth, that capitalism is bad. He goes to the trouble of listing these myths in text on what appears to be a massive parchment-esqe Powerpoint slide, and the structure of the film is a methodical treatment of each in turn.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

PZ Myers reacts to John C. Wright.<\/p>\n

Well, I am on a diet and trying to lose weight<\/a><\/p>\n

John C. Wright is an author of numerous hard SF\/far future novels over the past decade; here’s his page on sfadb.com: John C. Wright<\/a>. <\/p>\n

From Myers’ post, apparently John C. Wright has very specific ideas, based on Bible (of course), about how people should live their lives, and about how sex is only about procreation. <\/p>\n

Myers’ post is well worth reading, especially for his quotes of Wright’s posts… which I can’t quote here, just can’t. Myers concludes,<\/p>\n

\nSo much nonsense. Here\u2019s the real secret to mindblowing sex: each treats the other as a sovereign, intimately. My interactions with my wife are not subservient to praising tropes in a dusty old holy book, nor are they dedicated to creating some third party (yeesh, especially not at our age).<\/p>\n

Of course, this is John C. Wright babbling: Catholic, conservative, fan of Vox Day, science fiction writer. And if the puffed-up goofy prose in that column is any example, not a very good writer. Judging by the content, also a dogmatic idiot.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slate: A Congressman Signs Up for the Dinesh D\u2019Souza Tantrum Tour This reflects, it seems to be, the popular jingoistic notion that one’s own country — or state, or city, or sports team — can never be wrong, must always … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1456,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions\/1456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}