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Book Review: Stealing America by Dinesh D’Souza
I recently had the opportunity to listen to the book-on-tape version of Stealing America, by Dinesh D’Souza whom our readership is no doubt is familiar with.
For those who aren’t, Dinesh is an Asian Indian immigrant and naturalized American citizen who is a vocal critic of the Obama administration. His book is an attempt to explain the phenomenon of American progressivism as expressed in the Obama and impending Clinton Administrations and how they resemble in essence, criminal gangs.
How, I hear you ask, does one gain experience with criminal gangs? One possible source of experience might be to join one. Aside from the obvious hazards to one’s health there is the potential damage to one’s future career prospects, making such data-gathering impractical. However, Dinesh came by this information not directly of his own volition. He obtained it by force employed against him when he became an involuntary guest of the US prison system.
You see, in 2012, D’Souza (the man behind 2016: Obama’s America) decided to make a series of donations to then Senate Candidate and personal friend, Wendy Long in her vanity candidacy for New York’s Senate seat against incumbent Chuck Schumer. Having donated the statutory maximum of $10,000, Long requested of her old Dartmouth buddy that he donate additional money to her campaign. This, Dinesh did, through the means of recruiting friends and subordinates whom he would reimburse for providing Long with additional campaign funds, thus turning them into “straw donors.” This action is a violation of US Title 2, U.S. Code, Sec. 437g(d)(1)(D) and carries a potential maximum sentence of 2 years in prison.
When confronted with this fact in 2014 in the form of a visit from 2 FBI agents, Dinesh knew he was in pretty big trouble. He should have known he was in trouble – he sought straw donors in order to circumvent the law after all – which leads to the somewhat paradoxical claim that Dinesh was surprised that he had broken any law and had merely sidestepped it cleverly… As if nobody had ever come to the same conclusion as he had in the past.
Thus begins the story the author tells us, where the Obama Administration, irritated at D’Souza’s uncovering of the “truth” about Obama prior to the 2012 election decided to punch down and prosecute him with uncommon vigor for an offense so minor. To be fair to D’Souza’s case, there does seem to be evidence that the Administration took particular delight and care in seeking his incarceration – an allegation which itself receives far too little attention – but in the end, Dinesh admitted his guilt rather than risking the prospect of a multi-year prison term.
Thus, it came to pass that the minor conservative icon was sentenced to 8 months in overnight confinement at a dingy halfway house in San Diego, which provided him with a great deal of fodder.
It strikes me upon listening to D’Souza’s writings that rather than producing evidence for this or that proposition, he frequently seeks to psychoanalyze his targets using a series of just-so stories. In this particular instance, the targets, principally Clinton and Obama are analyzed through the lens of stories and experiences allegedly relayed to D’Souza by his fellow inmates at the lock-up. The point of all this is that there is essentially just one type of crime: Theft. The principal insight which was granted to D’Souza is that all criminals essentially engage in theft, from petty operators all the way up to the White House. The veracity of these stories is rendered somewhat questionable in hindsight if only because of how neatly they make the author’s point.
Take for instance the story of the cocaine dealer who ventured across the border into Mexico to pick up some Columbian snow from his supplier, Angel. Having successfully made the transaction, the would-be dealer returned across the border, only to find the cops waiting for him. Soon, along came Angel, money in hand to split with the cops. Angel leaves with all the drugs and half his money, the cops with the other half, and the hapless “victim” in prison. Leaving aside for a moment that the story itself would be an incredible one worthy of a crime novel, does D’Souza really expect us to believe that this in any way reflects the common interaction between criminals and cops? Cops have bosses. Criminals hate snitches. What motive would this motley crew of miscreants have to even leave this prospective dealer alive so that he could implicate those same cops? This is real life, not Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
While it is true that sometimes cops find themselves wound up in illegal activity, the notion that every cop is Vic Mackey as a result of what a few have done beggars the imagination, and wouldn’t sound out of place in a #blacklivesmatter screed. D’Souza then goes on to extrapolate this story into the tired Facebook meme that your one Libertarian friend loves to post claiming that “Taxation is Theft.”
Once you hear this tale, no matter how many obscenities you drop into the narrative for effect, it’s hard to take seriously that D’Souza actually spoke to any real criminals while in the pokey.
As the narrative wends on, we meet other earnest criminals in the lockup who conveniently have life stories that enable D’Souza’s explication of the various perfidies of the Progressive movement, chief among them being the much despised Saul Alinsky. It is true that Alinsky was a Machiavellian sort of liar and hypocrite. However, the manner of godlike power the narrative grants him in terms of his self-reported influence over events in Chicago leads one to believe that of all things Dinesh should have learned about criminals, he should have learned first that their capacity for untruth and self-promotion are unmatched.
This all leads up to the big enchilada – that of course being that the ultimate Progressive plot revolving around coopting the nation’s resources and directing them as they see fit through legalized theft. As Conservatives, we may be susceptible to believing this. Of course, it also assumes what in essence comes down to a vast conspiracy theory, where at the center of the web live infinitely devious and villainous progressives – of whom there are no doubt some. In the end, most of them are just as competent as the fictional thieves that inhabit D’Souza’s all-too-real overnight detention center. They make for a good story to scare people around the campfire, but when you actually look, it’s hard to find any who match this description.
In reality, D’Souza knows who his audience is and is ready to feed them buckets full of red meat. I have no doubt that he loves this country – it has made him unimaginably rich in comparison to his modest youth in India. It nonetheless strikes me as ironic though that even as he purports to lay out the progressive plan to “Steal America,” the principal beneficiary of his shouted warnings is most likely to be him – because with a message like this, cross-ideological persuasion has essentially gone out the door. The real irony of the situation is that in the end, it feels as if the book is itself premised upon a con: that D’Souza can simultaneously be such an obviously intelligent guy and such a rube as to have done what he did. It beggars the imagination.
Perhaps he did learn a thing or two in the Stony Lonesome after all.
“Stealing America” was read by Andrew Klavan, who is quite amusing as he reads the various fictitious criminals’ swear words.
- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Broadside Books (November 17, 2015)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0062366718
- ISBN-13: 978-0062366719
Obviously, there is nothing hucksterish about LF. I haven’t read Stealing America, but the film made D’Souza seem a little overly interested in the sell. This is particularly clear in his conversations with Jonah, who is pretty effective at giving D’Souza the sentences D’Souza is asking for while making it clear that he’s not going along for the full ride.
While it didn’t seem like the kind of work you’d want to cite without independently researching claims, and I agree that the criminals’ self-reported stories sounded particularly implausible, it contained a lot of persuasive and under-appreciated facts memorably portrayed and it was entertaining. In other words, it seemed kind of like a good Ann Coulter book in film form. The bit about the Civil Rights Act opponents dying as Democrats rather than switching was my favorite bit. There are plenty of people I’d recommend watch the film.
It is true that the 2012 campaign of Wendy Long was against Kirsten Gillibrand.
It is also true that Wendy Long is currently running another vanity campaign against Chuck Schumer in this cycle.
The author regrets the error.
Mr. Majestyk, this error has to cost you your life. Sorry to say, but no human kindness or courtesy can be extended you-
I shall be granted no quarter, it seems. :)
In all seriousness however, the thing that kept coming up in my mind as I listened to the book was “never attribute to malice what is more easily attributed to incompetence.” We on the right can’t have it both ways. Our opponents can’t simultaneously be the smartest, most Machiavellian people in the room with 3D-chess future-vision and also the sort of ignoramuses who implement massive takeovers of parts of the economy which promptly fall flat on their faces.
I kid only slightly about this. Does it seem clear that hubris, overweening pride and arrogance in regards to their own intelligence drive the left? Sure. They’re far too confident in their own limited abilities to chew the things they’ve bitten off. That doesn’t mean however that such failures are always intentional.
I’m willing to grant that in the case of Hillary Clinton there is intentional, knowing malice at work… but it should be viewed through the lens of catastrophic incompetence. The woman has failed at everything except getting people to give her vast amounts of money in exchange for access to power. But, in reality the nefarious desires are unmatched by similar competence.
Dinesh makes the mistake in my estimation of attributing both malice and far too much undeserved competence to not only big fish on the left, but practically all the way down to the individual level. I know plenty of people who are leftists. I certainly wouldn’t want them to be in charge of anything, and their aims are wrongheaded in my estimation… but they aren’t thieves.
By presuming bad intent from people who are your ideological opponents you essentially close off any possibility of cooperation. A leftist reading Dinesh’s book is probably going to think that conservatives would just as soon jail them as look at them. If we are looking for a reason why relations between the left and right are so poor, ipso facto preumptions of ill-will like this are probably one reason why.
I’m completely with you. The moralistic strain in conservatism, seeing evil wherever something happens that hurts them, is not all of sanity! Now that well-educated people with intellectual pretenses are dedicating themselves to it, I wonder whether there’s any place for someone like me in conservative-world. I’ve no idea whether people even will give me a listen–incompetence on both parts is one of the reasons we can reasonably hope to do better if we try out in speech & in deed ideas about improvement. But if there are nefarious forces, then there are only enemies, & people like me, who tell people to relax & get to work are merely blind stooges, wishing for peace where only cold civil war can reign…
I definitely agree here, Titus. I know many, many leftists and was one myself in recent memory, so I can tell you that most people out there are reflexively, not deliberately or mindfully left or right.
If there is one thing I hope that the GOP imitates about Trump’s campaign next time around, it’s the appeal to black voters. There is discontent and anxiety aplenty there—the failures, whether they result from incompetence or malice—are only becoming more obvious as the screams of “racism!” become more implausible and absurd.
Someone—it might have been Andrew Klavan!—said that Trump’s problem is that he keeps feeding applause lines to the people who are already going to vote for him, instead of trying to persuade or charm new voters. This is what the next GOP presidential candidate should definitely not imitate.
Not my quote, ma’am! But I appreciate your sentiments & endorse’em!
I don’t think this is true. It’s not my observation, but I can’t remember to whom to attribute it, but even if the people trying to plan the economy are the smartest people there ever were, they’re still going to fail. They don’t have the knowledge or wisdom of the millions who make up the economy.
Just because people think they’re smart doesn’t make it so. I don’t believe that the people who came up with Obamacare intended for it to fail. Sure, some people on the left view it as a ratchet, but the innumerable mistakes of the thing between there and here such as the failed rollout of healthcare.gov and the exchanges circling the drain certainly weren’t intentional. They just reveal that economic reality can’t be denied or altered by legislative fiat no matter how hard you close your eyes and wish it to be true.
I didn’t mean to imply that they were intentional, though they may have been. I just meant that, no matter how smart they are, no one can plan an economy including 330 million people (with success).
Obviously, which is a pretension that many on the left ascribe to government. We disagree with them about that, but that disagreement doesn’t make them evil and us luminous.
But it goes without saying that they are and we are.
Perfect example in@claire Berlinksi’s latest post on the Kardashian robbery, she mentions a fool in CA who emptied someone’s bank account and claims it’s not stealing because the money is insured. Since when is that not stealing? Yet he has a bigger fool defending him and tying up the courts. Ever since Bill Clinton said define “it” when he was on trial trying to deny every wrong-doing, things have gone down the dumper. And you want that family back in the WH????? Lies are now truth and visa versa. Parents have an extra tough job today.
Thanks for the book review!
You assume that they intended the massive takeover to be a success. Why do you do this? The takeover itself, whether successful by its own claims or not, is the success.