Hillary’s America: The Secret History of The Democratic Party (2016)
What kind of candy-coated daffodil Disneyland has Disnesh D’Souza mistaken for reality? What universe is this man living in? His new film Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is not only the stupidest documentary that I’ve ever seen, but it must be the most ignorant wrong-headed, mean-spirited work of fiction ever to come from anyone given license to make a movie. And that comment comes from the guy who had nice things to say about After Earth.
Four years ago I gave this man modestly positive marks for his documentary 2016: Obama’s America which I found to be a well-organized essay on the life and times of one Barak Hussein Obama II as he tried to dig under the life and history of the 43rd man to occupy the White House and uncover what brought him to the highest office in the land despite the fact that he had been in politics for only a decade. The movie was very anti-Obama, but I was impressed by the fact that it wasn’t all fire and brimstone.
That was long ago and far away. Since that time, D’Souza seems to have taken leave of his senses especially in light of his humiliating incident a year ago, just after being released from an eight month stretch at a community confinement center, in which he posted a photo on Twitter of a young Hilary Clinton with a confederate flag behind her – a child could have seen that it was a Photoshop manipulation of a famous picture that had appeared in Life Magazine in 1969, but somehow D’Souza missed that. When he was turned out as a fraud he took to nervously making fun of the size of her glasses.
That embarrassing stunt is representative of the bullpucky that he tries to flim flam his audience with in Hillary’s America: The Secret History of The Democratic Party, a nasty, hateful screed disguised as information that paints the entire Democratic Party as Jackson-worshipping, Klan-loving bunch of racist monsters who want to, here in the good ol’ 21st century, revert America back to the old slavery days of 150 years ago – literally. Through re-enactments he tries to educate you on the fact that the Democratic Party was responsible for slavery and Jacksonian politics, that the Civil War was fought between Democrats and Republicans and even tries to sell you on the idea that such monstrous practices as slavery are still in the agenda of Democrats today. No kidding, there’s a moment in this film in which Dinesh himself enacts a scene in which he visits the DNC headquarters and finds a secret basement containing chains and neck-collars, Klan implements and paintings of Andrew Jackson. That’s low.
D’Souza’s film enacts a alternate historical fantasyland in which the parties have avoided paradigm shifts over the past 200 years. He uses that as a template to mine every sin and stain from the past in an attempt to apply them to the current situation without any sort of consideration to the idea that governments, political parties, ideals, agendas, policies and, in fact, human beings grow and change and evolve over the course of time. His supposed history lesson is designed to drop “truth bombs” but what he’s really designing is the sort of half-wit conspiracy theory nonsense that keeps factual information at bay. He’s apparently in love with the fact that President Woodrow Wilson screened the notoriously racist The Birth of the Nation in the White House. He expands that little nugget with re-enactment in which Klan members walk off the screen during Wilson’s viewing and ride off into the night with the President looking on in admiration. Plus, apparently, LBJ’s passage of the Voting Rights Act had nothing to do with racial solidarity but shoring up party loyalty for the next 200 years. D’Souza’s ideas of a American history resemble those science fiction novels in which Hitler wins the Second World War. Don’t send a copy to Dinesh or he might try to sell it as a history book.
What’s worse is his contempt for his audience. This work of fiction is propagated by his apparent belief that those who attend his films don’t watch television, listen to the news or keep up with social media. He opens his film with footage of himself being sent to prison for an eight-month stretch for, we know, campaign finance charges and making false statements to the FEC. That’s not news. Everybody knows that. YET, his movie would try and convince you that the REAL reason he went to prison was because he was railroaded by the president himself for making 2016: Obama’s America and the person responsible for confinement was one Barak Hussein Obama II. How dumb does he think we are?!
This work of fiction is dangerous. It is beneath contempt. D’Souza misalignes and mangles American history and heritage for the propagation of his own ego. We don’t need a movie like this. We’re living at a time when racial tensions are at a boiling point with police shootings and Black Lives Matter. A movie like this propagates paranoia and fear and adds no sense of reality or basis in fact. It seriously undermines young people who are just beginning to learn the inner workings of their government into a false understanding of the most important aspects of their heritage. They don’t need their young minds filled with this kind of conspiratorial nonsense.
It is made by a highly educated man who apparently has learned nothing at all. His ideas of America are monstrous, his view of the opposing party is inhuman and cruel and his view of American history is on par with someone telling youa story that he keeps making up as he goes along. Yes, he got the public’s attention with 2016: Obama’s America and made it a minor hit, but he’s been setting fire to his own reputation ever since. He’s not only a bad filmmaker but he can’t even get his own con game right. In the opening scene, as he blames Obama for his confinement he tells us that “If you make a film criticizing the most powerful man in the world, expect the empire to strike back.” Okay, NOW I know what fantasy world he’s living in.
About the Author: Jerry Roberts
Jerry Roberts is a film critic and operator of two websites, Armchair Cinema and Armchair Oscars. 
