Apologies for not knowing how to selectively quote a lot of different people, but I will try and express where I am coming from and reply to things mentioned so far:
I am just coming into this out of general interest and with not much in the specifics either way. I had one of those "here's what you missed" emails in my inbox and it was just a subject I thought I'd look into over here. I do follow some things in the media, but I am not an expert on the American systems or an avid follower of such events there.
From that initial vantage point, the statement about it being "common sense" again seems to be bit of a liberal bias-by-default. That's just how it looks, or rather, how it may appear to those looking in who do not share the consensus here.
It sounds like because the claims do not agree with a particular world view and because the person making those claims is not liked or has a history of controversy, the issues raised in the documentary must therefore be invalid and fake (in a black-and-white 'debunkable' way).
I'm not American. I don't know who D'Souza is or his reputation other than a brief skim on Wikipedia just now. He seems to have unorthodox views about slavery (as a whole and how it is used today as a political weapon), on colonialism (and how it was not necessarily always a bad thing), and that kind of thing which is bound to rile people up.
Not surprisingly, most of his harshest reviews and critics appear to be from the political left, and some of those cannot help themselves talk cross-purposes or making anecdotal cases to rebuff some of the points he seems to have been making about certain subjects.
So, just stumbling into this topic as an outsider, I think dismissing and "pre-debunking" the documentary from the outset because the man doesn't agree with "accepted" politics or viewpoints is not coming from a position of neutrality, which one ought to expect from a place that's supposed to be interested in trying to balance out what the truth may be.
It already seems to be a war to find any crevice or crack to undermine the contents or just dismiss the grey areas that may be raised in it, even nit-picking on camera shot angles or whether a mobile position could be triangulated within feet of accuracy.
If they are claiming in the documentary that the same shots are more than one location, or it works out to be impossible that one of the mobile devices could have travelled particular distances in the time duration presented, etc, it is right to be exposed as lies and fake.
However, I'm not sure what the arguments above are supposed to be oriented around yet. They didn't make sense to me, other than a rush to find *something* to be cynical about and get comfort in some kind of confirmation bias to protect a pre-existing world view.
That is your opinion, no doubt based on the idea that the system works, is neutral, independent and willing to do what'd be necessary.
Others could and would take a different opinion to that. It would then become a matter of viewpoint on both sides, not necessarily a reflection of the theoretical due process (that'd tend to be raised as a "debunk").
These differences on vantagepoints and expectations are reflections of the times we are living in, and I'd say it is getting worse.
I do not know the chronological order of what has been previously put forward to courts. It has no doubt taken some time for the documentary makers to investigate this, collect the claimed data, etc, which others in officialdom have seemingly had little interest in investigating. (There won't be 'official evidence' if nobody is really all that interested in looking for it, after all).
I believe there were some claims put forward to courts to challenge the results in some states after the election, but if this kind of claimed activity and evidence was not there and not yet compiled, it could not possibly have been deliberated on or duly further investigated by appropriate means to make a decision on in court when it may have mattered. Things have moved on since. The window of opportunity to contest the results has surely been and gone by now.
I want to be clear that I am NOT claiming D'Souza is right, that the documentary will not have flaws or exaggerations or insinuations of the sort that could never be proved either way (and which instead just provide a continued partisan bias for the people most likely to watch it).
I've already said it is bound to be propaganda and sensationalist. I am perhaps just more willing than others here to be open to the idea that they may have good cause for their claims of wrongdoing in the election process - or, more likely, that grey-areas were cynically constructed, orchestrated, implemented and exploited to get a certain result.
If it is all fabrications, blatant lies, falsified data, then so be it. I'd not lose any sleep over it. I'm not here to prove it is true or to argue for its validity. I am just pointing out the ideological biases that tend to occur on sites like these, which forms a closed-thinking in of itself, as I will try and highlight in a moment.
I did not deny I have biases of my own. That was partly my point, that there are biases and people need to remember them, particularly in regards to how they process 'facts' and 'evidence'.
For example, the "fact checking" Snopes quote provided tells us all about the legalities of felon voting rights - and there is a quip made about it being the "right thing to do for democracy", taken from the newspaper article.
Yet, this misses the point being made by the detractors by a country mile. It is not those things that mattered.
What mattered is that there was a swing state seat, where a billionaire gave $16 Million to what is reported to have been exclusively Black and Hispanic felons in order to get them elegible to vote, because Democrats knew that they'd be 95% and 2/3rds more likely to vote for Biden, by a margin and in such numbers that could swing the seat. They had calculated it out.
It was an orchestrated and contrived effort to use racial and ethnic aspects to tip an election result.
If it was about "felon voting rights", they should have done it across the board - but they didn't. They applied it selectively and PRECISELY to get an outcome favourable to one party.
Anybody who doesn't see a problem there and who isn't disgusted by such antics have a serious political bias going on.
The Hunter Biden story has since been reported to be true by the New York Times and others. There's even some claimed evidence that some reporters knew it to be true whilst they were proclaiming it to be fake-news. I'm not going to state for sure that this is the case because I don't know enough about it, but I know there is talk in some media outlets about it.
As such, you seem to be out of date on that one and have fallen for the "fake-news" and "conspiracy theories" of the MSM establishment. Both sides have them, they are not exclusive to the "right", although debunking sites and "fact-checking" organisations would tend to make people think otherwise.
That may well depend on who is doing the investigations and who is deciding on what constitutes wrongdoing, wouldn't it?...
Furthermore, given the sheer volume of information, the various dodgy dealings, the debauchery, some blatant illegalities (when it comes to behaviour and drugs, for which the police turned a blind eye), I don't think it could possibly be stated so early that "no wrong doings" have been done and that the Biden family are vindicated.
Hunter may not have been personally running for president, but Joe Biden is involved in the issues raised in the laptop revelations. For Joe Biden to have claimed that he has no idea about $5m deals with companies in China etc is laughable.
I don't know if any wrong-doing will be proven by letter of the law, but you repeatedly go to China with your son, introduce him to such people, he brings in $5 million and nobody in the rest of the Biden family know what's going on? Give me a break. It's these kinds of things that really drive a wedge between left and right.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ear-DailyMail-com-confirmed-authenticity.html
https://nypost.com/2022/04/01/new-y...laptop-is-real-but-only-to-protect-joe-biden/
Some of the issues being raised are damning - and they would have been damning and damaging in the presidential election, if the newspapers and media companies had done their job as journalists instead of being activists.
It is said that it could have been so problematic that Trump would have been re-elected. Why does this matter to the thread? Because it makes it easy to believe D'Souza, as the establishment and "left" were so desperate to do anything and all possible to get their result.
Given that 50 former intelligence officers came out fighting for it being "Russian disinformation", without any evidence whatsoever (the very people and organisations whos job it was to discern this kind of thing), it is a damning example of how, to many people, there is a "deep state" and media collusion. (The latter being evidential given that umpteen news sources were handed the raw data and a majority of them did not even bother to investigate any of it as it was too inconvenient to their political biases and their push to oust Trump).
It is true that the former intelligence officers included a caveat about them not really knowing of its validity or not - but the designed and orchestrated spectacle of them even doing this was entirely aimed at dismising the story and would have provided a shield for the MSM to hide behind whilst not reporting or investigating it.
Again, anybody who isn't disgusted by this blatant theatre and disregard for the truth by the establishment and the media (and anybody who is not disgusted by social-media platforms banning the subjects from being discussed, etc), is more than a little biased towards the liberal-left.
If people wonder why folks like D'Souza can gain such followings, they may need to look with some fresh eyes at what liberals and the establishment are actually doing and why trust is evaporating in all forms of officialdom and media and why polarisation is getting ever more extreme.
There is lying, then there are narratives that are based on purposeful distortions. That is my point.
I have no experience of D'Souza, I couldn't possibly make a contrast or assess how brazen he may be - but you do get propaganda and narratives from CNN which they know to be false or distorted, like the repeated claim that Trump called (all) "Mexican's rapists", or that he was "putting children in cages", or that he called white nationalists "very fine people", or that the BLM rallies were "peaceful protests" (whilst people were stomped on the head, battered with skateboards, stores looted and buildings burnt to the ground).
I am willing to see my biases and the troublesome narratives that come from the right, but are others here willing to admit their own and own up to what gets done from their own side of the fence?...
Yes, perhaps I did. I will own up to my mistake. I got it wrong from a poor memory and some vague recollection of it being news. As I say, I don't live and breath this stuff, I just see this and that.
The point was more that the media cannot always be trusted and that all sides can and do manipulate the news to suit an agenda, not just D'Souza.
Even the famously "impartial" BBC (which I think is a complete joke) was once caught out editing a video clip of some workers at a factory that had been employing immigrants.
They interviewed a man about what was going on in the factory then cut-and-shut his commentary to make him say "We can't work with those Eye-Ties {the local slang for Italians) in there" and make him look like a racist and that the protests were racist against immigrants. They ran this clip all day long on news bulletins.
In reality, in the full interview, only aired late at night on a niche program, he said that the areas inside the factory had been divided off and that they couldn't work with the immigrants in there.
The BBC had to apoligise for it after a backlash and vaguely blamed "editing" - but you'd have to be Mr Magoo to not see the game they were playing.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/feb/06/bbc-misleading-edit-wildcat-strike
I am just saying CNN is NO different to anyone else, Fox, etc. They all play these kinds of games every day to paint a narrative.
Again, I concede I was wrong. I had heard this so many times in discussions, I just posted the first article I searched for and inadvertently assumed it went with the story.
However, as I said above, it is typical of a "debunking site" to cite the letter of law on felon voting rights, or highlight a "non-partisan group" aiming to deal with "all former felons" as though this somehow debunks the issue being raised. It doesn't. These are the 'grey areas' that will likely never get agreed upon.
The issue is that a calculated and explicitly defined effort was made to apply it to only Black and Hispanic felons in this case, because 95% and 2/3rds of those felons would statistically vote for the Democrats. It was funded by a billionaire mayor in support of Biden, and the funds were issued to those particular types of felons in such numbers that would or could be enough to swing the state seat in time for the election.
You'd have to be blind to not see that for what it is, or to claim it is some "defence of democracy". It is the opposite of defending democracy when used this way.
Voting rights is one thing and can be argued for or against. What they pulled here was another matter entirely!
And these are the kinds of antics that can sway so many people to documentaries like this one from D'Souza!
I think people need to wake up and see what's going on and why everything is going to hell.
Like it or not, people are being led to conspiracy extremes because of an unwillingness of liberal-left minded people to take a plank out ones own eye before debunking the splinter in somebody else's.
