It’s a process: http://doingdemocracy.com/

It might be wasted effort if D’Souza’s initiative fails to be leveraged as a building block to grow an activist social movement, which is what’s ultimately necessary to compete in the social political game.

Would anyone want people in Hollywood to rule over their town or state? I wouldn’t. Neither does foreigners want the US in their nation, for the same reason.

There was a film by Mitch Anderson and Jason Tomaric (largely narrated by Niall Ferguson) called “The World without US” that explored that premise in a fascinating way. It’s a really good documentary.

I can’t see “America” until it comes out on DVD. They’re not exactly chomping at the bit to show it in China 🙂

Reality is against the popular narrative: Blacks — the ex-slaves — stayed largely in the old south after the Civil War.

1) They didn’t have transferable skills. Overwhelmingly they became sharecroppers — reverting back to the subsistence agriculture still seen today in Niger and Nigeria.

2) They had no working capital or credit… no grubstake to get them on the trail west.

3) In the agricultural economy of the late 19th Century the requisite labor was supplied by neighbors — not uncommonly kin from the old country.

4) If and when there was a labor shortage the industries sent agents straight to Europe to get more ‘fresh ones.’ Famously the meat packing industry paid for the transit of no end of Poles and Lithuanians to Chicago. As a result there’s more Polish DNA in Chicago than Warsaw (!)

The ONE industry that famously brought Black talent across the nation was the railroads. Blacks had a monopoly as porters, cooks, baggage handling. So you’ll discover tight Black communities at every significant railroad ‘division point.’

(A ‘division point’ occurred whenever the railroad changed the make up of a train. A town would always arise around any newly established division point. Spokane, Washington was — and remains — a classic division point. Roseville, California became the northern California division point for the Southern Pacific Railroad.

No end of land speculation occurred in the 19th Century — all turning on where the railroad was going to establish the next division point. In this, they were pre-peating the 20th Century speculations as to where an interstate exchange or off ramp was going to be built.

Dara’a (Jordan — see Lawrence of Arabia) and the mythic Sweet Water of Once Upon a Time in the West were division points. — It was the water — Dara’a is actually miles out of the way. It just happens to be the only viable source of decent water for miles around.)

More generally, unemployed Blacks were routinely run out of town as vagrants — in the 19th Century.

The big surge out of the old south came with WWII. The US Federal government financed a massive relocation of young Black men out to the West Coast and up north. Overnight Oakland switched from Irish to Black. ( It was the main debarkation point for the USN out to the Pacific. As ever, Blacks had the monopoly on portage. )

THIS was the source of Black internal migration out of the South.

Ford, GM, etc. all shunned Black labor — until WWII — and government suasion.

If you look at period films of labor riots in the 1930s you’ll note that virtually everyone is white.

Under FDR, the union movement positively discriminated against Black talent.

It’s hardly surprising. On an apples to apples comparison Blacks are usually not competitive. A shocking number have IQs below 85. (50%) Which means that they can’t/won’t take the lead in any activity. It also means that they are generally unsafe workers. They don’t perceive risk before disaster strikes. This often takes the form of crippling their co-workers.

This persistent IQ gap — nay chasm — is at the heart of the big nanny state. It’s the source of the LIV — and much else.

The welfare state is an attempt to paper it over. If only it worked.

The first black that owned slaves was said to be in 1610 or around there. That meant really early colonial times, where there was no rule of law.

The Democrat plantation system in the South was only setup a few decades before 1850. So between 1810 and 1610, a lot of differences going on with slavery as an institution. Early on, it was merely the Old Testament or Greek version of slavery. You were indentured labor, but might have had laws protecting you because you were still a “full human”. No full humans existed on Democrat Southern plantations, except the overseer and the master. The master’s family, if it counted women, weren’t even considered equal to a Southern plantation owner. It was feudal beyond the feudal.

“1) Isn’t this really the same thing as some of those left movies that are really just propaganda with little general popular appeal?”

General appeal isn’t what people think it is. General appeal comes from a strong foundation of zealous believers. The Left fortifies their believer’s faith with certain consensus building tools, so that they will go out and Preach the Word of the Left’s Death God. If conservatives are afraid, stay quiet, and shut up, obviously there is no “general popular appeal” because conservatives have voluntarily killed their Voice.

So defensive propaganda designed to raise one’s own ally’s morale, is actually in the end effective for raising general popularity and acceptance as well. It seems counter intuitive, but that’s how humans are.

“So America’s take is about 4% (!) of the current run of June release movies; and the 3 listed above while successful, are definitely not blockbusters.”

Independent films generally have a hard time breaking the MPAA dead lock or monopoly. That’s always been natural.

“My point is that this is a wasted effort.”

It’s not a wasted effort, as determined by actual propagandists and operatives. If you think it is a wasted effort, either you do not study the art of propaganda or you are using some kind of scientific, physics, rule set to apply to human motivations and beliefs. Doesn’t work that way on this planet, unfortunately.

I thought his production techniques were a step up from America: 2016. And his ability to get big name Leftists to speak on camera was effective.

I wish he’d included parts of Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s “Blame America First” speech at the 1984 Republican convention.

1) Isn’t this really the same thing as some of those left movies that are really just propaganda with little general popular appeal? Much like Al Gore’s movie. Sure the faithful go see it and gush over it, but does it really reach the audience one wants?

2) Follow-up: what are the box office statistics for the film? Now I’ll answer the question. total take around $9M since its release. While it ranked 12th this past weekend, the better comparison is the total gross as this measures the number of people paying to see the film. For June, some comparisons:

Xmen $229M
Maleficent (a not very good Disney effort( $224M)
Godzilla $198M,

reference http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

So America’s take is about 4% (!) of the current run of June release movies; and the 3 listed above while successful, are definitely not blockbusters.

My point is that this is a wasted effort. It’s not reaching the people that need to see it. Sorry, but sometimes conservatives are clueless in terms of reaching the masses, while the left has advanced their techniques to an art form.

My impression is the black-white aspect of slavery was an inherent part, but the main operative aspect of slavery was the legal status. As such, a freed black in the South had his (full?) civic rights and could conduct business, buy a home, get rich, vote, and everything else, among whites. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong and there was, in fact, some sort of apartheid system for freed blacks, but it could well be that free blacks weren’t handicapped by discrimination in the antebellum South.

Evidence for affluent blacks in the antebellum South is the sharp class differences that emerged immediately after the Civil War. It didn’t just happen that an equal group of poor ex-slaves just sorted themselves with some becoming rich over night. Affluent blacks before the war were affluent blacks after the war.

The blacks who migrated to northern cities seeking work were predominantly ex-slaves or descended from them, rather than antebellum free blacks.

When I did my college term paper on MLK and learned about the cold reception MLK received at Watts, it shed light on northern poor black resentment for affluent southern blacks.