Dinesh D'Souza's Crockumentary
And yet the damage from 2000 Mules continues.
Dinesh D’Souza’s crockumentary, 2000 Mules, has been withdrawn by Salem Media Group.
Here’s Bill Barr roasting the entire premise. Years ago.
The entire basis of this thing appears to be one man, dropping off ballots for himself, his wife, and their adult children. This not an actual problem foundation was then blown up by a factor of 2,000 using a bullshit analysis of cell phone location data.
The publisher of “2000 Mules” issued a statement Friday apologizing to a Georgia man who was shown in the film and falsely accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election.
The widely debunked film includes surveillance video showing Mark Andrews, his face blurred, putting five ballots in a drop box in Lawrenceville, an Atlanta suburb, as a voiceover by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza says: “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.”
Salem Media Group said in the statement that it has “removed the film from Salem’s platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem.”
“It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr. Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family,” the statement said.
A state investigation found that Andrews was dropping off ballots for himself, his wife and their three adult children, who all lived at the same address. That is legal in Georgia, and an investigator said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Andrews.
Commentary:
There are two types of people who read this Substack, actual practitioners/researchers in the field, and paranoid ninnies. For the ninnies among you, I’ve been watching CLOSELY since April 12th. If I squint just right I can even see the sites you’re visiting when you’re browsing one handed, and you are a sick puppy.
Now that we’ve taken care of that, I want the rest of you to interpret this the way a conspiratard would.
An EXPERT made a DOCUMENTARY.
There were pictures of people DOING THINGS WITH BALLOTS.
The DOCUMENTARY WAS REMOVED.
Why is THE MAN covering up this DOCUMENTARY?
There isn’t a “conspiracy nut” section in the DSM V. It’s not a developmental disorder. It’s not an organic brain function problem. It’s not a character disorder. And yet there is marked dysfunction and a common set of characteristics.
You absolutely MUST read the Recursive Fury paper mentioned in Reading: Required & Recommended. It’s a little thing, just fifteen pages. Here are the six key cognitive patterns.
Nefarious Intent - the conspiracy is always harmful.
Persecution-Victimization - the theorist is affected by the conspiracy.
Nihilistic Skepticism - things that do not support the conspiracy are ignored.
No Accidents - everything that happens is some dark power’s scheme.
Must Be Wrong - if superior evidence crushes a theory, the conspiracy remains.
Self Sealing - superior evidence against is just evidence of a larger conspiracy.
So the fact that D’Souza’s bullshit movie is finally pulled AFTER TWO YEARS does not begin to undo the harm that such things cause. Copies will circulate and the manner of its demise will ensure that the conspiratard pantheon will grow around it, elevating it while doing so, just like this famous bicycle embedded in a tree.
What was a poor quality donation to a growing boy after a house fire in the 1950s, is now a curiosity a dozen feet off the ground, firmly embedded in both the tree and internet mythos. Instead of simply have been outgrown and forgotten, legend has it the original owner parked it there before leaving for World War I, never to return. The crockumentary will be subject to similar myth building.
Conclusion:
The degradation of journalism that began with Fox News was turbocharged by the internet, which killed classified ad revenue for local papers. This infographic casts the decline in terms of people and government spending. As always, Pew Research Center has a flock of additional visual assets for anyone who wants to call attention to this problem.
The press, our once vaunted 4th estate, was the people’s GAO, the people’s National Security Council, and that daily paper was the people’s equivalent of the President’s Daily Brief. Today we face Reality Under Siege and November’s Civil War Referendum is coming at us fast.
If you’ve read the referendum piece you know my grim prognosis: We’re Gonna Fight. Even if we retain democracy and the rule of law, because of the forces I described in Heathens & Heretics, I think we’re in for a partial disintegration and the rise of para-states in our white, rural, poor fringes. Theocracy won’t serve them well, but lacking a grounding in objective reality, magical thinking will permit them to rationalize that purging the diverse, economically productive Democratic urban areas will solve their problems.
These next 154 days are going to feel just as long as the 159 years since our last civil war ended.