2016: Obama's America has been filling theaters and surpassing box office expectations across the country — no mean feat for a documentary. The film is based on the book The Roots of Obama's Rage by Dinesh D’Souza, an Indian immigrant and popular conservative spokesperson who also co-wrote, co-directed, narrated, and executive-produced the film. It provides a well-reasoned, well-researched exploration of the philosophical underpinnings that motivate Barack Obama.
D'Souza begins with a simple premise, which is emblazoned across his posters and promotional material: "Love him. Hate him. You don't know him." He then takes viewers on an investigative journey across four continents to discover what makes Obama tick, concluding that the ticking we hear could very well be a time bomb set to explode the minute he is reelected. As Obama told Premier Medvedev in an infamous open-mic incident, "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." Well, flexibility to do what? That is the question D'Souza tries to answer. What is Obama's ultimate goal for America?
According to D'Souza, Obama is motivated first and foremost by intense anticolonialism inherited from his parents, grandparents, and academic mentors. D'Souza understands this anticolonialism. He grew up with it in India, where his grandfather's mistrust of British colonialists included mistrust of whites in general. He could not understand why young Dinesh wanted to go to college in America, where there were "so many whites."
In some respects this film is the biography of an intellectual immigrant, written by an actual immigrant. D'Souza begins the film by telling his own story: raised in relative poverty in Mumbai, he came to the United States as a teenager to attend Dartmouth College. When he was barely 20 he was offered a job in the Reagan White House, not unlike the young Obama being elected to the Senate. Both Obama and D’Souza are passionate speakers. Both ended up as presidents — Obama as the president of the United States, D'Souza as the president of The King's College in Manhattan. D'Souza and Obama were born in the same year, graduated from Ivy League colleges in the same year, and married in the same year. Both spent their childhoods in third-world Asian countries. Yet ideologically they are polar opposites.
This background is important because it shows that D'Souza is specially, perhaps uniquely qualified to understand Obama's history. It also demonstrates that one is not controlled by one's environment; we all have choices. Obama himself said, "My destiny wasn’t given to me; it was constructed by me."
Obama, of course, was born and schooled in Hawaii, the 50th state in the union. (D'Souza dismisses the birther argument without even addressing it, noting simply that Obama's birth was reported in two local newspapers.) But Obama’s Hawaii is an island state, far from the mainland, where anticolonialist sentiment is strong among ideologists, such as the people who brought him up. He has the background of an immigrant, having lived in Jakarta as a child and among Hawaiian anticolonialists as a teenager. He arrived on the mainland at the same age as D’Souza, with the mindset of a non-American, and perhaps something more.
D'Souza takes viewers on an investigative journey across four continents to discover what makes Obama tick, concluding that the ticking we hear could very well be a time bomb set to explode the minute he is reelected.
Obama spent his childhood in Jakarta, not America, and was nurtured by a mother who was decidedly anti-American. It was almost laughable to hear Kathleen Sebelius claim Obama as a Kansan during her speech at the Democratic National Convention. His mother may have been born there, but she was certainly not in Kansas anymore when Barry was being brought up. Obama titled his biography Dreams from My Father, but it was his mother who taught him those dreams; Obama met his father only once, when he was 10 years old. Most people don’t realize that.
Of course, in many ways an absent father is more powerful than a father who comes home from work every day. The absent father is never seen making a mistake, losing his temper, drinking too much, or disciplining his child. He can be whatever the child dreams him to be. D’Souza asks, “What is Obama’s dream? Is it the American Dream? Martin Luther King’s Dream? Or another dream?" To answer that question, he focuses on the preposition in the title of Obama's book: dreams from, not of, the father. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Obama seems to have adopted the dreams and aspirations that were his father’s. These include an African anticolonialism that led to a rabid anticapitalist, anti-American mentality. Although, by his own admission, he hides it well behind a carefully crafted, winning smile, Obama embraces his father’s third-world collectivism, a collectivism he learned at his mother's knee.
In addition, Obama had a series of philosophical fathers. In his education years he met a stream of radical mentors. These included Frank Marshall Davis in Hawaii, Edward Said at Columbia, Roberto Unger at Harvard, and Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright in Chicago — all self-proclaimed radical leftists. Unger recently complained that Obama has not been progressive enough! It was Obama’s campaign strategy to distance himself from these mentors (although the distance from Wright had to be forced on him by publicity). Yet their influence, D’Souza suggests, is already deeply embedded in his philosophy. And Obama’s obscured friends and influences are likely to come out of obscurity during a second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection.
One of Obama's goals is to "level the playing field" by disarming the United States and other Western nations. Yes, it would be great if all the countries in the world agreed to destroy their weapons. Weapons have a way of being used eventually. But America seems to be the only country that is actually following through with Obama's idea of reducing defense (!) missiles from 5,000 to 1,500 to an eventual goal of hundreds.
Meanwhile, right under our noses, Obama has been cagily stockpiling his own "weapon of mass destruction." This weapon is the burgeoning mountain of debt that has accrued during his presidency and about which he seems to care absolutely nothing at all. D'Souza suggests that the unprecedented increase in the national debt has been a deliberate tactic, designed to destroy America's position as a leader of the world. "We will collapse into bankruptcy, and our creditors will have the upper hand," he concludes, adding prophetically, "Nothing shapes the future like the debts of the past."
The tone of this film is neither shrill nor bombastic nor even particularly emotional. It doesn't make wild accusations or offer unfounded rumors. In fact, it uses Obama’s own words in his own voice to tell Obama’s own story. (To make money, Obama produced a self-narrated audio version of Dreams from My Father.) This gives the film an unexpected voice of authenticity, a voice that cannot be denied, even by those who love and admire Obama, because it is his voice. The film is all the more frightening and convincing because of its calm and reasoned approach.
It is, simply, one of the most powerful and important films of the year. It may not win any Oscars, but it may just win an election. Congratulations are due to Dinesh D'Souza for this courageous documentary — as well as my own thanks for letting us premier it at the Anthem Libertarian Film Festival this July.
