Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Truth about Obama

By Thomas Sowell

Years, and sometimes decades, pass between my visits to movie theaters. But I drove 30 miles to see the movie "2016," based on Dinesh D'Souza's best-selling book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Where I live is so politically correct that such a movie would not even be mentioned, much less shown.

Every seat in the theater was filled, even though there had been an earlier showing that day, and more showings were scheduled for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I had to sit on a staircase in the balcony, but it was worth it.

The audience was riveted. You could barely hear a sound from them, or detect a movement, and certainly not smell popcorn. Yet the movie had no bombast, no violence, no sex and no spectacular visual effects.

The documentary itself was fascinating, as Dinesh D'Souza presented the story of Barack Obama's life and view of the world, in a very conversational sort of way, illustrating it with visits to people and places around the world that played a role in the way Obama's ideas and beliefs evolved.

It was refreshing to see how addressing adults as adults could be effective, in an age when so many parts of the media address the public as if they were children who need a constant whirlwind of sounds and movements to keep them interested.

Dinesh D'Souza's own perspective, as someone born in India who came to America and became an American, provided a special insight into the way people from the Third World often perceive or misperceive the United States and the Western world.

That Third World perspective is Obama's perspective, D'Souza demonstrates in this documentary, as in his book — and it is a perspective that is very foreign to that of most Americans, which may be why some believe that Obama was born elsewhere.

D'Souza is convinced that the president was born in Hawaii, as he claims, but argues that not only Obama's time living in Indonesia and his emotionally charged visits to his father's home in Africa, have had a deep and impassioned effect on his thinking.

The story of Barack Obama, however, is not just the story of how one man came to be the way he is. It is a much larger story about how millions of Americans came to vote for, and some to idolize, a man whose fundamental beliefs and values are so different from their own.

For every person who sees Obama as somehow foreign there are many others who see him as a mainstream American political figure — and an inspiring one.

This D'Souza attributes to Barack Obama's great talents in rhetoric, and his ability to project an image that resonates with most Americans, however much that image may differ from, or even flatly contradict, the reality of Obama's own ideological view of the world.

What is that ideological view?

The Third World, or anti-colonial, view is that the rich nations have gotten rich by taking wealth from the poor nations. It is part of a much larger vision, in which the rich in general have gotten rich by taking from the poor, whether in their own country or elsewhere.

 Read the rest here.

7 comments:

  1. Obama's not such a bad guy....if you aren't a dog.
    http://dogsagainstobama.tumblr.com/

    Jim,MtnViewCA,USA

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  2. You can see the movie and judge for yourself, but I saw 2016, and I think Thomas Sowell is full of shit.

    Just taking politics out of the equation for a moment, the movie was terrible as a movie. Even terrible as a movie by documentary standards!

    D'Sousza should have taken some VO (voice over) classes before doing this movie. He drones through this movie in a mostly monotone monologue that will have you picking at your own eyeballs just to stay awake. We see interview after interview of guys standing with cell phones to their ears trying to look important while D'Souza supposedly is interviewing over their cell phones. It's amateurish and ridiculous.

    Putting politics back into the mix, D'Sousa has some good points about Obama's psychology. However, he completely misses the bigger point. Even if everything he says is true, SO THE FUCK WHAT?????

    This is the typical teocon mentality. The president is the problem. If we replace a socialist with a "D" after his name with a socialist who has an "R" after his name, the problems will be solved. They ignore every piece of historical data that should be apparent in their own lifespans -- no matter who is in power, government grows exponentially.

    If you don't end the Fed, and drastically reduce ALL spending -- ESPECIALLY military spending -- you cannot change America's decline.

    Which brings me to one section of the movie where some self-important neocon was describing how Obama's foreign policy would destroy mankind. The neocon, by implication of what we "should" be doing -- was trying to centrally plan the entire fucking world. There were smatterings of approval in the audience.

    It was all I could do to keep from standing up and screaming "YOU FUCKING MORONS! You're all upset that Obama's socialist agenda is trying to centrally plan the U.S. economy, but you're orgasming over this retard who is describing how we should be centrally-planning the whole fucking world!

    "You think the U.S government fucks everything up, but somehow, when it operates outside of the country's physical borders, it's pure socialist genius. Pull your heads out of your asses so your shit-for-brains can dribble out your ears!"

    Needless to say, since I'm not incarcerated in a psyche ward, i controlled myself.

    But "2016" is a piece of shit movie any way you cut it.

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    Replies
    1. Kudos, Anon.! Unlike Sowell, you get the lameness of this "2016" movie.

      In portraying Obama as a closet commie, D'Sousa is simply repackaging in film a worn out theme of the conservative media. But is Obama really so out-of-step from the political status quo as this movie assumes? In my view, Obama is as much a creature of the political establishment as any of his predecessors(or would-be successors).

      Moreover, to like this film, you have to buy into the questionable corollary that if we just got some conservative in the White House instead Obama like say Mitt Romney, that things would change dramatically, and that things would be so much better than they have been under Obama.

      I don't buy it. I doubt anybody would reads this web site regularly would buy this notion either. But there are a lot of ignorant people out there. So, if you already hate Obama AND think Sean Hannity is a genius, then "2016" is the movie for you. Everyone else should take a pass.

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    2. But if tommy rejected that barry is a commie idea, how long before he lost his nice gig as a syndicated columnist?

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    3. yeah, don't go see the movie. I haven't seen it, but I just read most of D'souza's book and it wasn't easy. It may have some good points on Obmama, but misses the big picture. Romney would be no better, and possibly even worse. If we had it D'souza's way we'd be bombing iran already and building even more bases over seas. I'm disapointed with Thomas Sowell and suprised to see this article on this site.

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  3. Whenever someone says Obama is a commie or is way out of step with the political mainstream, I reply: then why do all of the same insider corporations give him so much money?

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  4. D'Souza is neocon personified. Why should we care about his neocon attack on Obama?

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