By Richard Larsen
Published - Idaho State Journal, 10/07/2012
What will the United States look like by 2016, if Barack
Obama is re-elected in November? Will it look much like it does today, or will
it be dramatically different, economically and in world stature? These are the most
fundamental questions posed by the blockbuster (by documentary film standards)
movie 2016, Obama’s America, based on
the 2010 book The Roots of Obama’s Rage
researched and written by Dinesh D'Souza, and produced by Gerald R. Molen, who
won an Academy Award for Schindler’s List.
Born and raised in Mumbai, India, D’Souza came to the States
as an exchange student at Dartmouth College where he graduated with high
honors. He became the editor of Policy Review,
which caught the attention members of the Reagan administration who recruited
him to the White House as a policy analyst. Currently serving as President of
King’s College in New York, D’Souza has been a Fellow at the Hoover Institution
at Stanford University, and a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Investor’s Business Daily has called D’Souza one of the most influential policy
researchers and analysts in the country.
The strength of D’Souza’s research for the 2016 movie is not just in his reliance
on primary sources for the book and the movie, but in the close parallels
between his background and that of our 44th president. Both were
raised in European colonial countries, both immigrated to the U.S., both
received Ivy League educations, both became editors of major publications, and
both went on to careers in public service. These parallels, laid out with
precision at the beginning of the film, establishes a foundation that D’Souza’s
research and perceptions place him in a unique position to assess and analyze
those early influences that dramatically affected Barack Obama’s worldview, and
more precisely, his view of America.
The intent of the movie is well articulated on the movie’s
website. “2016 Obama's America takes audiences on a gripping visual
journey into the heart of the world’s most powerful office to reveal the
struggle of whether one man's past will redefine America over the next four
years. The film examines the question, ‘If Obama wins a second term, where will
we be in 2016?’”
D’Souza doesn’t engage any of the conspiracy theories about
Obama’s birth, religion, Social Security number, or sealed college records. His
entire focus is on what he discovers from Obama’s book and from his own primary
sources. The movie’s co-producer, Doug Sain, said that Dinesh “walks on solid
ground,” with his research and sources.
The movie draws
heavily from Barack Obama’s autobiographical narrative attributed to him,
published in 1995, Dreams From My Father.
References from the book within the movie are exceptionally poignant as they
are from the audiobook version, with Obama reading the excerpts D’Souza uses.
The book tells the
Obama story from his birth to when he enrolled in college at Harvard. The early
narrative relates how his father, Barack Obama, Sr. of Kenya affected the young
Barack’s attitudes about life, relationships, and politics, based largely on
what his mother, Ann Dunham, told him. Since his parents were separated when he
was about two, almost everything the young Barack knew about his father was
from what his mother and maternal grandparents told him. Yet those dreams from
his father, as related to him, were sufficient to form the philosophical and
introspective thread of an autobiography.
Drawing from quotes in Obama’s book, D’Souza illustrates how
his mother’s radicalism and his father’s anti-colonialism and self-avowed
socialism guided him in his selection of school friends and associates, as well
as what he read, and who he idealized.
D’Souza tracks the autobiographical and historical
influences in Obama’s life, the people he actively sought out, associated with,
and learned from, and refers to them as Obama’s “founding fathers.” They
include the self-proclaimed Communist activist Frank Marshall Davis, the
alleged anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright, the terrorist and founder of
the Weather Underground Bill Ayers, the anti-Israel professor at Columbia,
Edward Said, and the radical Harvard professor Roberto Unger who mentored Obama
and taught him in a class titled “Reinventing Democracy.”
Based on the evidence D’Souza presents, Obama’s own statements
and firsthand interviews, Obama is an anti-colonialist who is heavily
influenced by the ideals of socialism. “He adopted his father's position that
capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to
perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within
America,” D’Souza explains. From an interview, a friend of Obama Sr. says that
“the son and the father are basically the same,” while describing the father’s
dream of 100% taxation and a socialist state to take care of everyone’s needs.
From his research, D’Souza shows why Obama rejects American
exceptionalism, and why he declared just before the 2008 election that we were
days away from “fundamentally transforming America.” He is able to explain why
Obama wants to reduce the global influence of the U.S. while increasing the
nations that have been “plundered” by U.S. and Western domination.
The body of research is not inclusive, nor does it attempt
to be so. D’Souza has an hour and a half of movie time to work with, not a
miniseries, so his research that made it into the film is only of supportive
evidence.
The film concludes by analyzing the affect of the massive
debt and deficits under Obama’s term, nearly as much debt as was amassed under
the previous 43 presidents combined. D’Souza interviewed former Comptroller
General of the United States, David M. Walker, appointed by President Clinton.
He described America as a “sinking ship” in a sea of our own debt. He points
out that the country is rapidly heading towards a debt crisis that could
collapse the U.S. economy within the next two to three years if we continue on
our present course with no correction.
The mainstream media typically goes to great lengths to
examine the background of our presidential candidates, but was conspicuously
reticent four years ago in its vetting of Obama, and has done little to compensate
for their omissions since then. This movie is an attempt to do what the media
failed to do. As such, it should be required viewing by all who consider
themselves to be informed voters, as the research is meticulous, and the evidentiary
conclusions are sobering with far-reaching implications and ramifications.
AP award winning
columnist Richard Larsen is President of Larsen Financial, a brokerage and
financial planning firm in Pocatello, and is a graduate of Idaho State
University with a BA in Political Science and History and former member of the
Idaho State Journal Editorial Board. He
can be reached at rlarsenen@cableone.net.