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 but also 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.
Whatever its factual weaknesses, it is an emotionally powerful
vision, to which many people have dedicated their lives, and for
which some have even risked their lives. Some of these people
appear in this documentary movie, as they have appeared throughout
the formative phases of Barack Obama’s life.
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is just the most visible and vocal
of a long line of such people who played crucial roles in Obama’s
evolution. When Jeremiah Wright thundered about how “white folks’
greed runs a world in need,” he captured the essence of the Third
World or anti-colonial vision.
But many of the other mentors, allies, family and friends of
Barack Obama over the years were of the same mindset, as this
documentary demonstrates.
More important, the movie 2016 demonstrates how so many
of Obama’s actions as President of the United States, which D’Souza
had predicted on the basis of his study of Obama’s background, are
perfectly consistent with that ideology, however inconsistent it is
with the rhetoric that gained him the highest office in the
land.
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