2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA

A Review by Michael Berry

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Dinesh D’Souza’s film had a strong – albeit limited to one theater – opening weekend. Well, I hosted the opening night, and I’ll tell you, first hand, what I saw.

As for turnout, literally every seat was filled for our opening. We turned away 100 people, even though the event was invitation only.

The film is not, and should not be reviewed as, some sort of conservative Michael Moore effort. Far from it. Instead, it tells a story with a remarkable balance, and in a restrained, delicate way. It left me not angry at Barack Obama, or – to use a trite and inaccurate term – “hating” him, but rather, pitying the man. Pitying him in the way a victim’s family pities the man who murdered their daughter. Pitying him as a confused, sad, somewhat angry, hopeless man, struggling to become a man while fighting demons of a childhood filled with desperation. The theme of abandonment coarses throughout Obama’s life in this narrative, told in the soft, polite voice of Dinesh D’Souza. While he’s wrought horror on America, the film tries to understand why.

D’Souza was born, graduated, and married in the same years as Obama. They are both Ivy League-educated, non-white, driven men. His first seventeen years in India provide him a unique perspective in understanding, almost sympathizing, with Obama. He looks at Obama in a way that few have, creating a new narrative on what drives Obama. It is an interesting, and frightening, narrative, but carried out subtly, without the heavy hammer of most documentaries driven by ideologues.

Obama’s early years are studied, without judgment. A young man emerges from the experience who is quite foreign to the viewer. He lives in Indonesia, raised by a step-father who grows distant from Obama’s mother as he grows closer to the American dream. Obama’s mother’s influence is underscored, particularly as the keeper of his father’s dreams. Obama is shipped back to Hawaii to be with his grandparents, who find a mentor for him in the communist agitator Frank Davis. He goes off to Columbia, where he seeks out mentors with radical anti-colonial, anti-Western, anti-Christian curriculum vitae. These men (other than his mother, they are always men) influence the introspective Obama as he grows into the quasi-intellectual he aspires to be.

All the while, he tries to reconcile the role of the father who abandoned him in his life. Powerful scenes of Obama returning to Kenya are simulated.

The narrative arc bends powerfully toward the obvious conclusion that Barack Obama shares different values, beliefs, and dreams than the typical American. Unlike Bill Clinton, among other Democrats, he seems to seek the downfall of America. That so much of the story is told literally in Obama’s words, with his own voice from the audio book of Dreams From My Father, gives it a haunting element.

Ed Klein’s The Amateur advances the theory that Obama is in over his head, an almost harmless bumbler who was hoisted into the White House on the dreams of his handlers. 2016 Obama’s America concedes that Obama’s success is largely due to the willingness of others – mostly guilt-ridden whites – to help him without questioning him. But the real thrust of D’Souza’s movie is that Obama harbors an anger toward Whites, Christians, and the West, and that his agenda is far more frightening when that is understood.

The film manages to stick to its core focus, without chasing rabbit trails, and offers a unique narrative style. D’Souza is almost an adult Carmen Sandiego, on an international journey of study to find out who this man is and how he came to be that man. His constant movement throughout, with phone calls to various sources (his call with Shelby Steele is the highlight of the film) makes a journey we all share with the narrator himself.

D’Souza is a gentleman scholar. Both of those elements define this film, which, if watched by every American, would change the direction of this nation. Even many Democrats will vote down Obama if they give this film a chance.

Friday 5: Dinesh D’Souza

Most avid fans of social policy are familiar with Dinesh D’Souza’s name. For the last 20 years, his byline has appeared on countless magazine articles and blog posts that deftly slice through the rhetoric to get to the heart of complex policy issues; for the last two years, he’s served as president of The King’s College in New York City. He is a New York Times best-selling author whose eleventh book, Godforsaken: Is There a God Who Cares? Yes. Here’s Proof, was published earlier this year — and on July 27, his documentary film “2016: Obama’s America” will open in approximately 150 theaters nationwide. D’Souza recently spoke with CitizenLink about the film, and his Christian faith.

CitizenLink: Your new movie is based on your book The Roots of Obama’s Rage. What are you trying to get across?

Dinesh D’Souza: Well the key to the movie is, “Who is Obama?” In other words, Obama is kind of a mysterious figure — and I’m not just referring to his personal mysteries. There are a lot of personal mysteries, such as what was his SAT score for getting into college? Unknown. What were his grades at Columbia University? Unknown. Who were his friends at Columbia? Unknown. What was his GPA? Unknown. What was his LSAT score to get into law school? Unknown. Who were his girlfriends that he dated? Unknown, except for one. So there’s lot of personal mysteries surrounding Obama, but what this film focuses on is the ideological mystery of Obama. What’s his inner compass? What’s he like? And it’s based on my earlier book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, but also a new book that I’m publishing next month called Obama’s America. The Roots book looks back, and the new book, Obama’s America, looks forward. That’s why the film is called “2016,” because it’s looking at what would America look like in 2016 if Obama were to be re-elected.

CL: After all your research and your interviews, what could that future America look like?

DD: Obama’s a very unique president. He is different than traditional Democrats, and I think he has different agenda than a Clinton or a Gore, Kerry, Dukakis or even Kennedy. Traditional Democrats kind of want to redistribute income in America. Obama wants to realign America in the world, and so what he’s been doing is shrinking American power abroad, and expanding the power of the state at home, and he’s doing both things simultaneously. It’s part of his sort of anti-colonial or third-world agenda — an agenda that was very powerfully held by his father, and one that Obama adopted at a young age.

CL: Did you see anything encouraging about this future America? Or is it just a different country?

DD: Well, America is a unique kind of country in the sense that we are now the world’s number one. We are a country not based on birth or blood, but a country based upon allegiance to certain ideas. America’s wealth has been generated by a kind of a free-market entrepreneurial culture. America also has tried to be a force for spreading freedom in the world, and sometimes we have used force to do that. We used force to impose democracy on Germany and Japan after World War II, and the results have been fabulous.

That America is hateful to Obama. He wants to transform America — in fact, his own phrase from his inaugural speech is ‘re-making America.’ But of course, to re-make a country you have to unmake it. You have to undo what’s there to make it differently, and Obama’s been busy doing that. So if you look over the past few years we have seen dramatic changes. Our allies in the Middle East are weaker, our enemies are stronger, America’s standard of living has markedly declined. According to Federal Reserve reports from 2007 to now, the wealth of Americans is down 40 percent. That’s a huge amount. And if we had another decline of similar magnitude, I think that America would cease to be a First World country.

CL: Was there anything that you uncovered in the course of making this film that surprised or shocked you?

DD: It’s one thing to say that Obama was the most unknown guy to walk into the White House. There was a very special set of circumstances in 2008 that caused people to say “no” to Hilary Clinton, “no” to John McCain — these sort of time-tested politicians — and turn to a new guy. So in 2008, it was not surprising that we didn’t know Obama. But four years later, at the end of his first term? The fact that he still is largely unknown, that you can still have radically different things said about him on the Left and on the Right — that’s odd. So part of what surprised me with the film is I’d be down in Africa, I’d be talking to people who knew him or knew his dad, who are related to him, and I’d say, “Who are the people who’ve interviewed you so far?” And they’d be like, “Absolutely nobody. No one’s been down here.” So I’m thinking, “How odd. There’s almost like a willful silence about Obama and his past.” And that left the field open to us while we were researching this film.

CL: Tell me a little about your personal story. How did you come to know the Lord?

DD: I was raised Catholic in India. My family is from Goa, which was a Portuguese colony many generations ago. I came to America — I was an exchange student, I went to Dartmouth. I sort of rediscovered Christianity in adult life. My wife and I began to attend a Calvary Chapel church in California, and I found my faith reviving and deepening. And I started noticing that these new atheists were out there; Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, attacking God and Christianity. And I sort of got the idea that, “Wow, I know a couple of these guys, and have been doing a bunch of debates on political topics with guys like Jesse Jackson and others.” So I wondered if I should jump into the arena, take on some of the atheists on their own turf — which is to say, to debate them not so much like on the Bible, but debate them in secular venues using reason alone. And so over the past five years, I’ve debated, wow, I don’t know, maybe 30 leading atheists at different venues around the country, and that’s inspired me also to write some books about Christianity. It’s great because it’s a way of me bringing my faith and my work closer together.

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