Last night my wife and I ventured out for a rare date - 2 for 1 burritos and the documentary 2016: Obama's America, which, surprisingly, is playing at two movie theaters near our central Minnesota home. To find it near a theater near you, look at this list. The film performed extremely well this weekend and has opened at additional theaters across the country.
Imagine my shock, first of all, to find the theater three-quarters full on a Monday night, with people of all ages. When I asked the theater staff person how the movie has been doing, he replied, "This movie has been doing very well here."
Dinesh D'Souza's cautionary documentary, based on his book "The Roots of Obama's Rage," is well crafted. It spans the globe, taking viewers to India, Indonesia, Hawaii, and Kenya - recreating scenes from Barack Obama's and D'Souza's life to share their history and how their environment shaped them both.
D'Souza points out that he and the president share many similarities. Both were born in the same year. Both attended Ivy League schools. Both graduated from college in the same year. Both were married in the same year, and both spent time in former colonial countries. It is this last element that D'Souza spends the most time examining.
Avoiding the rhetoric employed by many pundits who describe Obama as a socialist or a Marxist, D'Souza makes a convincing argument that the dream Obama inherited from his father, and which was effectively passed on through his mother, his mentor and many others whom he associated with, was an anti-colonialist dream.
The film effectively utilizes prominent commentators to shed light on Obama. Psychologist Paul Vitz talks about the impact of an absent father. The Hoover Institute's Shelby Steele talks about how Obama's ability to appeal to both African-Americans and whites helped him get elected the first time. Daniel Pipes speaks about the dangers in the Middle East and President Obama's inconsistent way of dealing with the Middle East. Former US comptroller David Walker sheds some light on our current unsustainable debt situation. Obama's Kenyan half-brother George doesn't share his brother's anti-colonial views. Paul Kengor talks about Obama's intimate connections with his mentor Hawaiian Communist Frank Marshall Davis.
Much of the material presented by the documentary isn't new, yet it's put together in a cohesive and convincing manner. It's a thinking man's Fahrenheit 9/11. The film does what the mainstream media has refused to do, taking an honest look at Obama's history, his problematic connections, and his desire for America. D'Souza notes that Obama's founding fathers are not Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, but Communist Frank Marshall Davis, terrorist Bill Ayers, liberation theologian and pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and pro-Palestinian professor Edward Said.
D'Souza uses his anti-colonial thesis to explain why the President has made many of the decisions he has, such as returning a bust of Winston Churchill to the U.K., siding with the Falkland Islands against the U.K., drastically reducing America's nuclear arsenal, preventing off-shore American oil drilling, while allowing it off shore of Brazil, Mexico and elsewhere, embracing universal healthcare, getting the government into private industry, and continuing to triple our national debt.
While the film's timing did not allow it to include the now infamous Obama quote, "You didn't build that," the film sheds a great deal of light on the philosophy behind the president's statement. Businesses, he believes, have been unfairly built on the backs of others.
The film is largely narrated by D'Souza, yet includes many Obama quotes, most in Obama's own voice, taken from his biography, "Dreams from My Father."
The film doesn't fear-monger. It's not extreme. It's a calm, scholarly, fascinating look at a man whom few really knew in 2008. At the film's end, based on the president's previous actions, D'Souza makes three predictions, all of which appear to be taking place.
Sadly, the film doesn't explore the president's attack on religious freedom, other than to note that Obama's views against capitalism, Christianity, and corporations were shaped by the radical anti-colonialist views of his father, mother and associates.
"I chose my friends carefully," we hear Obama say in the film. "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets."
At the end of the film, the patrons in the theater errupted into spontaneous applause. As I left, I asked a fellow patron what he thought of the film.
"It told me a lot that I already knew," he said, "but it's an important film. Others should definitely see it."
I could not agree more. Whatever your politics, you should see this film.
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Cannot wait to see it - it’s about time more people realize what this man is really about, how bad he has been for the country’s economy, morale and pride (in the best sense of the word) - and how things will even get worse if he remains in the White House for another term. Four years ago, those who spoke these truths about him and his checkered and hidden background were either ignored, heckled, or reviled for being ‘racist’. That race card has been overplayed by now. One can only hope that more people today are awake and aware of these truths about Obama, and this film sounds like it will really help achieve that. Thank you for the excellent review, Mr. Drake.
After reading this article, I’m actually glad I gave up the Catholic faith. I find it hard to believe that intelligent people look to only reinforce their onw beliefs rather than looking/examining other points of view. The writer is clearly a FOX/Hannity/Limbaugh/Beck believer and one who fails to do his own research! In regard to the comment by TeresaL, This country was at the financial abyss in January 2008, thanks to George W Bush. It only takes a little bit of research to look at the number of lives lost in two useless wars, trillions of dollars in debt to fund the two wars, the donut hole in Medicare Part D, the tax breaks for the wealthy, the near total collapse of our banking system. Watch this piece of drivel with an open mind, and ask yourself this question: Is the absence of evidence evidence of the thing that is absent? Don’t be less mislead.
WOW It makes me wonder about Shindler’s List. We need another Documetary written by someone who doesn’t have his/her head up their a,,.
We are moving very rapidly into a very different world. Who is going to help us get there? Republicans 1950?
@Dave Guiney- how sad for you. What did this article have to do with the Catholic faith? Did you even read it? Sounds like you are just a worker for the DNC.
Tsepho: No, I’m not a worker for the DNC but a person who looks behind the screen to make sure there is no Wizard of Oz. The author’s enthusiatic article led me to think he believed everything the director Dinesh D’Souza stated in the film about President Obama was gospel…It was not. Mr. D’Souza is a Goan Christian/Evangelical who advances the ultra consrvative point of view. He is a member (fellow) of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation etc. all holding and advancing neo-conservative ideas. My argument is not with their ideas or the enthsiastic endorsement of Mr D’Souza’s film, but with the inability or lack of ability to research as to what is placed before one is true, untrue, or patrially true, and to arrive at their own conclusion/judgement…not to readily accept the opinion of others.
Sorry to hear that Dave has given up on the Catholic faith, yet how does a blog article regarding the 2016 movie have anything to do with his acceptance or rejection of Catholic teaching? Regardless of the writer’s personal position on politics, Dave has a history problem. George W. Bush did not create the financial crisis. A Democrat controlled House and Senate did. Remember the 2006 election Dave? Democrats took control of both and began a spending spree. Case in point, the housing bubble was a direct result of the Dodd-Frank legislation and Free Market Banks and Investment companies were forced to lend to people they would not consider a viable risk. Add to that, pressure from far leftist Democrats and the Main Stream Press which is openly liberal, Republicans and anyone who would argue the contrary would be subjected to a withering assault and be ‘Acorned’ into submission. Bush’s fault in this was his support of the prescription drug benefits program and no child left behind which added increased government spending into deficit numbers. As far as the war on terror goes, Dave is naive to think we caused radical Islam to repeatedly attack us for a number of years before 9/11, and that somehow the US wasn’t going to pursue countries that were actively supporting world-wide terror? When Dave claims the Writer has a lack of research because he believes him to be morally/politically conservative, then the burden of proof lies with Dave to be specific and lay out the evidence. Yet, somehow Dave’s examples are mere sound-bytes that are overused by a partisan press that can’t even sell it’s own newspapers. I think Dave should open up his mind and not be afraid of truth.
I came to read this article because it was posted on a friends Facebook page. I was raised catholic and have since become atheist. I can’t comment on the movie because I haven’t seen it yet but I can tell you it will not change my vote. The Catholics I know complain about their religious freedoms. What about my right to health care? Why should that be based on your religious beliefs? Obama has stood up for women, same sex coules and basic human rights. Yup. Human rights. If I wanted to practice catholic values and feel guilty for breathing I wouldn’t have left the church. At least Obama values me as a person and not a breeding machine.
@ Tom M: Well said. I find liberals such as Dave to be the most close minded people of all. 2016 is a very well done movie. I recommend that everyone see it. Dave does not want the facts to get in the way of his hatred of all things Republican.
@ Lyss: Obama does not value you as a person. You are just a vote to be sought. Watch for his support for you if you have a difference of opinion with him or the DNC.
I don’t think this provides an adequate analysis of Obama. D’Souza’s standpoint, in ideological terms, is closer to Obama than to the Catholic Church. He may pass himself off a “conservative” by denouncing anti-colonialism, but then again we must remember that the colonialism alluded to was a product of liberalism and the blind adherence to “progress” of an earlier time.
We must also remember that D’Souza’s love for all things once known to be liberal (such as capitalism and the enlightenment) puts him at odds with Catholic Tradition. My point being, we must pick the correct tradition to critique Obama’s actions and beliefs, and I believe the Catholic Tradition can offer the best way to do so. To critique Obama in the tradition of Liberalism is no different than attempting putting out a fire with a flamethrower: It may yield fast results, but the results are inevitably detrimental.
I leave you with some word for thought:
“The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” - G.K. Chesterton
“So-called conservatism and so-called radicalism in these contemporary guises are in general mere stalking-horses for liberalism: the contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals. There is little place in such political systems for the criticism of the system itself, that is, for putting liberalism in question.” - Alasdair MacIntyre
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