2016: Obama's America

Obama supporters (e.g. the mainstream media) want you to believe that "2016: Obama's America" is a sensationalistic, white supremacist attack on President Barack Hussein Obama. It isn't. "2016" is a fact-based, artistically ambitious documentary, the product of an egghead intellectual, Dinesh D'Souza, who himself is a college president, and who is non-white, Indian-born, the grandson of an anti-white grandfather. D'Souza supports almost every point he makes with original material, including Obama's biography and on screen experts, including Shelby Steele, the eloquent, African American scholar, George Obama, the president's Kenyan half-brother, Kenyan villagers who knew Obama Sr. intimately, and US Comptroller General David Walker.

The film is shot in an artistically ambitious style, with lots of shaky camera work, off-center placement, explanatory animation, and depressing montages of garbage-strewn Kenyan, Indian, and Indonesian slums.

In fact, for many viewers this documentary will be entirely too cerebral and level-headed. This is not Michael Moore. It's not funny, it's not shocking, and it's less manipulative than lots of other election-year material. D'Souza never exploits his subjects with the ruthlessness of a Michael Moore. I didn't laugh, I didn't gasp, and I didn't become outraged. I mostly compared what was being said to publicly available information on the subjects discussed and I found the film – dare one say it – reasonably responsible and informative. In fact, the film's one mistake may be that it does not talk down to viewers enough. Anti- colonial theory and action will be new to many viewers. Many will simply not know who Frantz Fanon is, for example, or even Shelby Steele. These scholars could have been introduced to the viewer more slowly, carefully, and thoroughly.

Dinesh D'Souza was born in India, famous as the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire. India was a hotbed of anti-colonial theorizing and activity. D'Souza inherited this from his grandfather. As such, he sees Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., through the lens of anti-colonialism. D'Souza supports this view of Obama with quotes from Obama's own work, interviews with people who know the Obama family, and scholars like Paul Kengor who has researched Obama's relationship with Frank Marshall Davis.

D'Souza argues, using Obama's own words from his memoirs, that Obama wants to fulfill his father's dream of anti-colonial political and economic action. Rich, white, Western people need to be shaken down in order to even the score with poor people of color living in formerly colonized countries like Kenya and Indonesia, and poor, exploited people of color living in Western countries.

Interestingly, the lack of economic soundness of this grudge-and-race- based politics is argued by George Obama, the president's half-brother. George makes a very interesting observation. Compare the "Asian tiger" countries to formerly colonized countries in Africa. South Korea used to be at the same economic level as Kenya. South Korea has been able to advance in a way that Kenya has not. Why is that, George asks? The unstated but implied answer: not just colonization is to blame for the poverty of some formerly colonized countries. Rather, cultural and economic differences also play a role. Rather than pursuing the kind of race-and-grudge based politics and economics that have destroyed Mugabe's Zimbabwe, exploited people could benefit from learning from countries like South Korea.

The documentary veers into speculation toward the end, stating that President Obama wants to see the US in the debt crisis it faces now. That's the film's most outrageous speculation. As the Comptroller General explains, the debt crisis is very real. That Obama desires the debt crisis is mere speculation. The film also criticizes Obama for reducing nuclear warheads and NASA. Again, that Obama has taken these steps is fact. His motivation for doing so, as presented in the film, is mere speculation.

That I cannot recall a serious documentary film made about a president who was still in office at the time of the film's release, at least not a film with a wide theatrical release (can we count the propaganda laden Fahrenheit 9/11?), speaks volumes about this film's importance. That no president that I have ever studied in school has been shrouded in so much mystery and controversy speaks volumes about the legitimacy of a documentary investigating who he is and what he has come from. 2016: Obama's America explores the history and influences of our current president Barack Obama, from as much an objective standpoint as I think one could take without simply saying nothing. While lacking the flashiness and polish of a Michael Moore film, director Dinesh D'Souza wisely goes straight for the facts, tossing aside all the propaganda, assumptions, theories and pretty motion graphics of more famous documentarians. How can I say "fact"? How do I know? Because much of the film explores the writings and quotes and interviews from Obama himself. It's straight from the horse's mouth. Much of it is alarming, I don't know how it could be seen any other way by anyone who loves this country. Much of it also puts away petty arguments about things that don't really matter when it's all said and done. D'Souza affirms that Obama was born in Hawaii, which I'm sure will anger some people. But there are bigger issues at stake in this film, which is about our very real state of affairs here in the United States of America. While it does naturally take a partisan stance, it is as objective as documentaries get, and should be seen by all. And if box office numbers mean anything, it is being seen by quite a few (it posted Top Ten numbers for this past weekend, and only projects to grow to more and more theaters). The film's tag-line, "Love him or hate him, you don't know him" could very well be the complete review for this film.

-Thomas Bond, TheFilmDiscussion.com

I heard about this movie coming out some time ago, just before the US elections are happening, which is a perfect time for a presidential documentary. First I should say, I am not an American, I'm a Canadian, but I do have quite the interest in American politics. Also, like the vast majority of Canadians, I'm more of a Democrat. Sure, if there was a leader in the Republican field, that was far superior to the democrat candidate, then I would be fully behind the republican, but for the past few decades, I've been far more on the side of the Democrat candidates.

I found a lot of this film to be really interesting. The first half of the movie goes into who Barack Obama really is, a history of his life, and his father's life. There were so many tidbits of information that I never knew before, and it was really great to be able to find that information.

At the same time though, D'Souza, the maker of the documentary, has many scenes where he's talking about himself, and putting words into people's mouths. The direction of the title of the movie, showing what America will be like if Obama gets his second term, is hardly put forward, and when D'Souza does put forward his ideas, they really hardly make sense, and they're so extreme, that I doubt they will ever happen in the united states.

After seeing that movie, I just had to go back in time a few years, and watch Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9-11" and... oh my god... if anyone thinks, in any direction, that Obama isn't a good president, then look back just a few years and take a peak at what George Bush Jr. had done... it's freaking insane, and horrific. Looking at what has happened, I would say that Obama is the greatest president the US has had in a long, long time... perhaps going back to Ronald Reagan, perhaps even going back to Kennedy. I highly doubt that any republican would be able to beat out Obama for a second term in office, and one thing is for sure, this movie didn't make me doubt that, at all.

But one thing that D'Souza says about Obama is true. Many parts of his life up to when he got into office are quite a bit of a mystery to most people, so if you'd like to know more of the history of Obama, I highly recommend watching this movie.

I saw this movie tonight with my father, and was slightly skeptical. I half expected it to have an in your face approach like the conservative talk radio hosts always seem to have. I can say that as a 20 year old that considers myself to be somewhat more of a moderate than a conservative, I really appreciated what this movie brought to the table.

It was very informational about who Barack Obama is and where he came from; as well as where his parents came from and how their views were shaped and molded. From what I learned in this movie, President Obama's views are simply a consequence of his upbringing and he completely holds true to his father's ideals. Unfortunately, those ideals seem to have connected him with some "shady" people, including communists. I definitely learned some startling statistics and first hand accounts of his life from friends and family members that have shaped my opinion about this man.

I would say that this movie is quite obviously going to be popular with the conservatives, but it worthwhile to see even for a liberal voter. None of the facts or stories in this movie seemed to be fictional and were fairly presented.

Contrary to my expectations, this was not a scare-fest along the lines of "The Day After Tomorrow." Instead it's kind of an egghead treatment that starts by asking, Why did Obama disappoint so many of his supporters? He was voted in by Democrats, independents, and a few disillusioned Republicans. Many of them are feeling betrayed.

I'm gay, he betrayed me. I'm Green, he betrayed me. I'm a DREAMer, he betrayed me. I want card check, he betrayed me. I want to close Gitmo, he betrayed me. I want the rich to pay higher taxes, he betrayed me. I want single-payer healthcare, he betrayed me. I wanted transparency, he betrayed me.

D'Souza replies: The reason is, these piddly Democrat-Republican squabbles are not Obama's concern.

According to D'Souza, Obama's aim is way beyond this two-party conflict that the rest of us Americans are locked in. Thanks largely to Obama's often squalid overseas upbringing and the education his parents and grandparents designed for him, he takes a much broader view of America: as a colonialist thief of other nations' natural wealth. He has essentially projected the sins of Britain onto America. The British Raj, Churchill's suppression of the Mau-Mau Rebellion, are examples of the crimes he lays at America's feet. Rapacious British = White = America. That's why he wants to level America by reducing its military power and individual Americans' standard of living. Of course this is misguided; America is itself a former British colony which expelled its overlords in a bloody revolution.

D'Souza intuits much of this from parallels to his own life; he is Indian, and he was advised by his grandfather not to go to America, where "they're white." He lived in Third World squalor, he escaped courtesy of an educational opportunity in an elite American university, he was born and graduated and married in the same years as Obama. He "gets" the whole anti-colonial mindset.

But for most of his evidence, he simply quotes Obama's own words in "Dreams from My Father" and hunts down the teachers and mentors that Obama himself credits. Frank Marshall Davis, Jeremiah Wright, some Brazilian Communist who was expelled from Brazil and found a welcoming and lucrative home at Harvard. He also learned from Bill Ayers.

D'Souza concludes from Obama's first term that he's just not that into the Democrats. He used them (along with the independents and disgusted Republicans) to get himself into power, but he's got another agenda all his own that is well beyond disagreements over who pays what tax rate and whether teenage rape victims should be forced to become mothers.

Therefore he'll adopt progressive issues where they help him and not an inch further. For instance, when he saw some of his base slipping, he did finally evolve his own, deep, personal, individual view on gays marrying -- but he also flat-out said he's not going to put any energy into it as President.

One may agree with Obama's agenda, one may not. It does overlap the liberal agenda in some areas. Indeed, there are plenty of American liberals who feel America should be taken down a peg for the good of the world. But Obama is not motivated by the same things American liberals are. He's not at heart a Democrat, or a progressive, or a liberal, or a leftist. He's more of a sort of confused anti-colonialist.

D'Souza devotes only a few minutes at the end of the movie to the world's prospects if Obama gets a second term. Just a few. Essentially, "there will be no place to hide" if Islamists expand, if American military power is significantly reduced, if our wealth is flushed. It will be bad for the world and bad for us.

8/10 because of its slightly choppy structure.