Book Review of “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” by Dinesh D’Souza

Dinesh D’Souza is one of my favorite writers and I would heartily recommend pretty much any of his books to friends and family. He has a knack for being able to approach a complex subject, get to its crux, and then render it in a concise, precise and prosaic manner that is easily digestible to the layman. A couple of weeks ago, I watched a debate he had with famed atheist Chris Hitchens. I really had trouble following Mr. Hitchens’ line of reasoning. I remember mumbling to myself several times, “What the hell is this guy saying?” However, whenever D’Souza spoke, there was a clear line of reasoning that was easy to follow. In other words, I could understand him. Now some might say, that just reflects your Christian mindset. I disagree. While I am a fervent believer in the Christian faith, I don’t think that particular argument is relevant here. In such a debate where the majority of listeners are likely NOT to be philosophy or religion specialists and where the theoretical tenets of evolution are going to be meticulously picked apart, the arguments presented need to be coherent and fairly easy to understand. So from that perspective, Chris Hitchens’ sucked big time in my opinion. Anyway, I’ve gotten off track. My point is, whether verbally or via the written word, D’Souza is a most effective communicator and is in particularly fine form with his recent book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”.

So what’s the book all about? Well, let me take a stab at being concise, precise and prosaic. In a nutshell, Dinesh claims that the our current President is driven by forces rooted in a raging anti-colonial philosophy that took its most virulent form in the writings of Frantz Fanon and that as a result the policies being formed in the White House today will ultimately hurt more than help the United States. Well, there you have it in one sentence. But let’s dig a little deeper by looking at some of these excerpts:

“Who was Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr.? First and foremost, he was an anti-colonialist. He grew up under British rule in Kenya, and he came of age during the struggle for independence. He was considered one of his country’s bright young stars, one of an elite group of African scholars who came to study in the United States, and then returned to their home countries with a goal of helping them form their independent identities. This Obama was an economist, and as an economist he was influenced by socialism, but he was never a doctrinaire socialist; rather his quasi-socialism sprang from and was integrated into an anti-colonial outlook that was shared by many of his generation, not only in Africa but also in Asia and South America.” Pg. 28

The four tenets of colonialism presented in Dinesh’s book are as follows:

First Tenet:
Empires are produced by murderous conquest and sustained by unceasing terror and violence.

Second Tenet:
Colonial regimes are racist-they systematically produce the dehumanization of the colonized.

Third Tenet:
Colonialism is a system of piracy in which the wealth of the colonized countries is a system of piracy in which the wealth of the colonized countries is systematically stolen by the colonizers.

Fourth Tenet:
The colonial powers have a new leader: America

“For Obama, the task ahead is simple: he must work to wring the neo-colonialism out of America and the West. First he must reign in the military so that it does not conduct wars of occupation against other countries. Then he must use American leverage to restrict military adventurism on the part of America’s allies, especially the former colonial powers in Europe. Even symbolic measures of humiliation are helpful in showing the former European colonialists that their day is now gone. In addition, Obama seeks to check American and Western consumption of global resources so that the formal colonial (and now neocolonial) powers do not consume what belongs to others. Another objective for Obama is to bring the powerful sectors of American industry, such as investment banks and health care, under government supervision and control. Obama seeks a large custodial state as a protection against the dangers of concentrated corporate power. Finally, Obama seeks to castigate and expose the rich, who are viewed as a neocolonial force within American society, so that they cease to be exploiters of the rest of the population. It may seem shocking to suggest that this is Obama’s core ideology, and that he believes it still. This is the moral and intellectual foundation of his ideology. It is a dream that, as president, he is imposing with a vengeance on America and the world.” Pg. 35

“Obama’s voice rises in pitch when he condemns the scoundrels on Wall Street or gives a tongue-lashing to the CEOs of large banks or insurance companies. ‘The rich in America have little to complain about,” Obama wrote in the Audacity of Hope. Recently in Illinois he condemned well-heeled executives for trying to earn as much as possible. Obama snapped, ‘I do think that at a certain point you’ve made enough money.’” Pg. 38

“I want to draw attention to what makes the guy irritable and mad, what makes him go bitter and sarcastic on us. The answer: big corporations and rich people.” Pg. 39

“When Obama hears the word ‘profit,’ he thinks of neocolonial exploitation.” Pg. 39

Telltale signs revealing Obama’s rage towards neocolonialism:

“The ultimate insult to the English was when Obama, right upon assuming the presidency, came upon a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office and promptly decided to return it. Churchill, of course, is routinely quoted by American presidents, and the bust has been loaned to America from the British government’s art collection. In a way it symbolized America’s special relationship with Britain. Somewhat shocked by Obama’s decision to remove the bust from the White House, British officials suggested that perhaps Obama could display it elsewhere. Obama declined.” Pg. 42

“Addressing the nation on the BP oil spill on June 15, 2010, Obama stressed that Americans ‘consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s resources.’ Obama went on to say that for ‘for decades we’ve talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, “time and again the path has been blocked’ by, among others, ‘oil industry lobbyists.’ Now on the face of it, this is a perfectly reasonable statement from a liberal politician who thinks this is what the American public wants to hear. But ask yourself what does this have to do with the oil spill? Would the oil spill have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world’s resources? Of course not. The point is that for Obama, the energy and environmental issues reduce to a simple proposition. America is a neocolonial giant eating up more than its share of the world’s resources, and in doing so America is exploiting the scarce fuel of the globe; consequently, this gluttonous consumption must be stopped. This is the heart of Obama’s energy and environmental agenda: not cleaning up the Gulf or saving the environment in general, but redressing the inequitable system where the neocolonial West-and neocolonial companies like BP-dominates the use of global energy resources.” Pg. 48

OBAMA DOESN'T GIVE A DITTY ABOUT THE AFGHANISTAN WAR!

“Now why would a president who has a big political stake in Afghanistan not care about proposed strategies to successfully prosecute the offensive and maybe even win the war. Short answer: he doesn’t want to win. If Obama views Afghanistan as a war of colonial occupation, then his only concern is how fast he can get America out.” Pg. 51

Comment: It should be noted here that the recent surge in troops was simply a matter of political expediency. (So chill out Michael Moore. Obama doesn’t want US troops in Afghanistan anymore than you do.)

CONCLUSION:
“The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s-a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash), raging against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions.” Pg. 198

“For many, it still may seem too fantastic to be true. Yet it is true. The great strength of our anti-colonial theory is not only its psychological plausibility-it is rooted in Obama’s vivid and persuasive self-description-but also its explanatory power. The anti-colonial hypothesis explains both Obama’s economic and his foreign policy. Obama’s domestic and foreign agenda operate in a kind of reverse action: Obama wants to expand government power at home even as he works to contract America’s broad power abroad.” Pg. 199

WHY OBAMA’S ANTI-COLONIALIST NOTIONS ARE WRONG AND MISPLACED

“The blunt truth is that anti-colonialism is dead; no one in today’s world cares about it-except the man in the White House. He is the last anti-colonial. The rest of the world has no interest in how many schools the Belgians built, or didn’t build, in the Congo, or how British officials in Kenya used to beat their house servants with canes. We are now living in a new world. And while most of the world is facing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the twenty-first century, Obama refuses to embrace the promise of that growth-for his African homeland or for the country he was elected to lead. Instead, President Obama is committed to bring down the ‘neocolonial’ forces in the economy and to lasso the rogue elephant that is America.” Pg. 215

KEY QUESTION: What harm can Obama due to America and world?

“Obama may have nothing to offer Africa, but are his policies harming people today? Even with the power of his presidency, Obama is not going to stop globalization or the information revolution. But there is another way that he could gravely damage the engine of global prosperity: that is by removing its cordon of protection, a cordon that is provided by the United States. Trade, after all, is vulnerable to thugs who want to disrupt trade routes and save themselves the trouble of buying and selling by taking and plundering. That’s why contrary to the views of some economists, global free trade cannot by itself solve the world’s problems of scarcity and want. The world needs a policeman, and in case you haven’t figured it out, the United States has that job.”
Pg. 216

“Call it empire if you will, but America’s role is very different from that of previous empires. Contrary to the charges of the anti-colonialists, the United States today has no intention of ruling or seeking tribute from other countries; American’s foreign policy goals are basically to encourage people to trade with us and to make sure they don’t bomb us. That’s pretty much it. Of course America could stop being the global policeman, but then there wouldn’t be anyone to deter North Korea from nuking South Korea or to prevent China from kicking around the small countries in its neighborhood, or to put a stop to genocidal wars in Bosnia or Rwanda or the Middle East. Someone has got to be the cop, and it’s a role that I don’t want to hand over to China, Russia or the United Nations. There is currently no alternative to American leadership in the world, and deep down even American liberals know this.” Pg. 215

“So one great threat posed by Obama is that in weakening America he will jeopardize the security and stability that America provides for not only its own citizens but for the world. Then there is the second threat that Obama poses to his own country. America is currently the world leader, but it is faced with serious competitive challenges from leaner, hungrier nations like China and India. The economic balance has tipped in favor of these countries; they are growing five times faster than the United States. Chinese cities are bigger, newer, and glitzier than anything in America today. Also, China and India have larger populations and this too has economic significance. Since China has more than three times the number of people that America has, even if the Chinese per capita income only rises to one-third that of the United States, China will have a bigger GNP than America. At current rates, the Chinese economy will overtake that of the United States in a few decades. The American era will be over and, if history is any guide, it will never return.” Pg. 217

CLOSING THOUGHTS:
As not only an ethnic minority but a person of mixed race (half-French, half Japanese) Obama being elected to the President of the United States held a special significance for me. Let me share with you an incident from my youth when I 21 years old. At that time, like any ambitious young person, I wanted to succeed greatly in this world. In order to achieve this goal, I become an avid reader of popular self-help literature of which one of the most prominent authors was Napoleon Hill, best known for his book Think and Grow Rich, one of the best-selling books of all time. However, prior to that, Hill had published what could be considered a precursor to Think & Grow Rich titled The Laws of Success. It was a huge thick volume and I was very excited about it, thinking that if I absorbed the information contained in its pages I too could become another Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. However, within the pages of that book, I came across a passage that would devastate me and for a short period of time almost spiritually and psychologically destroyed me. Unfortunately, since I have since discarded the book, I cannot provide a direct quote here, but basically the passage went something like this:

“In a neighborhood not too far from here, there lives a woman, an average, fair-skinned American woman. She is married to a black man. And they have a child. One who is neither black nor white and will never be able to fit in with either of the two races. THIS IS PERMANENT FAILURE as there is nothing this poor child can do to rectify his genetically-based curse.”

In typical self-help fashion, the passage went on to state (obviously directed at a white audience) that no matter how trying your particular circumstances may be, at least you can take action to rectify your situation, unlike the mixed child. Being of mixed race、this passage devastated me. I even showed the passage to some friends and they tried to console me by pointing out that the book was written in the early 1900s and as a result was simply the product of the author’s mind at that time. Regardless, it did little to console me. And I began to curse the day my mom married a Japanese man. Interestingly, reflective of my Minnesota white upbringing, I was never pissed at my father for marrying a white woman. My rage was directed at my mom for marrying a Japanese man at the time. I wanted to be white and have access to all of the privileges of that race. I never forgot that passage. Those words of “PERMANENT FAILURE” had seared themselves into the recesses of my consciousness. As a result, I went through a period of depression that never really lifted until I found hope through my Christian faith.

So when Obama was elected to be President of the United States of America, I was euphoric. In a sense, I felt like almighty G-d Himself had answered my prayers by saying “Mixed race! Hah! Mixed race my ass! I’m gonna take what was once considered to be the wretched of the earth and make him the president of the United States.” I need to stress that while the majority of the world was probably looking at Obama as an African American, I was looking at him as being more like me, a mixed-race person. Hence, on election night, I mentally took that passage from Hill’s book that had haunted me for so many years and trashed it. It has never bothered me since.

So, as superficial as it is, it is true that my support for Obama was based solely on his ethnic background. I would be lying if I admitted otherwise. In fact, prior to Obama’s election, I never really had much interest in politics, considering it to be like some kind of closed white boy network that I could never be a part of anyway, so why bother. However, Obama’s election to the presidency, changed my outlook and I’m pretty sure has changed the outlook of millions of non-White Americans including the mixed races.

This leads me to my second point. According to Dinesh’s book (another ethnic American who has a mixed daughter I should add), the image Obama presented of himself is different than what we see manifesting in the White House as evidenced in the following excerpt:

“At the democratic convention in 2004, in which he said, ‘There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America and an Asian America…We are all one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.’ Let’s call the Obama who uttered these inspirational words Obama I. We haven’t seen much of Obama I in the White House. Instead, we regularly encounter Obama II, a very different character. This is the Obama who lambasts the banks and investment houses and forces them to succumb to federal control; the Obama who gives it to the pharmaceutical and the health insurance companies, bending them to his will; the Obama who demonizes his predecessor and his opponents, portraying them as the source of all the problems that only he can solve.” Pg. 19

Hence, in his book, what Dinesh has does for us is that he has given us an intelligent peak behind the public mask that is separate from Obama’s charismatic smile, his public speeches and his skin color. It is also a reminder to me that although I was inspired that Obama became the first African American US president, I need to judge him on other factors besides his racial background. I think this book is a good reminder of that and fulfils Martin Luther King’s vision when he said; “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”