The Roots of Obama's Rage

Solid effort by Dinesh D'souza, a naturalized American of Indian (as in Indian)  decent who I find to have a unique perspective on the value of America as an exceptional nation.

The thesis of the book is quite simple; By the proper reading of Obama's "Dreams FROM my Father", plus some extra research, it is clear that the core motivation of Obama is that of an anti-colonialist, the "colonialist"  role somewhat nonsensically assigned to America as a result of her ties to Europe, super power status, and such events as the "taking" of the Southwest from Mexico, the Philippines, Hawaii, and other activities seen as having "taken over the colonial mantle".

The following from BO's "Dreams":

When my tears were finally spent, I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized who I was, what I cared about, was no more just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America -- the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of this was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my fathers pain.

This quote follows rather long segment where BO talks of his father -- the "imaginary father", the "great man" that abandoned BO at age two ad visited him for a week when BO was 12. The real father went back to Africa, had a number of wives, sired a number of children, took care of none, drank heavily, crashed his car and lost his legs in a major drunken accident. Continued to drink and eventually died in another drunken crash. But both the imaginary and real father were staunchly "anti-colonial" -- as is BO in the books thesis.

Obama is a man on a mission, and he is obsessed with executing that mission. He is like the lead character in a movie who has come home to find his whole family wiped out. The incident brings forth an outpouring of grief and rage, but in time the emotions settle, leaving behind a more controlled anger combined with steely resolve. From that point, the man's course is set; the rest of his life is dedicated to a campaign of revenge. In Obama's case the villans are dead, sot he rage takes a different form and settles on a different target. Rather than focus on the specific people who wronged his family, Obama is on a systematic campaign against the colonial system that destroyed his fathers dreams. With a kind of suppressed fury, he is committed to keep going until he has brought that system down. And according to his father's anti colonial ideology, which Obama has internalized for himself, that system is the military and economic power of the United States of America.

Does Dinesh "prove" the thesis? No, of course not -- the inner motivations of characters are only known in novels, in the the real world, typically only even marginally to the person themselves.

I am struck however how often the MSM would engage in negative armchair psychology over Bush or Reagan though. W of course being motivated to attack Iraq because "Saddam tried to kill his father" ... or motivated to attack because "HW not finishing the job" in '91 cost the election. Or he was motivated to be president in order to "measure up" after a being a long term frat-boy disappointment to the family. Reagan was often just "nuts" ... "acting on the basis of some script of movie, motivated by some fantasy that never was or would be", "or just a puppet, driven by his handlers".

In short, the MSM often finds the motivations of the right to be "dark ... disturbing ... difficult to understand ... questionable". All the while, the motivations of Democrats are so OBVIOUS, they really don't need coverage at all -- doing "intelligent things for good", "peace", "children" ... "caring". The motivations of the left are amazingly clear to the left -- if only because the assumed motivations are simply projections of the goodness that the folks on the left believe they see in themselves.

The book is an easy, quick and very scary read. If you don't want to read "Dreams from My Father", which is a not very well written, hard to maintain interest, but very surprising and maybe even more scary if you can get through it book, this is an excellent alternative. As I have said before, as long as this guy is in the WH we are in GRAVE danger!

Of course, reading my excellent review of "Dreams", followed by "Rage", would also be a fine approach ;-)