This was a documentary, that I thought would be pro-Obama stuff about how he was going to transform the country given another term. Instead, it was mostly by Dinesh D’Souza, whom I belatedly recalled promoting something of the kind at CPAC this past February.

2016 had a kind of interesting premise. D’Souza claims that Obama does not fit in with the standard left-wing ideology, nor with the black/civil rights politician type. He presents the film (based on a book, which I gave a quick skimming) as an attempt to discover the ideological roots of Barack Obama. It turns out to be much less impressive, since Obama wrote a book Dreams From My Father where he basically lays it all out himself. Large portions of the film are a glorified book report on that work, with some other biographical details to expand upon the thesis.

The answer to D’Souza’s question (which I found rather academic, since I was pretty sure it would turn out to not be Roman Catholic-libertarian, and thus, would be a variation of the theme of Wrong), is that Obama is an anti-colonialist. His ideology is one of outrage at Western exploitation of the other parts of the world, and his agenda is to level the playing field, to raise the developing countries and former colonies to the level of the rest of the world and enable them to compete on a more even footing.

I thought it was interesting, because it’s not inherently a condemnation of the President, and from a certain point of view, inclines one to think more favorably of him if he in fact, does believe in something and has a unifying operating principle, rather than a collage of feel-good bromides about hope & change. Also, the ideology of anti-colonialism has some fair points, considering the abuses and harm done.

However, for D’Souza himself, and the mentality he has taken from his own life experiences, that is pretty much an automatic condemnation. He gives as his own background, his birth and upbringing in India, and his coming to America and embracing the American dream and opportunities. The ideology of Dinesh D’Souza that emerges, is the neoconservative vision of America as some sort of superior nation that embodies good and is an avatar of righteousness, with a vocation to save the rest of the world. How this squares in their heads with our tendency to elect men like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is not anything to which I have ever heard the neocons come up with a coherent answer, nor the fact that if American can elect a Clinton (or a Bush, depending on your political devil), why should we trust that these lesser countries, newly come to our superior democratic practices will not elect equally bad leaders? Again, no answer. But for a neo-imperialist like D’Souza, perceptions of the past from an anti-colonialist view are blasphemy.

For much of the film, his narration remains objective, as if he is content to merely state the truth of Obama’s views as he sees them and let the facts condemn him of themselves. It is only in his conclusion, where he starts extrapolating Obama’s future policies and actions from his constructed ideology, that he gets explicitly and overtly political, ending with a cri de coeur to stop this madness by not re-electing Obama.

Among the points the film makes in exploring Obama’s past is how his left wing mother seemed to have a college-fling relationship with Obama Sr., based on the romance and appeal of his foreign origins and personal anti-colonial, anti-Western view, which fit in with her student-radical perspective (and which attitude of reflexive awe of foreign cultures D’Souza recounts experiencing himself as an Ivy League student, meeting Americans who, with no actual knowledge of Indian culture, nonetheless were effusive in their praise for its presumed spiritual wisdom and virtues), and afterwards held up her romantic image of him as an aspiration for Barack Jr. Because he was an image, rather than a real human being, whose virtues and ideas a child could explore and test, Obama Sr was also infallible and perfect, and thus, by his absence, lent an even greater weight to the worldview Stanley Dunham passed on to her son.

Later, she married an Indonesian, but according to the film, they had a falling out when the husband began “selling out,” getting a corporate job and moving into better neighborhoods and opposing communism. She also hated that he tried to befriend American businessmen and their families and encouraged her to do the same.

The (Stanley Ann & Barack 2) went back to Hawaii, but instead of taking part in mainstream “American” culture there, apparently BO was immersed in the local Hawaiian experience and their resentment over the rather sordid history of how they became Americans. Academically, Obama was mentored by explicitly anti-American, anti-Western left-wing extremists, selected by his family in his younger years and sought out by himself in college and beyond.

The film also describes interviews with African family and friends of Obama Sr to make clear that Obama’s actions as president and his rhetoric are basically a continuation of his father’s ideas and vision. Such risible notions expressly stated by Senior, like Israel being a colonial Trojan horse in the Middle East, and the US taking over the European role as colonial masters, or support for confiscation of all income so long as commensurate benefits are paid out, are presented with the implication that Obama can be judged guilty of his father’s positions, since they are exactly alike.

One interesting interview that stuck out and amused, was D’Souza’s discussion with George Obama, the President’s half-brother, who, during the election, was living in poverty in Africa. Despite persistent attempts by D’Souza to pry out a condemnation of Barack’s failure to provide economic aid to a man sired by a guy he had met once in his life, George refused to do so. He kept insisting that Barack had his own family to care for first, and that George himself was a grown man and responsible for his own well-being. After D’Souza’s repeatedly asked why Obama isn’t doing anything for his brother, George came up with the formulation that since Obama is working to improve the state of the world, he was helping George in that manner, since George lives in the world and will thus benefit from his brother’s presumptive success (and if Barack is such an utter failure at helping the world as D’souza and his ilk obviously believe, why would you want him getting involved in your life? ). Since even Grimlock the Dinobot has proved capable of grasping George’s point, D’Souza finally shut up and left the man alone.

One other point made in the film, while exploring Obama’s difference from other black politicians, was that Obama consciously worked at appealing to the desire of people to move past racism and see blacks succeed and get ahead, rather than stirring up racial divisions in order to profit off of black solidarity and white guilt.

Shelby Steele made the point that Pat Buchanan brought up on the Rachel Maddow show four years ago, which is that Obama did not succeed in spite of his race, but because of it. Steele claims that no white man could have moved up from state legislature to presidential candidate as fast as Obama did. He cited the wish of Americans to see a black man get elected and to repudiate racism. D’Souza makes the point that the election of the first black president does not reflect as an achievement of Barack Obama, but of the United States of America.

The few interesting points made by D’souza, however, are undermined in the overall view of the film. Near the conclusion, his degeneration into anti-Obama propaganda will cost him whatever credibility an objective viewer might have been willing to concede. What is more, D’souza himself appears to fall victim to the same mentality he mocks in his American classmates with their uninformed admiration of India and willful ignorance of its faults. D’Souza seems to be trying to be more Anglo than the Anglo-Americans.

Among the facts presented, as if a self-evident condemnation requiring no further explanation, was Obama’s removal of a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. No background or history is given of the bust itself, nor is any explanation offered for why he should not want a bust of a fat, white, alcoholic racist and political opportunist leering at him while he tried to work at one of the most difficult jobs in the world. As it happens, I am familiar with the long and storied history and unbroken tradition of that particular status and its history of providing comfort and inspiration to so many presidents…oh wait. It hasn’t. It was put there by George W Bush. The guy of whom Obama’s election was widely considered a repudiation! Obama should no more be expected to retain Bush’s personal decorative touches than Reagan should have kept Carter’s or Harding, Wilson’s!

Furthermore, a commentator who has been fired and lambasted for being far more pro-Western and pro-Christian than D’souza could dream, pretty much agreed with that point! Pat Buchanan used Bush’s emplacement of that same bust as the rhetorical climax to his condemnation of Bush’s foreign policies in one of his more recent books.

D’souza might like to familiarize himself with the fact that Americans in general are not quite as enamored of England as Uncle Tom Indians or the personnel of the State Department. Winston Churchill’s policies led to half a million dead American soldiers in two World Wars, and absent American intervention to spare him from facing victor’s justice, might have gone down in history as a war criminal equal to any of the men farcically strung up at Nuremburg on ex post facto charges. His military strategy led to the colossal blunders of Norway and Dunkirk, and his plan for the invasion of Europe was to attack through its “soft underbelly”(sic) that most people know better by the term “Alps.” Furthermore, D’souza denounces Obama for siding with Argentina in the Falkland Islands issue, a stance surely in accord with such radical socialistic anti-white politicians as James Monroe and John Quincy Adams, who composed and promulgated the Monroe Doctrine!

There is also Obama’s supposed laxity regarding the threat of Islamic terrorism. He’s such a sympathizer with the jihadis that he’s released them all from Gitmo, shutting down that little den of iniquity…oh wait. Oh, yeah. We’re talking about the guy who invades a sovereign country with a team of commandos to kidnap and murder an old guy with kidney problems, and who deploys robot assassins against brown people.

D’souza’s appearance at CPAC to promote this film just goes to prove what a crock the term “conservative” is as used in modern politics, and this film, though containing some credible insights into the President’s character and motivation, as a piece of political information, only goes to show why neoconservatism & imperialism/colonialism are, like fascism and objectivism, liberal heresies that fall under the description of “conservatism as understood by liberals.”