Dinesh D'souza and his apocalyptic film "2016 Obama's America"

I witnessed a spectacle from Orwell's 1984 tonight. Goldberg was replaced by Jeremiah Wright but a packed cinema hissed at his appearance in what is perhaps the clumsiest piece of political propaganda I have ever had the misfortune of watching. I have listened to D'Souza and thought quite highly of him going into the film but that has changed.

At the most fundamental level the premise of the movie is ridiculous. It reminded of attempts to psychoanalyze Hitler using Mein Kampf and other historical research. The problem with D'souza's film is that his ominous warnings about who Obama really is are uninteresting and/or factually incorrect.

Let's start with a simple argument D'souza makes by implication, namely that Obama sympathyzes with jihadists and that's why he wants to "give them civil rights and close Guantanamo Bay". This statement drew the obligatory collective gasp from the theater of white hair but as a zealous advocate for the rule of law, trial by jury and other revolutionary concepts I can assure you that Obama has done neither of these things(and if he had so what?). What is strange to me is that I can't be the only one in the cinema who is aware that Obama has aggressively followeed the Bush Justice Department's lead on suspected terrorists. Attorney General Eric Holder's subordinates have vigorously opposed all attempts to grant Constitutional protections to detainees at Gitmo and it's still open for business.

A Jeremiah Wright sermon clip which showed the obligatory "God damn America" statement is no more revolutionary than an essay by Noam Chomsky and from a theological point of view not even conroversial. A nation that has wantonly bombed and pillaged every corner of the globe can hardly be expected to enjoy the favor and protection of a God whose theology is grounded in the concepts of self sacrifice and love.

In an interview clip of D'souza promoting his book on which the film is based he says he has a "new card to lay on the table about Obama". D'souza's "new card" is that Obama's worldview is shaped by the anticolonialist notions of his absent Kenyan father who was an "advisor" to the revolutionaries who kicked the British out of Kenya. Thus, stay with me here, Obama, in a futile attempt to win the affection or approval of his now dead father, is also an anticolonialist and therefore secretly trying to cut off America's strength at the knees. The premise that America was and is a colonial power/superpower is old hat. I read Edward Said (also listed ominously as one of Obama's "founding fathers")at the Univeristy of Cincinnati. It would be impossible for anyone to receive an Ivy League educaton and not be exposed to the scholarship of colonialism of which Said is a pillar.

Another one of Obama's deep, dark secrets is that his grandfather's friend ("his chosen mentor" as D'souza characterizes him) was on a list of radicals the FBI "could have detained in the event of a war with the Soviet Union". News flash, I'm probably on that list too. What literate person didn't join the Communist and or Socialist Party in their youth? In Sweden there is a saying "if you're not red in your twenties you've got no heart and if you're not blue in your 40's you've got no brains". Wasn't the ultra right wing "Project for a New American Century" founded by a group of ex-Marxists?

As for Obama's plan to destroy America's military has D'sousa ever heard of Ron Paul? Is he a socialist/jihadi sympathizer too? I am astonished that the notion of downsizing the world's largest military with 900 plus overseas bases is controversial. Shame on you Dinesh D'souza, the only possible motivation I can see for this horriby made, poorly researched, unentertaining, badly edited piece of garbage is money. His production cost couldn't have topped $50,000 so he's going to make a shitload of money. Too bad he will never be taken seriously again.