Guarino on Obama
From The Evil Dr. Guarino at The Greensboro Guardian:
Dinesh D’Souza’s new film began screening this weekend in Greensboro and High Point. It is designed to air certain themes he explored in his recent book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” But D’Souza, a noted public intellectual, had initially floated these concepts in an article published in Forbes Magazine nearly two years ago.
From Betsy Sharkey at the LAT:
The core thesis in “2016″ is that Obama’s politics come from Third World influences — from his father in Kenya and his early years spent with his mother in Indonesia. There are lengthy explanations of colonialism, which D’Souza supports, versus what he describes as Obama’s preference for an anticolonialist approach, one that would favor the rise of the Third World (or, as D’Souza labels it, the United States of Islam), greatly reduce Israel’s influence and cede the U.S.’ role as a superpower.
D’Souza goes on to argue that this approach explains everything from healthcare reform to a reduction in the nuclear arsenal. Interviews with interested parties, news footage and excerpts from Obama’s 1995 book “Dreams From My Father,” are woven in as well. But mostly it is D’Souza connecting the dots; there are no opposing points of view.
From Alan Scherstuhl at The Village Voice:
NYU psychology professor Paul Vitz shows up to explain that the father who abandons a boy has a profound influence on the shaping of that boy, an argument that lays bare D’Souza’s debased rules of evidence: the fact that Obama senior was never around to radicalize Obama junior only proves that he did radicalize Obama junior. That explains why junior later went on to fulfill the dream of all Kenyan revolutionaries of the 1960s: passing the health care plan Republicans came up with in the ’90s…
D’Souza has made a career out of convincing white American conservatives that his personal history qualifies him to be the arbiter of which brown folks can and can’t be trusted. Remember, he’s the chap who declared American racism to be dead in 1995—something he was uniquely equipped to argue, considering his first experience of life here was those Dartmouth mixers. That claim is echoed in the only sequence here that achieves the inspired lunacy of a Glenn Beck.
OK, a lot of us already knew D’Souza was full of shit. The Evil Dr. Guarino probably knows it too. However, using dolts like D’Souza to fan the flames of intolerance is his stock in trade.
From Guarino:
America’s role as a colonial power has been very limited. Our influence internationally after World War II was to usher in an era referred to as the “Pax Americana,” during which we avoided the great wars of the past; engaged in numerous charitable initiatives benefiting foreign nations; and helped raise living standards throughout much of the world. The record shows that the United States has been, on balance, a force for good internationally; and has helped to spread liberty.
Tell that to the Central American governments we destabilized until 1934 so we could enjoy Cavendish bananas at 59 cents per pound.
Tell that to the countless citizens abroad tortured and killed by despots we puppeted so long as they bowed to our interests.
Tell that to the Iraqi Sunni Muslim diaspora dying in the streets of Syria because they can never go home.
Guarino goes off the deep end:
Some have asserted over the last three years that Obama has been an inept, erratic, unprepared president. D’Souza, however, clearly implies that there is a method to the president’s madness. Exploding debt and nationalized healthcare will inevitably leave us economically less powerful. This will ultimately erode our military power dramatically. He also notes that Obama negotiated sharp reductions in American nuclear stockpiles. This will ominously tend to level the military playing field with other nations. He argues that abandoning the nation of Israel, and allowing the takeover of Middle Eastern countries by fundamental elements of Islam, is inherently anti-colonialist; and consonant with the desire to reduce western influence in the region.
Uh, the inept and unprepared have neither madness nor method. To Obama’s credit, he got stuck with two wars and a terrible economy. Yes, he failed to deal with the housing problem, but so did the opposition. He’s managed to get us out of Iraq and is trying to extricate us from Astan. If that’s anti-colonialism, I’m all for it.
As to abandoning Israel, they can pretty much take care of themselves. It is high time we had a foreign policy more sympathetic to the Muslims, especially after having illegally invaded and broke Iraq.
The Christofascists want the sheeple to believe there is an impending threat from the Muslims and that Obama is somehow their agent. While it is true that Obama, by his very name, is a student of Islam, it is also true that he understands the plight of Africans and Malaysians far better than his predecessors. And with a globalized economy, this is a very fortunate perspective if you value such things as peace.
The social retards point to the Arab Spring and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as evidence of Obama’s plan to elevate Islam, when in fact those uprisings were the result of Wikileaks disclosures.
I am not happy about many things Obama has done and left undone. But tarring him with baseless charges of promoting Islam simply feed the authoritarians the red meat of xenophobia. Ignorant to begin with, these poor bastards are made ever more frightened of a fictional future. The pathetic part is we have real dangers with which to contend and promulgating these ridiculous lies for political advantage takes away valuable time and energy which might otherwise be used more effectively.
