The Roots of Obama's Rage By Dinesh D'Souza, (Review)
Lately I have been bored to tears by most books that I have read. I even blogged about this most disturbing development because, basically, I loved to read from the time my mother taught me the letters. You, dear readers, have not been helpful with suggestions so far, and have not recommended any splendid, outstanding books.
Well, I managed without your help to find a book that was truly amazing. Dinesh D’Souza, born into an Indian family whose great grandfather was a laborer (they were called coolies than,) on the railroad-line through Kenya and Uganda, says that he and his generation benefitted greatly from British Colonialism. He took on the task to discover what intellectual and emotional forces move President Obama to make decisions for America and its people.
Before I explain Dinesh’s scholarship and reasoning, let me preface the discussion by stating that I evaluate everything written by the following criteria. First: I can accept only logical discourse. Second: I like brevity. Do not try to bamboozle me with a lot of extemporaneous flimflam and hearsay, muddying the water. Third: if I cannot see the straight line leading me your thought process, I refuse to follow your argument. Fourth: if you use false emotion to make your case I will abandon you and your case immediately. I am not young and cannot waste my time with falsehoods and useless frills.
To make a long story short, Dinesh proposes the hypothesis that Barack Hussein Obama, formerly Barry Soetoro, suffered for many years from an identity crisis, more than that even; he had abandonment issues of enormous proportions. I can agree with him on both points. From the beginning, after reading Obama’s “Dreams of my Father,” I wondered how a young child, particularly a boy, would feel if both, his father and mother, both of different cultures and continents, abandoned him. Imagine the psychological load: two people, male and female, white and black of two different continents, found that they could not love and raise you but abandoned you. Wow!
In a former life I studied psychology and was particularly intrigued with the child’s mind and development. After all, I had two children of my own. From that view point I would argue that a child treated in this way would have trust issues and an inner rage forever.
Dinesh argues that Barry, in order to overcome the multiple issues of race-confusion, abandonment and identity crisis, begins to construct a new reality for himself. He does not see himself as an American but as the child of a larger than life man, Obama sr., whose potential was ruined by colonialism.
From the moment he begins to build the constructs for his persona, researching his father’s past, Barack identifies with his father’s families lives under colonialism. This becomes the overriding theme in his mind. He begins to emote the past, ignores that the world has changed. He, however, to live out his father’s dreams, sees neo-colonialism wherever he goes. To him America becomes the biggest neo-colonial nation, the enemy that must be brought its knees or tamed.
I quote Dinesh: “In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father’s dreams; he writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father. Think about what that means. 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 a stupor, 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. This philandering, inebriated African socialist is now setting this nation’s agenda through his reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one, who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father’s dream the invisible father provides the inspiration and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost.”
Oh, dear Dinesh, what an enormous web of research you weave to make your point. What a mind, I was thinking reading my way through the book. As I said earlier, my criteria for judging a book of that character are fairly simple, and I found all fulfilled. Dinesh writes with brevity, intellectual acumen, a straight line through the thought process and no false emotions.
I think one has to read the book and draw one’s own conclusions, but I highly recommend the exercise.
