The Film: 2016: The Roots of Obama’s Rage
Commentary
Wil J. Wellisch
31-August-2012
NOTE: I do not
claim to be a film reviewer or a political analyst. These are simply personal thoughts; musings
of an old fellow who knows as much as a jelly fish.
Introduction
The film, 2016, is based upon a recent book
titled The Roots of Obama’s Rage by the south-Indian/American author,
Dinesh D’Souza.
Body of film
The film’s title directs us to the author-director’s central
theme which is two-fold.
One, the author
maintains that Obama’s life from late childhood has led to a career path
directed by rage.
This rage is directed at western
industrial-postindustrial societies.
Particular attention is given to the global colonization drives of England
in the 19t h and 20th centuries. The later expansionistic activity of the
United States in the 20th and 21st centuries also becomes a source of his rage,
decrying as he does the notion of “American
exceptionalism”.
Believing that England’s activities were aimed at exploiting
the beleaguered people and securing the
abundant resources; believing that the colonizers were convinced of their own
inherent superiority, a superiority that might ironically benefit the colonized;
such invasions – economic, military, cultural – took place. This colonizing land-lust directed at the
lesser developed nations [LDNs} always led to harsh outcomes for the indigenous
populations.
These targets of Obama’s rage, by their very nature, lead
to collateral points of focus; attacks leveled against the religions of the
technologically advanced societies - Christianity and later Judaism - and
people of white ethnicity insofar as they harbored the values of the market economy
and gave force to the belief in their inherent superiority over people of color
who occupied these colonized places.
For D’Souza, Obama’s early acquisition of a psyche of
rage and his later actions in governing are inextricably linked.
Two, given this
psychological hurricane at the core of Obama’s psyche, the emerging question for
author-director D’Souza has to do with the sources
of this rage directed at individuals, groups, and institutions.
The film takes aim at the sources or instillers of such
rage. The result is a series of interviews
with people across the political spectrum, showing footage of historical film
relevant to explaining Obama’s development and other visual inserts of
relevance. The interviews are sober and
focused: there is no “Gotcha”
journalism in the questioning. For those old enough to remember, D’Souza’s
interviews are reminiscent of those in earlier days of television in programs
hosted by Dick Cavanaugh or William F. Buckley.
Concluding
commentary
Considering the complexity of the topic – covering
various time periods and visiting nations on at least three continents – the
film does a fine job in a brief period – 87 minutes.
A modest proposal
Given the fine quality of the finished product and
considering the host of challenges D’Souza and company faced in producing this
documentary it seems bad manners for a rank amateur to make serious
recommendations for expanded development.
Yet I believe that such an expansion would lend greatly to a fuller
appreciation of the themes laid out by the author-director.
It seems to me that the
documentary would have been greatly enhanced if the attention given to Obama’s
psychological makeup and consequent actions had led to a more comprehensive
discussion of Obama’s subsequent policies – proposed and enacted – as an adult.
The film would have benefitted by showering the filmgoer
with what would prove to be embarrassing contradictions between Obama’s words
and later policies. The hollowness of
his claims and the vagaries of his promises, lend no comfort. [Some might consider these as signs of conscious
and willful deception, as being intentionally
misleading by Obama, but let the reader decide.]
True, the film addresses the staggering and unparalleled national debt that Obama has bestowed
upon future generations and wishes to expand [with the film acknowledging the
disturbing role that G.W. Bush played in debt-growth during his two terms,
albeit with the drive of a Congress controlled for some years by Democrats].
It is also true that a few other serious issues are given
comment – the dismantling of the military,
the dangerous disregard for the well-being of the one dependable ally in the
Middle East, Israel for example – but they do not receive the detailed attention
that they deserve.
Apart from the above-mentioned items, several other key
matters are either ignored entirely or addressed almost in passing. Not in any particular order, I would offer
the following. To wit:
·
the staggering assault on the nation’s solid
health care system, one that needs modification rather than destruction, the “Affordable Health Care for America” act
– referred to by its detractors as “Obamacare”-
is an incomprehensible tome of two
thousand pages, 330,000 words, innumerable strikeouts of existing legislation
and countless references to other relevant legislation – that demands studied
understanding capable of only a privileged few:
The bill:
o adds
thirty million [30,000,000] people to the list of the insured [22,000,000 of
whom were not on insurance programs by choice].
o cuts
payments to physicians and hospitals covering Medicare recipients by nearly
three-quarters of a trillion dollars
[$716,000,000,000 –billions].
o selects
who will receive certain kinds of care and the types of care that will be
allowed through a national screening board of 15 appointed members called IPAB
{Independent Payment Advisory Board]; the board deciding whether patients presented
will be approved for certain treatments recommended by a physician, the board
having final authority.
This will lead to an impossibly
cumbersome process slowing care to a virtual standstill. As IPAB will be called upon in the most
serious cases what will occur will prove ironic – those in need of the best
treatment posthaste will be those facing prolonged delays, likely to writhe in
pain until they expire.
o the IPAB board thus will be in the position
of being able to over-ride medical decisions by physicians in an effort to
control health care costs; leading to such near-future consequences as
three of four physicians recently surveyed saying that they will NOT take new
Medicare patients or would refuse to enroll in Medicare-directed treatment.
o this
enforced reliance upon IPAB coupled with
the above mentioned cut in payments will cause the care for the elderly to
plummet.
o with
limited payment for care coupled with a decline in the number of physicians medical services will be delayed severely or denied completely to people of all ages; long waiting lists on the
order of those found in western European nations will become the norm in the
U.S.
o costs
of medical will rise dramatically for most people with most current group
coverage insurance programs from private plans disappearing.
o government
plans will impose requirements and restrictions that will make a cumbersome
one-size-fits-all health care system that ignores individual needs, violates
the edicts of religious groups, and will have the design efficiency of the committee that designed the elephant.
·
the disregard for constitutional procedures to
circumvent the Congress and establish laws by fiat as in the cases of creating
as never before czars beholden only to the White House and controlling
important areas of government.
[In the case of establishing
czars, it is not by accident that many of these appointments displayed particular penchant for selected people clearly to the far left on
the political spectrum, communists and other radicals, with at least one having
been a member of a self-declared communist group.
·
in the same vein as the preceding, the penchant
of Obama has been to create policies by
executive order without consideration of the role of the Congress and to
appoint people to critical positions without regard to the role of Congress
through the expansion of “recess appointments”.
·
pulling vital missile systems from Poland and
the Czech Republic simply to appease Russia’s de facto dictator Putin without
any quid pro quo, abandoning an established and legitimate military program.
·
remaining silent or giving only feeble expressions
of support to citizens of Iran protesting fraudulent elections, a failure that contributed
to the strengthening of control over this nation by the mullahs, letting the
protestors face slaughter or imprisonment for their orderly protests.
·
showing contempt for the Dalai Lama, the exiled
holy leader of Tibet and not wishing to antagonize the Chinese government which
opposes recognizing the Dalai Lama, by compelling the Dalai to exit the White
House by the backdoor, going past the garbage cans
so that news photographers
could not capture images of this revered spiritual leader with an American
president.
·
expressing contempt for the PM of Israel, Benjamin
Netanyahu, unceremoniously insisting that the PM wait while Obama dined, then
escorting him out the backdoor previously used by the Dali Lama.
·
giving a speech in Cairo, Egypt in which he did
NOT denounce the cruelty suffered by the Coptic Christians or of women under
Islamic law but condemned the construction of apartments in Israel on Israeli land that even the Arabs had recognized until
then as legitimate construction sites.
·
criticizing the state of Arizona to the United
Nations and the World Court because that state wished to regulate and control
immigration, a federal duty that the federal government refused to carry out;
falsely charging Arizona with discriminatory policies when in fact the law –
SB-1070 – followed faithfully the governing
federal law.
[It should be noted that both
Obama and Attorney General Holder falsely criticized the law as racist, having
to admit at a later date that they had not
read a single word of the bill but relied instead upon the assessment of their
advisors.]
·
tax policies that would allegedly benefit the
middle class, promised in the vaguest of terms, has proven to involve a host of
increases – some directly applied with others indirect, some labeled as taxes
while others masked by alternative terms.
·
ridiculing, blocking, burdening with
unreasonable regulations basic mining and energy exploration industries at a
long-term cost to be shared by individual as well as businesses, coupled with heavily
subsidizing new, untested energy industries, seeking to put these at the head
of the industrial-energy line:
o Does
Solyndra ring a bell with its bankruptcy after receiving $457 million in ‘loans’
to develop a state of the art clean energy system?
o How
about closing down without justification of 66,000 [thousands] jobs along the
Gulf after the BP explosion crippling various industries including fishing and
tourism?
o Blocking
the Keystone project that would have brought much needed Canadian oil into the
US with an estimated 20,000 construction jobs followed by operations that would
have offered employment for several thousands.
·
for an executive employing the politics that
would have fit into Machiavelli’s “The
Prince”, Obama’s early reference to transparency and unity rings sadly
hollow.
·
the racial-ethnic politics shared with Attorney
General Holder in such matters
o as
refusing to bring to justice members of the militant New Black Panther Party
for their menacing and threatening behavior towards white voters in
Philadelphia during the 2008 presidential elections – the young males in black
leather trench coats, dark sunglasses and berets, holding in menacing fashion
combat batons.
o as
allowing death threats with a promise of a financial bounty if a
“while-Hispanic”, George Zimmerman, could be found and killed for the
controversial shooting by Zimmerman of a black fellow of questionable
character, Treyvon [sp] Martin.
o as
condemning immediately the Cambridge, Massachusetts police for detaining Professor
Henry Louis Gates [a black fellow, aka African-American] after Gates was
reported by neighbors, not recognizing him, as appearing to be breaking into a
home.
o making
it official government policy to NOT employ such terms as “Muslim terrorist” when Muslims, in the name of Islam, have engaged
in terrorist acts.
In the case of Major Nidal
Hassan, army psychiatrist, who killed 13 unarmed military and civilian
personnel and wounded 30 others at Ft. Hood, Texas while shouting the Arabic
phrase praising Allah, his massacre was described in the official military
report as “workplace violence”.
o vigorously
opposing all attempts by state officials to curb the tide of illegal voting
plaguing the election process
·
waffling on what stand he should take regarding
whether marriage is a monogamous, two-partner and heterosexual coupling or
whether it should confer legitimacy upon homosexual partners.
·
expressing disdain at established and well
recognized religious beliefs by attempting to require that medical facilities
will provide for contraception practices even if the facilities philosophically
oppose such practices.
·
and more, so much more.
~~~~~
NOTE:
In considering some of the items that would have fit
nicely into this film, making it run as long as Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of
Arabia in a double feature, I
offered a modest selection of topics that came to mind. This is by NO MEANS complete. Two, they are not sequenced in any particular
fashion; there is no order of importance.
Three, they are not grouped into any categories.
Hopefully they merit some consideration – perhaps for a
sequel; 2016-# 2.
wil j wellisch
31-aug-2012
h/t DJ
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