Read Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012) Online
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
Tags: #Non-fiction, #Political Ideologies, #Conservatism & Liberalism, #Political Science
Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012) (26 page)
BOOK: Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012)
9.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Obama’s goal is to raise up the standard of living in the rest of the world while lowering the standard of living in the United States. This is admittedly a challenging task. Americans currently make up 5 percent of the world’s population, but we consume a quarter of the world’s resources and products. From my point of view, and probably that of most Americans, this is not inherently unjust. Americans use more because they produce more. But this is not how anti-colonialists see it. For them, America has more because America has stolen this wealth from others, and America must now give it back. This means that Obama will not consider his job finished until America consumes a much smaller fraction of the global economy, or until the American standard of living is comparable to that of the rest of the world.
In fact, Obama seems content to burden our children and grandchildren, who never voted for him, with trillions of dollars of debt that he has accumulated, without them receiving any benefits from it. Again, we may see this as grossly unfair, but from the anti-colonial perspective these future generations are still the beneficiaries of inherited privileges. In a sense, they are in possession of “stolen goods.” So they are not entitled to the bigger homes and more expensive cars and healthier meals and superior education that they are getting, and this becomes part of their unfair stock of capital that Obama can reduce by saddling them with a huge pile of debt. If debt produces not just decline but collapse, then these “luxuries,” or the benefits of being an American, may not even be there for future generations. I believe that Obama is very clear-eyed about all this. He knows it may take a catastrophe, or a series of catastrophes, to bring about such a fundamental change in the American way of life. Debt is the device he is using to precipitate those catastrophes. And when they occur, and when America has been brought down to the same level as everyone else, then Obama can feel deep satisfaction that, as a consequence of his singular efforts, his country has paid for its colonial sins and settled its debt to the rest of the world.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BIG DADDY
He believed in his own talent and singularity; he felt sure that the usual rules would not apply.
1
—Jodi Kantor,
The Obamas
The Obamas
S
o far we have seen that Obama, while calling on others to fulfill their obligations to the needy, doesn’t help the needy in his own family or community. Poor George Obama is on his own. Obama’s aunt can continue to sell coal on the street until she earns enough to get her teeth fixed. The Obama school can live on promises; who needs actual cash for books or teacher salaries? Put this down to rank hypocrisy; Obama wouldn’t be the first political leader to call upon others to do what he won’t do himself. What we haven’t emphasized thus far, however, is how Obama chastises others for extravagance while indulging himself extravagantly. “Everyone must sacrifice for the greater good,” Obama said in 2009. Again, in 2011, Obama said the nation’s problems could easily be solved “if everybody took an attitude of shared sacrifice.”
2
Clearly “everybody” does not include Obama, who lives well by any standard and is not notable for making any obvious personal sacrifices. In a sense, the rules of frugality are for “the people” rather than for their leaders. Obama has become, like many Third World anti-colonial rulers, something of a Big Daddy.
o far we have seen that Obama, while calling on others to fulfill their obligations to the needy, doesn’t help the needy in his own family or community. Poor George Obama is on his own. Obama’s aunt can continue to sell coal on the street until she earns enough to get her teeth fixed. The Obama school can live on promises; who needs actual cash for books or teacher salaries? Put this down to rank hypocrisy; Obama wouldn’t be the first political leader to call upon others to do what he won’t do himself. What we haven’t emphasized thus far, however, is how Obama chastises others for extravagance while indulging himself extravagantly. “Everyone must sacrifice for the greater good,” Obama said in 2009. Again, in 2011, Obama said the nation’s problems could easily be solved “if everybody took an attitude of shared sacrifice.”
2
Clearly “everybody” does not include Obama, who lives well by any standard and is not notable for making any obvious personal sacrifices. In a sense, the rules of frugality are for “the people” rather than for their leaders. Obama has become, like many Third World anti-colonial rulers, something of a Big Daddy.
I’ll explain what I mean by Big Daddy, but first I must answer an objection to my premise. Media reports suggest that it is Michelle rather than Barack who is the driver of the Obamas’ lavish lifestyle. She has been called a North American Evita Peron, and America’s answer to Marie Antoinette, spending $10 million in taxpayer money for her vacations and putting on a public display of magnanimity by bagging groceries at a food bank—while wearing a pair of $540 Lanvin sneakers.
3
Michelle has been blasted for everything from her Princeton thesis to her subsequent employment history. Of her thesis—now available on the web—the writer Christopher Hitchens wrote, “To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of the term. This is because it wasn’t written in any known language.”
3
Michelle has been blasted for everything from her Princeton thesis to her subsequent employment history. Of her thesis—now available on the web—the writer Christopher Hitchens wrote, “To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of the term. This is because it wasn’t written in any known language.”
Michelle’s thesis was about being black at Princeton. Here is the type of passage that accounts for Hitchens’s disdain: “By actually working with the Black lower class or within their communities as a result of their ideologies, a separationist may better understand the desparation [
sic
] of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.”
4
Alas, the grammar is wrong; the tenses are garbled. People are ignorant “of” the plight of the lower class, not ignorant “to” their plight. And “desparation” should be spelled “desperation.” As Hitchens would surely have pointed out, these are not mere typos; they reflect an estranged relationship with the English language. Moreover, they appear not in an off-the-cuff transcript but in a thesis that is supposed to reflect the culmination of one’s college career. Remarkably Michelle graduated with honors at Princeton and was admitted to Harvard Law School. And subsequently Michelle was hired by the University of Chicago to run “programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting” with a salary of $316,000 a year.
sic
] of their situation and feel more hopeless about a resolution as opposed to an integrationist who is ignorant to their plight.”
4
Alas, the grammar is wrong; the tenses are garbled. People are ignorant “of” the plight of the lower class, not ignorant “to” their plight. And “desparation” should be spelled “desperation.” As Hitchens would surely have pointed out, these are not mere typos; they reflect an estranged relationship with the English language. Moreover, they appear not in an off-the-cuff transcript but in a thesis that is supposed to reflect the culmination of one’s college career. Remarkably Michelle graduated with honors at Princeton and was admitted to Harvard Law School. And subsequently Michelle was hired by the University of Chicago to run “programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity, and minority contracting” with a salary of $316,000 a year.
All this may be true, but so what? Michelle Obama is surely not the first mediocre student to graduate from an Ivy League school, or to benefit from her racial background and political connections. If they taught her little at Princeton and yet graduated her with honors, that’s an indictment of Princeton; if she was admitted to law school with substandard preparation, that tells you something about the admissions policies of Harvard Law School. And what’s the big deal about Michelle’s spending habits—she can afford $540 sneakers.
So I’m going to lay off Michelle and focus on Barack Obama, who poses a different and much more serious problem. With Obama, we don’t get Michelle’s familiar sense of racial entitlement; rather, we see the kind of personal arrogance that was characteristic of his father. Barack Obama Sr. was convinced that he was a genius, and that Kenya needed him, and ultimately that his genius was unrecognized by petty, unimportant people. President Obama displays some of that same narcissism. His favorite word is “I.” This was evident in his speech announcing the Bin Laden killing. “And so shortly after taking office, I directed ... I met repeatedly with my national security team.... Finally, last week, I determined.... Today, at my direction. . . . ” And so on. With so many uses of the personal pronoun by Obama, one is a little surprised to discover that he was not actually the one who pulled the trigger. Like his father, Obama displays indignation when his great achievements are not appreciated. Of the business community, he says, “I saved these guys when the economy was falling off a cliff. Now I get nothing but their venom.” Obama even wants the group he calls greedy, selfish, and fat cats to appreciate how much he has done for them.
5
5
One of Obama’s lines from the 2008 campaign was “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” This seems to imply that the country has been longing for a savior and now he’s here. Warned by his political advisers that his party faced a debacle in the 2010 midterm election comparable to the debacle that Clinton faced in 1994, Obama dismissed the comparison: “Well, the big difference between here and ’94 was that you’ve got me.” Well, the Democrats suffered big losses in 2010, comparable to their ’94 rout, so having Obama didn’t help much.
Further examples of Obama’s self-esteem abound. Obama has inserted himself into the biographical accounts of other presidents on the White House website. Thus, for example, in the section on President Franklin Roosevelt, we read, “On August 14, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Today the Obama administration continues to protect seniors and ensure Social Security will be there for future generations.” In a recent interview with Steve Kroft of CBS, Obama noted that “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments against any president with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln.” Here Obama places himself in the very top rank of presidents, with just three “possible” exceptions.
6
6
My own favorite incident revealing Obama’s estimate of himself occurred in India, when the president spoke at a business roundtable in Mumbai. Bhupendra Kansagra, a Kenyan entrepreneur of Indian origin, was speaking, and Obama was trying to guess where his remarks were headed.
Kansagra:
Welcome, Mr. President, to India. As a fellow Kenyan, I’m very proud to see that you have made . . .Obama:
[laughing] Made something of myself?Kansagra:
. . . India the focus of your drive for exports out of the U.S.
7
I asked psychologist Paul Vitz about the source of Obama’s narcissism, and he suggested it comes from Obama’s sense of abandonment as a child. Abandonment creates a void, and narcissism is one way to fill the void. Lacking appreciation from his parents, the child becomes his own supplier of praise and recognition. There is a whole literature on this, I understand, but I haven’t bothered to read it. What interests me is not so much the psychological basis for Obama’s narcissism as the ideological basis for it. Where does Obama get this idea that he is above the normal standards that apply to everyone else?
We can get some insight about this by looking at several prominent African leaders over the past few decades. I am thinking of men such as Idi Amin in Uganda, Jean-Bedel Bokassa in the Central African Republic, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, and Kamuzu Hastings Banda in Malawi. Some of these guys were freedom fighters in the heady colonial days, but over time anti-colonialism became their pretext for looting the country and blaming their country’s problems on the former rulers. Moreover, they did not hesitate to make passionate speeches about poverty while they themselves lived like kings. Banda, for instance, lived in a 300-room presidential palace and traveled with a troupe of female dancers who entertained him wherever he went. Amin gave himself innumerable military medals and titles such as Conqueror of the British Empire and True Heir to the Throne of Scotland. Mobutu owned a fleet of Mercedes Benzes and insisted that all government officials wear lapel badges carrying his portrait.
Perhaps the best living example of this genre is the dictator Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Mugabe fought in the revolutionary war against the British, yet since assuming power he has shown little concern for the welfare of his people. Instead he has enriched himself and his supporters. Mugabe treats Air Zimbabwe as his personal airline. He used state funds to build a $25 million palace for himself, expertly decorated by his wife Grace, who is locally called “First Shopper” for her numerous European shopping sprees. Invoking the legacy of British rule, Mugabe routinely confiscates the land of white farmers for his cronies. Yet while Mugabe lives high on the hog, Zimbabwe today is a failed state, with widespread poverty, malnutrition, and disease. Life expectancy has fallen nearly fifteen years, from sixty to forty-five. The African writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka writes about “the corruption, venality, hypocrisy, and megalomania of much of the Third World leadership,” noting both “their arrogant neglect of, and alienation from, the people they are meant to serve” and “the contrast of their lifestyles with that of the productive majority.”
8
8
Obama, too, displays some of these traits. The London
Daily Mail
reports that Obama likes to travel in style. Shortly after being elected he took his wife to a Broadway show. The trip from Washington to New York required two planes, two helicopters, extra planes for security, and closing the streets for a presidential motorcade through the city. Obama said he had promised his wife the treat, and he seemed unbothered by the fact that American taxpayers paid for the whole trip, except the $60 Broadway tickets, which the Obamas paid for themselves. The
Daily Mail
also reported that when the Obamas vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard, renting a $50,000-per-week farmhouse for the occasion, Obama and his wife took separate jets, even though they arrived only a few hours apart. Evidently convenience for the Obama family was, in their view, worth the cost to the American taxpayer. While the White House customarily displays around a dozen Christmas trees, the Obama White House in 2011 featured thirty-seven trees, including one that was flown in from Wisconsin for the purpose. More recently the
Daily Mail
reveals that the Obamas fly in a personal trainer from Chicago each week for their workout regimen; apparently there are not adequate trainers in the nation’s capital. All presidents deserve time off, but Obama has set a record for a single presidential term in taking seventeen vacations stretching over seventy-four days and involving more than a hundred rounds of golf.
9
Daily Mail
reports that Obama likes to travel in style. Shortly after being elected he took his wife to a Broadway show. The trip from Washington to New York required two planes, two helicopters, extra planes for security, and closing the streets for a presidential motorcade through the city. Obama said he had promised his wife the treat, and he seemed unbothered by the fact that American taxpayers paid for the whole trip, except the $60 Broadway tickets, which the Obamas paid for themselves. The
Daily Mail
also reported that when the Obamas vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard, renting a $50,000-per-week farmhouse for the occasion, Obama and his wife took separate jets, even though they arrived only a few hours apart. Evidently convenience for the Obama family was, in their view, worth the cost to the American taxpayer. While the White House customarily displays around a dozen Christmas trees, the Obama White House in 2011 featured thirty-seven trees, including one that was flown in from Wisconsin for the purpose. More recently the
Daily Mail
reveals that the Obamas fly in a personal trainer from Chicago each week for their workout regimen; apparently there are not adequate trainers in the nation’s capital. All presidents deserve time off, but Obama has set a record for a single presidential term in taking seventeen vacations stretching over seventy-four days and involving more than a hundred rounds of golf.
9
Now several points are worth noting here. First, very little of this is reported in the United States. Obama worshippers in the media ignore Obama’s excesses, and when reports from abroad surface, they dismiss and pooh-pooh them. Second, while the Obamas are permitted to use government funds for legitimate purposes, such as White House expenses, official travel, and so on, previous presidents, like Bush and Reagan, took vacations at their own ranch, or at Camp David. The Obamas’ preferred venues are beachfront villas in Hawaii or ski cottages in Vail or mansions in Martha’s Vineyard. Third, what makes the Obamas’ lifestyle especially galling is that they regularly portray themselves as ordinary folks, struggling with the same difficulties as the rest of us; yet they are reveling while much of the country is in economic distress.
BOOK: Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012)
9.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Other books
The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy by Brian Aldiss
A Man For All Seasons by Brigalow, Jenny
Star Wars - Musings of an Ithorian by Bob Carrau
English Girl in New York by Scarlet Wilson
The Four Seasons by Mary Alice Monroe
Gifted Stone by Kelly Walker
September Tango by Jade, Scarlett, the 13th, Llerxt
At the End of Babel by Michael Livingston
