Reviewing 2016: Obama's America

The concluding sentences of John Maynard Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money are; " I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
After viewing Dinesh D'Souza's 2016 Obama America Mrs. Hoosierman complained that I had already told her everything in the movie. Perhaps I have as D'Souza has already disseminated every fact in his movie. This is not to say that it is a waste of time to see the movie as D'Souza offers a couple of insights into Obama thinking and the milieu that produced that thinking. The first conclusion I've drawn is Dreams From My Father would have been more aptly named Dreams From My Mother for it was Stanley Ann Dunham who created the myth of Barack Obama Sr. True the senior Obama was an intellectual and somewhat of an armchair revolutionary in addition to being an abusive spouse and a raving drunk but the image passed on to Junior Obama from his leftist mother must have been Homeric. Dunham seems to have had a thing for third world revolutionaries. Her second marriage broke up when Lolo Soetoro, her second husband, eschewed his anti-colonialists dogma and went to work for an American oil company. Lest young Barack acquire capitalistic ideas he was sent back to Hawaii to be tutored by Frank Marshal Davis. Barack Obama's siblings who grew up in the absence of Stanley Ann Dunham's romanticized concoction of the senior Obama are pretty conventional in their thinking.
George Obama, who does not worship at the altar of the brother, would be very much at home in the company Dambisa Moyo the African economist and author of three best selling books. India, China, Brazil, and Chile and a host of other once third world countries have given up on the drippy collectivism of the old left and embraced the very American idea of free enterprise while Obama, not just encumbered by the time lag that Keynes noted, is a full generation late to the fight against American imperialism. Perhaps if the senior Obama had found a twelve step program Barack Obama would be a successful stock broker in Honolulu instead of trying to radically transform the country into something from the pipe dreams from his father.
Obama is most at home with the Nancy Pelosi-Jan Schakowsky wing of his party that still has one foot stuck in the New Deal. The Nixon hating wing, that hates Nixon not for Watergate but for discovering Whittaker Chambers and beating Helen Gahagen Douglas in a senate race. His thinking is a generation behind Bill Clinton who grew up and pronounced the end of big government. What would he learn from Frank Marshal Davis? He would probably learn about Harry Bridges, Gus Hall, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Rosenbergs, past heroes of the old left. It's not that Obama is forward looking as he pretends; quite the opposite. Politically he lives in the past. He probably sees good in a united totalitarian Islam as counter force to US capitalism.
In 2010 George Obama teamed up with a British journalist to write a book. Originally Simon and Schuster agreed to run a 20,000 first printing. Then suddenly the offer was withdrawn. He applied for a visa to visit his mother in Atlanta the same year and the visa was denied. A drunken uncle in Boston is one thing but an articulate, well spoken, conservative brother must have been too embarrassing for Obama to bear. Very recently D'Souza received an urgent call from George Obama.
"He was a bit flustered, and soon informed me that his young son was sick with a chest condition.  He pleaded with me to send him $1,000 to cover the medical bills.  Since George was at the hospital I asked him to let me speak to a nurse, and she confirmed that George’s son was indeed ill.  So I agreed to send George the money through Western Union.  He was profusely grateful.  But before I hung up I asked George, “Why are you coming to me?”  He said, “I have no one else to ask.”  Then he said something that astounded me, “Dinesh, you are like a brother to me.”'
Remember that when you hear Obama speaking of being our brother's keeper.