Having read the article, I have to admit my original question remains unanswered because it appears that Obama doesn't even know America Ferrera. But the even more alarming question came to light... why does President Obama hate this country? I know if I ever hated someone, I would spend my adult life climbing a tedious and bullshit-ridden path full of personal inconveniences just so I could hope to get hired as that hated person's #1 guy. That's totally not a crazy and ridiculous thing to do with your precious limited time here on Earth.
The article addresses a recent - you know, I hate to do this to a word in the English language but I guess I must - documentary titled 2016. The Investors article breaks down the argument made in the film 2016 by its creator, Dinesh D'Souza. The thesis driving the film is that everyone has underestimated the impact Obama's father had on him, leading the President on a lifetime mission of revenge against the very country he leads. Not convinced? The article asks why would President Obama do the following things if this were not the case?
• Hold corporate America, Wall Street and the wealthy in contempt.
• Run against capitalism in a country run by capitalism.
• Deny America's exceptionalism on the world stage and lead from behind.
• Apologize and bow, literally, to Third World leaders in a bizarre and unprecedented doctrine of mea culpa.
• Throw key Middle East ally Israel under the bus over Jewish settlements.
• Withdraw hastily from Afghanistan while refusing to talk about this key front in the War on Terror in terms of victory.
• Propose slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while mothballing missile defense.
• Fail to guard national security secrets critical to protecting America from foreign threats.
• Curb domestic oil production and block the Keystone Pipeline, while underwriting exploration and drilling in South America.
• Compound America's debt crisis with even more federal spending, risking more U.S. credit downgrading.
Looking at that list... the accusations are pretty damning but they are also extremely broad at times, open to chunks of interpretation, or explainable by a number of other means (what's up last item on the list?). Regardless of the specifics, D'Souza believes that the heart of Obama's actions are to...
...either redistribute wealth at home or U.S. power abroad. He argues it's strategic, designed to right past wrongs and delegitimize America as the world's richest superpower.I might argue that a lot of Obama's presidency has been to react to an inherited catastrophe the same way I might if I was riding in a car spinning out on ice and the driver said "take the wheel!" Other parts were reneging on his foreign policy promises to cut back our human rights awfulness or stepping up lethal precision attacks. Another part was health care, and the final part was running face first repeatedly into the Senate filibuster.
The AP came back and said the claims made in 2016 are highly subjective, but let's allow the article a chance to cover the response to the AP's accusations:
For instance, D'Souza points out that London had gifted a bust of Churchill to the Oval Office only to have Obama, in a slap, return it as soon as he took office. The Brits made it clear Obama could keep the small statue in the Oval Office. Problem is, Churchill happened to be prime minister when Britain ruled Kenya and allegedly mistreated Obama's grandfather. So Obama shipped it off.
AP claims there's no truth to the story, even though an Obama aide recently had to retract a statement denying Obama sent the bust back to the Brits.
Now, while I personally believe that the above explanation is the only possible one that could ever fit all the facts, let's give the Liberal Media a chance to defend itself:
So ABC claims that there were two Churchill busts, one on loan to President Bush as a post-9/11 symbolic gesture, and the other a permanent fixture in the White House residency. The one on loan got returned, another bust put in its place. So Obama, in order to take a dump on the evil imperialistic America, returned the Churchill bust in his office but decided to keep living with the other. Or if the bust replacement really was a symbolic gesture, was the decision to replace the returned bust with one of Lincoln or MLK Jr just a clever ruse or some other anti-American enigma? And was the AP claiming there was no truth to the bust being returned or no truth to the batshit reasons put forth by some to explain why Obama returned the bust? The latter feels 147% obvious, but there's that -47% wiggle room I guess.
You can keep going in the article to read the list evidence that feels like it should end with a character in an Oliver Stone film repeating "Back, and to the left." One other key bit of support was taken directly from Obama's memoirs, Dreams From My Father, which the article talks about:
It's plain from Obama's memoir that he worshipped his father. Obama devotes more than 130 pages, or roughly a third, of "Dreams" to covering his father's life and his colonized ancestry in Kenya. This is purposeful. Obama sympathizes with the idea that "neocolonial wealth," held even by Asian business owners in Nairobi, should be "redistributed to the people." (Neocolonialism is the alleged economic exploitation that remains even after political independence.)
Obama says he realized who he is and what he really cares about when he visited his father's grave. He describes breaking down and weeping, whereupon he reflects: "The pain that I felt was my father's pain."
Personally, I've never read Obama's memoir but given what I know about his relationship to his father, it doesn't surprise me that a big chunk of it would be devoted to the subject. Obama was essentially abandoned by his Dad, so does it seem so bizarre that Obama would want to explore the mystery of "just who was my father?" It's twelve pounds of Freud and a few Shakespearian plays all wrapped into one. To D'Souza, it's a nefarious Bond-villain plot.
In the end, the reality of day-to-day life in the United States over the last four years just doesn't sync up to what the article claims. If Obama is pursuing some agenda fueled by O.G. beef, I'm not sure he's really started yet. After Romney's done flip-flopping his fists into his own groin and calling it a presidential campaign, after Obama wins re-election, if all of D'Souza's predictions come true, I will happily read every instance of "I Told You So" he desires to print. But it's so rare that the crazy guy yelling on the street corner gets that satisfaction.
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