Will Dinesh D'Souza Save the World from Obama?

Has the world turned into a giant promo for Dinesh D’Souza’s film 2016: Obama’s America?

I would assume so since the events of the last week or so appear almost constructed to prove the key point of his movie — that Barack Obama’s foreign policy, indeed his basic value system, is motivated by a rehash of 1960s-1970s era anti-colonialism with the USA as perpetual bogeyman.

That anti-colonialism is the true dream of Obama’s father and also the ideology he had drilled into him from all sides nearly until adulthood.

In D’Souza’s conception, that’s the core of Obama’s being. And it’s beginning to look as if the author and now filmmaker is right.

How else to explain the extraordinary seeming naïveté with which our evidently agnostic president has treated the Islamic world from the outset, acting as if completely oblivious, or more likely willfully oblivious, to the headlong plunge back into the Dark Ages being taken by countries as disparate as Egypt and Turkey. Iran had already taken the plunge back in 1979, but our president wanted to negotiate with them, still does apparently.

And he surrounds himself with shills for this reactionary worldview, pushing forward, or allowing Valerie Jarrett to push forward, the hapless Susan Rice to flog the nonsensical propaganda that the recent disturbances were all about an abysmal video nobody saw, thus discrediting the UN ambassador as either a moron or a liar.

If not for the mainstream media, Obama himself would be a laughing stock at this point. Even the great myth of multiculturalism would not be able save him.

And isn’t it interesting that since 9/11 so few “liberals” or “progressives” in that media (and elsewhere for that matter) evince a serious interest in Islam? It’s hard to find one who knows much substantive about it. Few even know what taqiyya or dhimmi law are. I have had many blank stares from otherwise intelligent people when asking even rudimentary questions.

I think the reason for this is a convenient and largely deliberate ignorance. Liberals know if they scratch the surface of Islam all the misogyny and homophobia will come pouring out, not to mention the tenets of Sharia with its attendant superiority of religious law to state law and the consequent abolition of the separation of church and state — all values and goals supposedly anathema to the liberal mind. Trying to reconcile those things with the policies of their hero-president would make their heads explode, so better not to know about them.

Or pretend that Third World poverty (caused by some version of American imperialism, of course) trumps medieval religious fascism, a proposition that is becoming increasingly laughable, if it ever made the slightest sense.

So D’Souza, it turns out, has made an important film, its message made all the more necessary by recent events. The horrifying terror attack in Benghazi could be his trailer.

What was once an election driven entirely by the economy (or the ignoring of it) suddenly has been upended by a situation that has been lurking for years not far beneath the surface — the War on Terror, the War on Islamism, call it what you will (I certainly prefer the latter), has never been resolved.

It has just been wished away with the inanity that all is well since Bin Laden was killed. Meanwhile, the demonstrators scaling the embassy walls in Cairo were screaming “Obama, Obama, we are all Osama.”

But sooner or later this war will be resolved. And, for the sake of ourselves, our children and grandchildren, it better be in our favor.

D’Souza’s movie might help just a little bit, but will it be seen by enough of the electorate to make an impact, to move the dial? So far it’s been doing rather well and is the second highest grossing political documentary of all time behind Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.

To put that in perspective, however, as of last weekend, 2016 had a cumulative box office gross just over 30 million dollars. That may seem like a lot but the cumulative gross of The Bourne Legacy — an apparently wretched remake of a remake — was 107 million, The Dark Knight Rises 441 million.

So comparatively speaking, not that many folks have seen 2016, not enough anyway. It’s up to all of us to rectify that. If you haven’t seen it, go and go soon. But most importantly, bring a liberal or independent friend. If you don’t know one, find one. I can promise you — they’re out there.

(NOTE: Lionel and I interview D’Souza for the next Poliwood. Look for it here and on PJTV Friday.)