One of the worst things about politics today is how some people are willing to say just about anything to score points. Look at Dinesh D’Souza’s recently published book called The Roots of Obama’s Rage. Before we get into the specifics of why this is such an incredibly bizarre and illogical book, it might be helpful to know exactly where D’Souza is coming from.
D’Souza went to Dartmouth back in the early 1980s, where he edited conservative student publications. After college, he went on to take jobs in the Reagan White House, at the conservative think tank The American Enterprise Institute, and at the conservative Hoover Institute. He has gone on to write books such as The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11. This guy isn’t exactly a moderate, which is important to keep in mind when you look at his thesis. And what may that be? Well, D’Souza thinks that President Obama is leading the country “according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s,” the Luo tribesman being Obama’s father. Yes, you did read that right. D’Souza thinks that Obama is a slave to his father’s ghost, and has some insane radical anti-colonial agenda. D’Souza think Obama hates America and its past, and wants to radically change our country.
Wow. That’s quite a radical thesis. Surely he has some proof to back it up? Well, as it turns out, D’Souza does have proof, if you’re willing to count outright lies and deceptions as “proof.” One of the more ridiculous claims D’Souza makes is that Obama wants a 100 percent tax rate, because Obama thinks that it would fulfill the purpose of “taming the plutocrats.” That’s just blatantly not the case. Someone could certainly say that Obama supports higher taxes on the rich than on the poor, but that’s a pretty mainstream view. Even Reagan, the god of the modern conservative movement, kept a progressive tax system in place. Obama has proposed that the top income bracket should pay 39.6 percent of its income in taxes. Say what you want about whether or not that’s too high, but it certainly isn’t close to 100 percent. It’s the same rate that they paid under Clinton, and if you said Clinton wanted to raise people’s taxes to 100 percent, you’d be laughed at. The same standard applies here.
D’Souza also says that Obama started the bank and auto bailouts. No, he didn’t. It’s very plain, there’s no real middle ground here. Bush passed the bank bailout, also known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Later that same year, Bush allocated 13.4 billion dollars from the bank bailout to be used to help General Motors and Chrysler. So, just so we’re clear, it was Bush who passed the bailouts, not Obama.
The rest of the book is filled with other such unfounded claims. For instance, D’Souza says that the Obama administration never made public a letter that was sent to the British about the Lockerbie bomber, when it turns out the letter was made public on July 26. Plenty of time to fact check before the book goes to press.
The simple fact is that in quite a bit of this book, D’Souza is just wrong. Yet as I write this, the book is number one on Amazon’s bestseller list. Of course, buying the book does not mean that you are a right wing extremist. But the more the book sells, the easier it is for D’Souza and his allies to say their ideas are validated and accepted by the American people. In order to combat such blatant fallacies, people need to speak up. I think that most of the people who buy the book will read it for a few minutes, and throw it away with a derisive snort. That is all such drivel deserves.
Excellent article! You know, D’Souza spoke at Conn when I was a senior there (I didn’t go). The saddest part is that his first book, Illiberal Education – available at the library – is lucid, balanced, thought-provoking, and still relevant. Somewhere along the line, a sharp mind was allowed (or made) to go dull.
Forest – trees? You picked on a couple of factual errors; you can do that with just about every book. It does not make the book “illogical”. What about the thrust of the book: Obama’s upbringing was vastly different from most Americans. He did not spend his youth, about 17 years, in the U.S. The world view as a “colonialist” he assimilated early in life helps explain destructive agenda as president. I cannot recap the book here, but there is a larger issue the author is attempting to address.
No, the book is absurd. Obama is part of the machine. No-one becomes president of the USA unless they’re firmly in the pocket of their corporate masters and friendly with all those oh so democratic lobbyists you have hanging around Washington. The idea that Obama hates the USA and wants to ruin it because of his anti-colonialist views is actually insane and I hope that a large majority of Americans come to realise that soon or with this embracing of insanity we really will see the end of the US as a superpower.
To the author– Did you read the book?
Dinesh NEVER says that Obama supports 100% taxation of the top income bracket. Obama’s father explicitly wrote that he favored as much as 100% taxation of the top income bracket.
Also, Dinesh NEVER says that Obama started the bailouts. He explicitly says that Bush did, as a last ditch effort to save his administrations legacy while he had one foot out of the door.
And if the letter by the Obama administration concerning Lockerbie was made public, please post a link.
Before you write an article bashing a book you never read, you should at the very least attempt to make your lies unverifiable. Purposely (or incompetently) mischaracterizing the book makes your credibility laughable.
Seth: You “think that most of the people who buy the book will read it for a few minutes, and throw it away with a derisive snort.” Too bad, so sad, you under-estimate us folks, because our education and intellect allows us to read Dsouza’s book, or any controversial book for that matter and make up our minds independently AND beyond reading “for a few minutes.” The only “drivel” so far is your review of Dsouza’s book.