Third World anti-colonialism as the key to the policies and decisions of the Obama administration? After reading the Forbes cover story by Dinesh D’Souza, “How Obama Thinks,” I found myself scratching my head.
In D’Souza’s account, the interpretive key to the Obama administration can be found in the anti-colonialist mentality that flourished in post-colonial Africa, a mentality that colored Barack Obama’s father’s way of thinking, as it also influenced so many Third World intellectuals at the time.
This way of thinking recognized that political independence after World War II did not lead to existential independence. The educated classes were cultural dependent on their former colonial cultures, and the economic well-being of the former colonies remained linked to the former colonial powers.
This ongoing dependency was much resented by the first generation of post-colonial intellectuals, which often led to anti-Western sentiments. America was demonized as a dominating economic and political power. The same desire to overcome Western influence led to a naive embrace of socialism as the key to economic independence.
It is entirely understandable that Obama’s father would embrace this way of thinking. D’Souza tells us his Indian relatives did so as well. After all, the American government had a long history of intervention in Latin American politics, and the term “Banana Republic” was coined to describe governments in the pay of the United Fruit Company. A covert operation in 1953 installed the Shah in Iran, a fairly typical episode in the back-and-forth of the Cold War when the U.S. and the Soviet Union treated Third World countries as pawns on a global chessboard.
But does our President think this way? Yes, according to D’Souza, and the evidence he gives is that Obama’s policies are best explained as motivated by anti-colonialism.
Huh?
Take D’Souza’s first example—Obama’s commitment to “massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.” Last I checked, that was also Exxon’s policy. The oil company is investing in exploration and production all over the world. Because of a commitment to anti-colonialism? No, because that’s where the oil is.
One could go further. Obama is a typical member of the Democratic Party, which is to say beholden to voters very committed to environmentalism. This means restricting energy production in the United States, and since this domestic restriction will drive up energy prices, and thus hurt the American economy, these same Democrats, the President included, are naturally motivated to encourage foreign production to maintain adequate oil supplies (and moderate prices) worldwide.
Or take anther one of D’Souza’s examples—Obamacare reflects an effort to “decolonize” the health sector. I would have thought the old-fashioned liberal desire to task private enterprise to serve political goals a sufficient explanation.
Or another example—the debate about tax policy. Apparently, D’Souza thinks that the current debate about whether the top marginal tax rate should be 34% or 39% amounts to an “anti-colonial crusade.”
What really lost me was D’Souza’s observations about the goofy idea that NASA should contribute to international outreach by including Muslims to help raise their self-esteem. Last I checked, this way of thinking reflects the way most college administrators talk about “inclusion” in education. And in any event, the episode tells us that NASA is currently a government program without a purpose, not a tool of an “anti-colonial” agenda in Washington.
I can’t fathom what made Dinesh D’Souza ignore the obvious. Barack Obama’s policies reflect mainstream postmodern American liberalism, view of the sort one finds on nearly all college campuses in America, in the Nation magazine, and on the editorial pages of the New York Times.
And the influence of Obama’s father? In his biography, Dreams from My Father, Obama emphasizes the importance of his search for an African identity, which culminated in a visit to Kenya and his father’s grave. Obama testifies that his vision of his father inspired him, giving him clarity about who he was—or perhaps more accurately clarity about who he wanted to become.
D’Souza is determined to make draw from this a tale of malign influence, which I think is both unwarranted and misguided.
We live in an increasingly rootless society defined by a mad scramble for the credentials necessary to climb the ladder of success—the SAT scores, the elite colleges, the elite law schools, the corporate jobs, and so forth. Both black and white, child of a wandering mother, I don’t doubt that the young Barack Obama knew how soulless this form of life can become.
By contrast, I imagine that Barack Obama, Sr., for all his flaws as a person, was like many Africans whom I have known—deeply loyal to his newly born country, anguished by the sufferings and failures of post-colonial Africa, and however misguided in his political convictions, willing to make personal sacrifices to try to make things better.
In his biography, Obama imagines his father upbraiding him: “You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people’s struggle. Wake up, black man!” Roughly translated: it’s not all about you and your climb up the career ladder. Stop being selfish and contribute to your community. Not a bad message.
In the end, I’m afraid I have an explanation of D’Souza’s implausible analysis that demoralizes me. D’Souza is determined to redescribe the standard issue postmodern liberalism that Obama embodies into anti-Americanism. It’s an old rhetorical trick, one that is the mirror image of the efforts of the Left to redescribe conservatism as racism and nativism.
But the trick won’t work. It is true that postmodern liberalism does have an anti-American, anti-Western component, but by my analysis, this “anti” component is an inner dynamic of both the West and the American project itself, which has a strongly universalist dimension. The “anti-Americanism” such as it is (I would prefer to call it ambivalent patriotism) should not be seen as an alien intrusion from post-colonial Africa.
It is stultifying, therefore, to play the “he’s anti-American” game. Instead, we need to be debating about the kind of American identity that will most likely sustain the common good.
September 15th, 2010 | 4:23 pm
D’Souza’s analysis is pretty weak. Anti-colonialism, liberation theology all other explanations for Obama’s motivations do ignore the obvious. All of the actions that D’Souza chalks up to “anti-colonialism” can also be chalked up to what are the general positions of a politician in the left wing of the Democratic party. They can also be explained by the academic cultures of Harvard and Columbia and the political culture of Hyde Park in Chicago. These cultures at this point are pretty much one and the same.
September 15th, 2010 | 6:02 pm
I tend to agree more with D’Souza than Reno. I particularly think its disingenuous to lay ‘the one’s’ weird proclivities off to a “typical” member of the Dem’s. Many – a lot – of my D friends no longer understand or trust him. They would dispute the “typical” tag.
D’Souza misses the mark sometimes, yes, but he still posits an interesting pov. At least that’s my opinion.
September 15th, 2010 | 6:34 pm
Occam’s razor. Nothing Obama has done cannot be explained as the result of the decisions of a doctrinaire post-modern academic liberal constrained by the necessity to make pragmatic compromises from time to time.
September 15th, 2010 | 7:10 pm
I cannot stand 99% of President Obama’s policies. That said, it really frustrates me to see such poor analysis from someone I have respected as a strong conservative intellectual. It also seems to cater to xenophobic attitudes. I hold conservatives to a higher standard, and feel analysis of policies rather than psychoanalysis of politicians would be far more constructive.
September 15th, 2010 | 8:09 pm
D’souza’s piece reminds me of essays by some of the strongly opinionated freshmen I have taught over the years. Passionate, emotional, but completely unsubstantiated and methodologically unsound.
The problem with any psychoanalytic methodology (from literary criticism to political analysis) is that you can’t put your subject on the couch. The Obama that exists in the collective imagination of the right is about as representative of the actual POTUS as the representation of Bush the left has abhorred lo these many years.
The piece needs a long paragraph towards the beginning outlining the limitations of such an approach. That the editors at Forbes didn’t feel the need to account for the fallacy at work tells me they’re more interested in scoring political points than in sound writing and argumentation.
D’Souza has done nothing more than dissect his own projections of a president named Obama, not the real thing.
But now we’re entering the frightening arena of postmodernist thought, which conservatives loath because they struggle to grasp the difference between subjectivity and outright relativism.
September 15th, 2010 | 11:42 pm
I agree that D’Souza’s argument is pretty baseless. (I laughed out loud when he brought up his NASA conspiracy theory.) Unfortunately, I think this is worse than just a piece of bad analysis. At a time when a growing number of people are trying to promote the idea that Obama wasn’t born in this country, when there is a concerted effort to spread the idea that he is secretly a Muslim, and when conservative talk show hosts regularly suggest that his policies are motivated by a desire to help blacks get revenge on whites for years of discrimination, it is hardly a minor thing to say that Obama is fundamentally defined by a mindset that is “Kenyan” and “anti-colonial”. This is feeding into the racist/xenophobic narrative that is being peddled by some on the far right. At such a time the intellectual leaders of the conservative movement ought to be trying to draw people back to the core tenets of conservatism, not working to rationalize the worst sentiments of the fringes. D’Souza, Gingrich and others need to be very careful which fires they stoke. Playing with fire is dangerous.
September 15th, 2010 | 11:52 pm
I guess it COULD be a zebra, but odds are it’s still a horse. It’s just not very exciting, I suppose.
September 16th, 2010 | 12:46 am
Zebra, horse… Who cares?
I just want it to be in the rearview mirror rather than standing in the middle of the intersection where it’s hogging the road and blocking all other traffic.
September 16th, 2010 | 2:34 am
I hold conservatives to a higher standard, and feel analysis of policies rather than psychoanalysis of politicians would be far more constructive. —EKB
This.
And this:
The Obama that exists in the collective imagination of the right is about as representative of the actual POTUS as the representation of Bush the left has abhorred lo these many years. —Clippy Clappy
And nice counter-analysis by R.R. Reno.
September 16th, 2010 | 8:59 am
There are two arguments in this thread against D’Souza’s piece. That of Reno and several commenters is based on what D’Souza says. The other one is that it caters to xenophobic attitudes and birtherism. If you classify these roughly as arguments from the right and arguments from the left, you can see why the left is held in such contempt by ordinary people.
September 16th, 2010 | 11:50 am
Judy,
I would actually classify my argument as falling into both categories. I didn’t bother to recapitulate Reno’s analysis because he pretty much said what I would say in terms of the specifics of D’Souza’s piece. I’m having trouble understanding your point though. Do you deny that D’Souza’s argument has serious implications in the current polarized climate where xenophobia and birtherism are realities, or are you denying that xenophobia and birtherism are realities in our culture?
September 16th, 2010 | 1:31 pm
Vincent, I can’t speak for Judy, but while I certainly wouldn’t deny that birtherism and xenophobia are realities, I think their extent is greatly exaggerated. Birthers are a fringe probably no larger than and certainly no more of a threat to the republic than 911 truthers. Xenophobia is a more complex question, but I think you run into a definitional problem there. Some in the media and on the political left consider opposition to illegal immigration, being in favor of the Arizona immigration law, and opposition to the Ground Zero mosque to be expressions of xenophobia. While that is probably true of some fringe elements, I believe the vast majority of people with those positions hold them for reasons other than xenophobia. Whether those are good reasons or right reasons is open to debate, but in any case, they are not expressions of bigotry.
September 16th, 2010 | 1:44 pm
“Occam’s razor. Nothing Obama has done cannot be explained as the result of the decisions of a doctrinaire post-modern academic liberal constrained by the necessity to make pragmatic compromises from time to time.” — Barry Arrington
I don’t doubt that Occam’s razor as expressed in this quote is valid. I even suspect that D’Souza would largely agree with it.
The problem is, it just isn’t an entirely satisfying explanation. And not just because I want to psychoanalyze Obama. We all know that there is something different about Obama. He just doesn’t fit into the clean ideological boxes that we are used to. There are subtle indications that something drives Obama beyond the simplistic analysis that Occam’s razor would lead us to.
But what?
I do question D’Souza’s analysis. The conclusions he jumps to are a bit too far out there for me. But then again, I think he may be on to something. And I appreciate his personal perspective of having grown up with relatives who had similar anti-colonialist beliefs.
If Obama Sr.’s dreams, that were heavily influenced by anti-colonialism, had no influence on Obama, then why did he title the book the way he did? Why should we put on blinders and ignore this aspect of Obama’s life?
Wouldn’t it be good if we could more fully understand what drives Obama? To me this is an important topic, and will even help dispel some of the more “racist/xenophobic narratives”, once we all can make better sense of him.
September 16th, 2010 | 3:12 pm
“It is stultifying, therefore, to play the ‘he’s anti-American’ game. Instead, we need to be debating about the kind of American identity that will most likely sustain the common good.”
Hear, hear.
September 16th, 2010 | 3:58 pm
Obama’s memoirs practically beg us to do political psychoanalysis from a distance. D’Sousa’s brand of interpretation is therefore not surprising. What surprises, however, is that Forbes would allow amateur pscyho-politico-identity construction (of the type Dreams from My Father employed) to form the basis of a cover feature.
D’Sousa is a sharp fellow and good polemicist. But his musing-out-loud does not serve the anti-Obama cause, of which I consider myself a charter member. Clever formulations, independent of their truth, sell. See: we’re talking about it.
Back to the grind. Defeat of the forces Obama represents will not be achieved in a mere flash of insight that will deliver us from the hard work we must do. The opposition is all too familiar.
Allons travailler.
September 17th, 2010 | 10:44 am
“Johnny does it too” is a lousy form of refutation, goodness knows. But having been treated to reams and reams of newsprint and videoroll “I’m doing this for you Daddy” psychobabble from the Left about the Bushes (41 and 43) with nary a peep of protest about its propriety or rationality, I find the “this is way out of bounds” outrage more than a bit much. D’Souza is probably off base here — I certainly think so. But an appeal to “racism/xenophobia”? From a guy named “Dinesh D’Souza”? Have you no sense of irony sir?
September 17th, 2010 | 2:09 pm
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September 17th, 2010 | 2:39 pm
[...] D’Souza’s Forbes piece has inspired the same reception — a collective “huh?” – from allies and opponents alike. The one exception is Newt Gingrich who has dubbed this the “most profound [...]
September 17th, 2010 | 5:05 pm
[...] so far D’Souza’s Forbes piece has inspired the same reception—a collective “huh?”—from allies and opponents [...]
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[...] professor in the White House carrying on his father’s legacy not only makes Obama The Other, as conservative online magazine First Things pointed out, it also maintains the [...]
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