Sunday, September 2, 2012

2016


I haven't been to a movie theatre in a long, long time. It takes something like Star Wars or Field of Dreams to get me to a theatre but LuAnn wanted to see this movie so we went today. It is a documentary about a native India writer's life compared to Barack Obama's and what he found out comparing their lives.

For one thing, you rarely watch a movie with such a somber audience. You could hear a pin drop through the whole film and when it ended, the audience gave a sounding round of applause and quietly left the theatre. The movie really makes you think. It confirmed a lot of those crazy emails we have all received the last 4 years or so and debunked some others.

The movie's offial site says this, although you have probably already seen it:
"2016 Obama's America takes audiences on a gripping visual journey into the heart of the world's most powerful office to reveal the struggle of whether one man's past will redefine America over the next four years. The film examines the question, "If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?" Across the globe and in America, people in 2008 hungered for a leader who would unite and lift us from economic turmoil and war. True to America's ideals, they invested their hope in a new kind of president, Barack Obama. What they didn't know is that Obama is a man with a past, and in powerful ways that past defines him--who he is, how he thinks, and where he intends to take America and the world. Love him or hate him, you don't know him. -- (C) Official Site "

Here is a good read on the film from a Wallstreet Journal blog.

The Christian Post wrote a fair piece on it I can agree with:

"By juxtaposing Obama's Dreams From My Father – often using Obama's own voice from the audio book version – with narration that includes information from his own two books about the president's past and potential second term, D'Souza makes a strong, intellectual case that the president's dream for this country is not in line with what many consider to be the American dream.

"One of the themes in the movie is the anti-colonial goal of downsizing America in the name of global justice," D'Souza recently told The Christian Post. "So the core idea here is that America has become a rogue nation in the world and also that America enjoys a standard of living that is unconscionably high compared to the rest of the world. So anti-colonialism is a program of global reparations, not racial reparations. It's reparations for global injustice. Obama's goal is to shrink America."

That may seem like an unthinkable thought for a U.S. president to have. However, as "2016" develops, viewers see the giant jigsaw puzzle of Obama's life put together like never seen before. It brings to question, "Who's writing the history books?" What turns out to be one man's, one country's perception of wealthier nations partaking in oppressive takeovers in the past and present, is another man's, another country's view of economic recovery and modernization."

Have you seen it? What did you think? Will you go see it if it comes to your area?

We might end up living in the camper regardless of how this election turns out.

Ed

5 comments:

  1. Saw it last night. Going in, I knew a little about Dinesh D'Souza but didn't know his whole backstory. Born and raised in India, I thought his perspectives on the "American way" were absolutely fascinating. He really put the Obama puzzle pieces together in a way that made me feel almost sorry for the man as I left the theater in that his influences during his formative years were so anti-American and anti-capitalist that he has no pride in the typical things that you and I do as Americans. D'Souza goes on to show how he uses that skewed yardstick to define his position on issues here and abroad. Anyone who is undecided this fall should see this movie.

    My $.02 anyway.

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  2. I'll watch it for fun, but I don't have high expectations. By his own admission, Dinesh D'Souza made the movie to be viewed just 10 weeks before Election Day in the same manner Michael Moore produced Farenheit 9/11 before the 2004 elections. Hardly objective, him being a Conservative and his producer a Republican.

    Saying you know what will happen in 2016 and that it's our responsibility to prevent it is not just a figment of his imagination, it's pretentious as well (as hell? ^-^), and the clearly stated agenda makes it propaganda, not a documentary.

    The director seems to be projecting a lot of his own anti-colonialist past and ideas onto Obama, and attributes him the same political views as the father he never knew (his father left the family when he was 2). I'd rather focus on what Obama actually did rather than said or wrote 17 years ago (Obama's first book seems to be quoted extensively) before he was president, that's more important to me.

    The movie is the video adaptation of his book The Roots of Obama's Rage, so I am not surprised the movie got it as wrong as the book. I can't really see any "rage" in Obama, even an inner hidden one that apparently only Dinesh D'Souza is able to detect...

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  3. Thanks for these thoughts. I agree completely! The US people do not know this man!

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  4. The only minds that the movie will change is those that waffle back and forth in the first place, and can't ever count on them.

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  5. Good comment, Gorges, I agree. Thanks for your input, too, Orin, that was classic. You are a smart young man and I am glad to know you. Chimel, the man definitely does not show any rage. That is highly misnamed. He is a very slow, calculating person that shows very little emotion, the way I see him.

    Thanks all for the great comments!

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