Review of 2016: Obama's America (2012) by Erms — 24 Sep 2012

I pay a lot of attention to public policy questions, so I will explain why I consider this movie to be the exact opposite of fair-minded or independent. The first hour is a moving narrative of Obama's life story, It avoids the birther perspective entirely, but it does present Dinesh D'Souza as sympathetic to Obama.

This is a misimpression, as D'Souza is mostly recycling themes that were used to attempt to "disqualify" Obama in 2008, when Obama first ran. D'Souza accuately indicated he is a conservative, but leaves the impression that he once had personal respect for Obama.

This is difficult to reconcile with his personal writing on anything political. Toward the end of the movie, D'Souza starts throwing facts around without context to help paint his narrative. Since D'Souza is a college president, and a well published political author, it is difficult to conclude that the misrepresentations are anything but fully intentional.

For example, D'Souza suggests the nuclear reductions from about 5000 warheads when Obama took office to under 2000 now should be viewed as an attempt to intentionally weaken America. There are disputes about the utility of spending money to maintain nuclear weapons stockpiles, but these cuts were negotiated by President Bush early in his 1st term, but the treaty had a final implementation date of 2012.

Such facts, as well as the fact that the US committed to long term nuclear disarmament with the NPT (under Nixon) seriously undermine his narrative, and their deletion is at best reckless and at worst intentionally deceitful.

Similarly, the D'Souza's statement that Obama has done NOTHING to contain Iranian proliferation is false. In addition to restating his opposition and maintaining the implicit threat of direct US attack, he had been more effectively than Bush was in rallying allies toward more comprehensive sanctions.

There are legitimate differences of the best way to discourage Iranian proliferation, and preferring immediate use of force would be a fair reason to vote against Obama. Saying he has done nothing, however, is easy to refute.

Even the Churchill bust story is a hoax. There is a Churchill bust in the White House right now, but the specific one that was removed was not US property, but was understood to be on loan through the Bush presidency.

It was returned, properly, and replaced with a similar bust from the same artist. If you do see this movie, out of curiousity as I did, then I would STRONGLY recommend doing a bit of independent research on any specific thing that grabs your attention.

Hopefully, my examples are sufficient to illustrate that trusting D'Souza to do the research for you is placing trust that has not been earned. If you see the movie to reinforce your prior hatred of Obama and reward a filmaker for being willing to twist the truth to reinforce your decision, then grab some popcorn because you might have a fun time - probably more fun that you will have on election night.