Read Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012) Online
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
Tags: #Non-fiction, #Political Ideologies, #Conservatism & Liberalism, #Political Science
Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012) (15 page)
BOOK: Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012)
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Listening to the rants of the Occupy Wall Street group—its denunciations of the rich, of the big bad corporations, of American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, of America’s support for Israel, of globalization and free trade, and so on—I heard many familiar Obama themes. So I asked: What makes Obama appear so different from these guys? If you review pictures of Obama from his student years, he too looks like a disheveled urban thug. There is one especially revealing picture, where Obama flashes a street-smart look, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. That Obama would fit right in with the Occupy gang. Yet Obama now seems quite different. He wears impeccable suits, he speaks in a measured and reassuring way, he eschews the obscenity that flows so copiously from the Occupy protesters, and of course he doesn’t defecate or urinate in public. So what distinguishes Obama now from his Occupy counterparts? Or to put it differently, what distinguishes Obama now from Obama then?
In
The Roots of Obama’s Rage
, I suggested an answer to this question, but it turns out to be an incomplete answer. In that book I attributed the change in Obama to the influence of Saul Alinsky. On my recent trip to Kenya, however, I learned that Alinsky’s influence came only later. Obama began to change his appearance in 1987, when he learned more about his dad. Gradually, but self-consciously, Obama began to imitate his dad’s stylish and classy dress and demeanor. This change of style and deportment in Obama was then reinforced by Saul Alinsky, who gave Obama a political reason to do it. Obama fully embraced Alinsky’s program soon after he returned from Kenya.
The Roots of Obama’s Rage
, I suggested an answer to this question, but it turns out to be an incomplete answer. In that book I attributed the change in Obama to the influence of Saul Alinsky. On my recent trip to Kenya, however, I learned that Alinsky’s influence came only later. Obama began to change his appearance in 1987, when he learned more about his dad. Gradually, but self-consciously, Obama began to imitate his dad’s stylish and classy dress and demeanor. This change of style and deportment in Obama was then reinforced by Saul Alinsky, who gave Obama a political reason to do it. Obama fully embraced Alinsky’s program soon after he returned from Kenya.
A good deal has been made of Obama’s connection with Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was a legendary labor and community organizer in Chicago. Even Hillary Clinton was inspired by him and studied his approaches. And here we find ourselves in a position to solve one of those small Obama mysteries. The mystery is why Obama kept going back to Chicago. Obama grew up in Hawaii, not Chicago. He went to college in New York and then Boston. After graduating from Columbia, and then Harvard Law School, and being the first black president of the
Harvard Law Review
, Obama surely could have gone anywhere. Yet he took a series of low-paying jobs as a community organizer in Chicago. He worked in Chicago before law school, and he went back to Chicago after law school. So why Chicago? The answer, I believe, is that Obama wanted to learn what Saul Alinsky and the Alinsky organization had to teach him. So he studied Alinsky’s works. He collaborated with Alinsky’s associates. He even taught Alinsky’s techniques to other activists. And he applied Alinksy’s counsel to himself, to his own career.
Harvard Law Review
, Obama surely could have gone anywhere. Yet he took a series of low-paying jobs as a community organizer in Chicago. He worked in Chicago before law school, and he went back to Chicago after law school. So why Chicago? The answer, I believe, is that Obama wanted to learn what Saul Alinsky and the Alinsky organization had to teach him. So he studied Alinsky’s works. He collaborated with Alinsky’s associates. He even taught Alinsky’s techniques to other activists. And he applied Alinksy’s counsel to himself, to his own career.
Alinsky’s influence on Obama was not ideological; it was tactical. This was Alinsky’s specialty: he was a master tactician. Born in 1909, Alinsky got his experience as an organizer by establishing “people’s organizations” in industrial slums, mostly in immigrant communities in Chicago that had been the setting for Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel
The Jungle
.
2
By the late 1960s, Alinsky was a veteran organizer, well into middle age, and he was not impressed by the radicals and hippies who came to him for advice on how to change things. Alinsky wrote two books,
Reveille for Radicals
and
Rules for Radicals
, in which he attempted to instruct the activists of the sixties. From Alinsky’s point of view, these people were going about their radicalism all wrong. “Activists and radicals, on and off our college campuses—people who are committed to change—must make a complete turnabout. With rare exceptions, our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle-class society.” So far Alinsky’s description is true of the sixties activists, true of the Occupy Wall Street types, true of Obama.
The Jungle
.
2
By the late 1960s, Alinsky was a veteran organizer, well into middle age, and he was not impressed by the radicals and hippies who came to him for advice on how to change things. Alinsky wrote two books,
Reveille for Radicals
and
Rules for Radicals
, in which he attempted to instruct the activists of the sixties. From Alinsky’s point of view, these people were going about their radicalism all wrong. “Activists and radicals, on and off our college campuses—people who are committed to change—must make a complete turnabout. With rare exceptions, our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle-class society.” So far Alinsky’s description is true of the sixties activists, true of the Occupy Wall Street types, true of Obama.
“All rebels,” Alinsky continues, “must attack the power states in their society. Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, warmongering, brutalized and corrupt.” Alinsky says, “They are right. But we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change.” Alinsky writes:
The power and the people are in the big middle-class majority. Therefore, it is useless self-indulgence for an activist to put his past behind him.Instead he should realize the priceless value of his middle-class experience.... Instead of the infantile dramatics of rejection, he will now begin to dissect and examine that way of life as he never has before. He will know that a “square” is no longer to be dismissed as such—instead, his own approach must be “square” enough to get the action started.... Instead of hostile rejection he is seeking bridges of communication and unity. . . . He will view with strategic sensitivity the nature of middle-class behavior with its hang-ups over rudeness or aggressive, insulting, profane actions. All this and more must be grasped and used to radicalize parts of the middle class.
3
Alinsky recognized, of course, that he was advocating a strategy of deceit. This didn’t bother him. Alinsky’s
Rules for Radicals
is dedicated to a most unusual figure: the devil. Alinsky calls Lucifer “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.” Given this, we should not be surprised at Alinsky’s contention that “ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.” Alinsky wrote that morality and ethics were all very fine for those who didn’t seek to improve the world for the better. But for those who do, the ends always justify the means. “In action,” Alinsky wrote, “one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter.” This is not to say that Alinsky eschewed appeals to conscience and morality. He used them, but only when they proved strategically effective. Morality for Alinsky is a mere cloak that the activist puts on when it suits him or her. One of Alinsky’s ethical rules was that “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”
4
Here we get a glimpse of why Alinsky’s disciples, including Obama, have shown a willingness on occasion to say anything, no matter how distant from the truth. What they learned from the master tactician is that even truth is a tactic; use it when it helps you, and lie when you have to. Of course Obama had a second instructor in the art of fabrication—his father, Barack Sr., who as we have seen was a notorious liar and fabulist.
Rules for Radicals
is dedicated to a most unusual figure: the devil. Alinsky calls Lucifer “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.” Given this, we should not be surprised at Alinsky’s contention that “ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.” Alinsky wrote that morality and ethics were all very fine for those who didn’t seek to improve the world for the better. But for those who do, the ends always justify the means. “In action,” Alinsky wrote, “one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter.” This is not to say that Alinsky eschewed appeals to conscience and morality. He used them, but only when they proved strategically effective. Morality for Alinsky is a mere cloak that the activist puts on when it suits him or her. One of Alinsky’s ethical rules was that “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”
4
Here we get a glimpse of why Alinsky’s disciples, including Obama, have shown a willingness on occasion to say anything, no matter how distant from the truth. What they learned from the master tactician is that even truth is a tactic; use it when it helps you, and lie when you have to. Of course Obama had a second instructor in the art of fabrication—his father, Barack Sr., who as we have seen was a notorious liar and fabulist.
If we consider the population of angry, dirtball activists, both in his day and ours, here’s how we can summarize Alinsky’s advice to them: You can be a freak, but you shouldn’t come across like a freak. You can be a revolutionary, but you should not look or act or smell like a revolutionary. Take a bath. Use deodorant. Cut your hair. Put on a tie if you have to. Don’t use obscenities. Don’t call the police “pigs” and U.S. military personnel “fascists.” Suppress your anger; go for cool anger which is camouflaged rather than hot anger which scares people. Feign an interest in middle class tastes; in other words, pretend to be like the people you hate. Speak their language, even to the extent of using local colloquialism and slang. Meanwhile, work creatively and even unscrupulously to build these people’s resentment against the rich and the big corporations and the military and the power structure. In this way the radical can harness the power of the white middle class majority even to undermine the values and interests of the white middle class.
Few of the sixties radicals listened to Alinsky. And from what I saw, clearly no one at Occupy Wall Street follows his counsel. Obama, however, recognized its strategic value. Already upon returning from Kenya he had improved his appearance. Now he stopped smoking in public and began to practice using a Midwestern accent. Obama says this himself. “The fact that I conjugate my verbs and speak in a typical Midwestern newscaster voice—there’s no doubt that this helps ease communication between myself and white audiences.” Yet with blacks Obama adopts a different tone. “And there’s no doubt that when I’m with a black audience, I slip into a slightly different dialect.”
5
5
At first glance it may seem implausible that a man can actually change the way he talks. But Obama has a particular talent for accents. We can verify this by listening to the audio version of Obama’s autobiography. There Obama uses a wide range of accents, African and American, young and old, even male and female. During the dialogue portions of the book, he switches back and forth effortlessly between characters.
6
Quite obviously, Obama could have been a successful actor. As a matter of fact, he is a successful actor. In politics, Obama found a profession that allowed him to play the role of a lifetime. Thus we see that Obama underwent a major transformation under the tutelage of Saul Alinsky. Again, it was a transformation not of ideas but of appearance, not of philosophy but of technique. Yet appearances and technique are very important. I call this the mainstreaming of Barack Obama, a process that proved crucial to his acceptance by the American middle class.
6
Quite obviously, Obama could have been a successful actor. As a matter of fact, he is a successful actor. In politics, Obama found a profession that allowed him to play the role of a lifetime. Thus we see that Obama underwent a major transformation under the tutelage of Saul Alinsky. Again, it was a transformation not of ideas but of appearance, not of philosophy but of technique. Yet appearances and technique are very important. I call this the mainstreaming of Barack Obama, a process that proved crucial to his acceptance by the American middle class.
Yet mainstreaming by itself is not enough to solidify Obama’s middle class appeal. After all, if you have policies that thwart and undermine the middle class, or diminish the country to which your middle class is attached, short hair, a calm demeanor, and comforting talk will only get you so far. Even lying and unscrupulous tactics can backfire if they are found out. This happened regularly in the life of Barack Sr., and even Barack Jr. has lost many middle class and independent voters who seem to have figured out that there is something deceptive and untrustworthy about him.
Even so, Obama continues to hold on to a surprising number of white middle class voters. Moreover, Obama exercises a formidable captivity over many liberals, especially in the media. We know all about MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who responds to Obama with thrills running down his leg, and who recently blurted out that “Everything he’s done has been good for this country.”
7
Another classic example is the
New York Times
, which has become, on its front page no less than on its editorial page, a publicity arm of the Obama administration. Now certainly the
New York Times
is a liberal newspaper, but its liberalism did not prevent it from being at least on occasion critical of previous Democratic administrations. The
Times
, for instance, showed that it could be tough on Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But when it comes to Obama, the
New York Times
is a cheerleader. A great newspaper doesn’t so easily give up its credibility and become a rag. We need to explain what has happened not just to this newspaper but to a substantial segment of American liberalism.
7
Another classic example is the
New York Times
, which has become, on its front page no less than on its editorial page, a publicity arm of the Obama administration. Now certainly the
New York Times
is a liberal newspaper, but its liberalism did not prevent it from being at least on occasion critical of previous Democratic administrations. The
Times
, for instance, showed that it could be tough on Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. But when it comes to Obama, the
New York Times
is a cheerleader. A great newspaper doesn’t so easily give up its credibility and become a rag. We need to explain what has happened not just to this newspaper but to a substantial segment of American liberalism.
The answer, I believe, comes from an ingenious psychological theory advanced by the African-American scholar Shelby Steele in a series of books:
A Dream Deferred
,
White Guilt
, and most recently,
A Bound Man
. In his earlier books, Steele makes the point that the collapse of the ideology of white supremacy in America has created in whites a powerful sense of moral illegitimacy. Steele calls this the “great shaming of white Americans and American institutions.”
8
Whites feel stigmatized by past racism and its continuing legacy, and whites also worry that they may harbor, perhaps even unknown to themselves, racist beliefs and sentiments. This may seem like a terrible thing to say about whites, but actually Steele means it as a compliment. The vast majority of whites, in his view, reject the ideology of white supremacy. Their moral code is anti-racist. They don’t just want to avoid being perceived as racist; they don’t like to think of themselves as racist. Again, this says something good about America—it is a measure of genuine racial progress. It also says something good about these white people—they want to bring their thoughts and actions into line with their anti-racist moral code.
A Dream Deferred
,
White Guilt
, and most recently,
A Bound Man
. In his earlier books, Steele makes the point that the collapse of the ideology of white supremacy in America has created in whites a powerful sense of moral illegitimacy. Steele calls this the “great shaming of white Americans and American institutions.”
8
Whites feel stigmatized by past racism and its continuing legacy, and whites also worry that they may harbor, perhaps even unknown to themselves, racist beliefs and sentiments. This may seem like a terrible thing to say about whites, but actually Steele means it as a compliment. The vast majority of whites, in his view, reject the ideology of white supremacy. Their moral code is anti-racist. They don’t just want to avoid being perceived as racist; they don’t like to think of themselves as racist. Again, this says something good about America—it is a measure of genuine racial progress. It also says something good about these white people—they want to bring their thoughts and actions into line with their anti-racist moral code.
But here the plot thickens, because blacks know this, and the white need for racial vindication provides blacks with a source of political and financial opportunity. White guilt, Steele writes, is the real source of black power. Consequently, in Steele’s words, “White guilt made racism into a valuable currency for black Americans.”
9
Blacks know that whites have given up their claim to moral authority on the issue of race, and that in this area they acknowledge blacks as their moral authorities and also, in a sense, moral superiors. How, therefore, can blacks cash in on this advantage? Steele takes his analysis to a new level in his most recent book,
A Bound Man
. In that book, Steele argues that throughout black history there have been two types of blacks who have risen to the occasion, and they have employed two quite different strategies for capitalizing on white guilt: the strategy of the challenger, and the strategy of the bargainer. In the real world, of course, there are blacks who fall somewhere in between these two poles; still, the distinction between the bargainer and the challenger helps us understand two very different ways for blacks to get ahead in American life.
9
Blacks know that whites have given up their claim to moral authority on the issue of race, and that in this area they acknowledge blacks as their moral authorities and also, in a sense, moral superiors. How, therefore, can blacks cash in on this advantage? Steele takes his analysis to a new level in his most recent book,
A Bound Man
. In that book, Steele argues that throughout black history there have been two types of blacks who have risen to the occasion, and they have employed two quite different strategies for capitalizing on white guilt: the strategy of the challenger, and the strategy of the bargainer. In the real world, of course, there are blacks who fall somewhere in between these two poles; still, the distinction between the bargainer and the challenger helps us understand two very different ways for blacks to get ahead in American life.
The challenger is the guy who, in Steele’s words, “forages for opportunities to cry racism.” And in fact he presumes that all whites are racist. The challenger even lets whites know this, to put them on the defensive. The challenger wants to embarrass and humiliate whites; he also wants whites to know that a reputation for racism could be lethal. “Once a person or an institution is stigmatized in this way,” Steele writes, “they become radioactive, the worst kind of pariah.”
10
Given the right opportunity, the challenger will even threaten to expose a particular white person or organization as racist. The point is to put enough pressure on the white person or group that payment is forthcoming. The challenger is a shakedown artist. In a way I’m reminded of the film
The Godfather
—the challenger always intends to make his white target an offer that can’t be refused. The main difference is that the racial challenger doesn’t have to use direct force. In a sense, the challenger trades on his target’s own conscience and inbuilt sense of guilt and remorse. Moreover, while Don Corleone and Luca Brasi didn’t claim to occupy the moral high ground, racial challengers do. They actually think their shakedowns are a demonstration of high moral principle. They believe they are doing good for society at the same time that they are doing well for themselves.
10
Given the right opportunity, the challenger will even threaten to expose a particular white person or organization as racist. The point is to put enough pressure on the white person or group that payment is forthcoming. The challenger is a shakedown artist. In a way I’m reminded of the film
The Godfather
—the challenger always intends to make his white target an offer that can’t be refused. The main difference is that the racial challenger doesn’t have to use direct force. In a sense, the challenger trades on his target’s own conscience and inbuilt sense of guilt and remorse. Moreover, while Don Corleone and Luca Brasi didn’t claim to occupy the moral high ground, racial challengers do. They actually think their shakedowns are a demonstration of high moral principle. They believe they are doing good for society at the same time that they are doing well for themselves.
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