Dreams of a Lunatic

[babylonsister]

Ouch!

Dreams of a Lunatic

by BooMan
Mon Sep 13th, 2010 at 12:15:17 PM EST


From the timing of it it looks like Newt McPherson, a 19 year-old mechanic living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had a shotgun wedding in September 1942 when it was discovered that 16-year old Kit Daugherty was pregnant. The marriage lasted three days and was over long before their baby, Newt Gingrich, was born. It would seem, then, that Newt Gingrich should be able to relate to someone like Barack Obama Jr., whose father abandoned him at a young age. Maybe Newt has had dreams of his father, the mechanic. Maybe he has wondered why his father didn't want to help raise him. What I don't think Newt has done is make every political decision with an eye to finishing his missing father's unfinished business.

But, for some reason, that's what he's now accusing the president of doing.

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.

Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."

"What if {Obama} is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together ?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.

"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."

We all know that the president wrote a book entitled Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Anything contained in that book is obviously not a secret. Millions of Americans have read it. And a typical review of the book doesn't even mention any discussion of colonialism. But Dinesh D'Souza has a different interpretation (that Gingrich considers a 'stunning insight'):

Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.

We might ask D'Souza if the House of Representatives during the mid-1990's was ruled by a mechanic from Harrisburg of the 1940's. A seducer of children and a deadbeat dad. Does Newt abandon his wives in their greatest time of need in order to continue his father's practice of doing the same?

These are cruel questions to ask, but then is it not cruel to refer to the president's father as a "philandering, inebriated African socialist"?

more...

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/9/13/121517/100

[babylonsister]

1. Ambinder: Newt Gingrich Is So Off, He's Not Even Wrong

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/09/newt-gingrich-is-so-off-hes-not-even-wrong/62856/

Newt Gingrich Is So Off, He's Not Even Wrong
Marc Ambinder

Sep 13 2010, 10:12 AM ET | Comment

snip//

Let's take this step by step. Obama grew up in Indonesia. Like any child who did not know his father, he was curious to learn about him. The indictment seems to rest on this assumption alone.

There is no evidence that Obama was particularly curious about East African socialism or anti-colonialism, but it's OK to presume that Obama, reading history, might have agreed that Europeans, did, you know, exploit Africa for its resources. By Obama's own recollection (inherently suspect in his rendering of his worldview, of course), but also by the remembrances of everyone who knew him, he struggled to meld the influences of his African father, his American mother, his Indonesian upbringing, and his biracial status in a still racially divided world.

Before the election, I asked one of Obama's close friends, someone who now serves with him in the White House, to explain how his Indonesian childhood and his identity quest might have influenced his view of America. This person recalled having a conversation with Obama where the topic came up. Obama told his friend that growing up in Indonesia, he came to know the fundamental limits of American power as exercised simply because he saw people whose life America had never touched. He saw a culture (and subcultures) that struggled to become more like America when they began to learn about the great country. Where his worldview is unique, he told his friend, is that he probably has a better sense of what actually happens when America, the country or its culture, touches another people.

So, yes, he incorporated his outsider's view of America into his American view of its power. Arguably, a president with a sense of America's limits -- not negatives, but limits -- is something that a small-c conservative would respect. When Obama speaks about the interests of other countries and is keen on making sure that other countries' peoples feel like they can live in a world with America (and not just against America), the young Indonesian Obama (born, of course, in Hawaii) is influencing the adult American President.

more...

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