2016: Obama's Fictional America

If you missed my opening post about this train wreck of a propaganda piece, then read 2016: Obama's Colonial America.

D'Souza puts forth a list of actions by Obama which supposedly show his anti-Americanism (er, anti-colonialism, or something). He puts them forward as a quick list without any evidence, then there is another hour of movie which talks about a bunch of different, often unrelated, things, then he reiterates the list at the end as if he's proven all of these things are a) true and b) proof that Obama hates America. 

First, D'Souza claims that Obama snubbed Britain and rejected American ideals (er, wait, British ideals) by removing a bust of Winston Churchill from the Whitehouse and sending it back to Britain. There are two very big problems with this ridiculous idea. The first problem is that the bust was already scheduled to be returned to Britain. It had been loaned after 9/11 to the George W. Bush Administration and was scheduled to be returned before Obama had ever been elected. I believe the space the Churchill bust occupied was filled with a bust of Abraham Lincoln, which is clearly Anti-American... oh wait, no. Lincoln is an American icon of Freedom, but that doesn't really make it into the anti-American narrative that D'Souza so desperately wants to push. 

Some conservatives say that it's still an insult because Britain offered to let us keep the statue for longer if we wanted, but we said "No, thank you" and sent it back. They say that's proof that he rejected them and sent it back, but that's just standard diplomacy. You always make the token offer to extend the loan so that it doesn't look like you're taking it back, but instead they are freely giving it back. It's similar to very traditional asian culture wherein you had to offer a gift three times before it would be accepted because that's how the diplomacy worked. They weren't rejecting the gift, they were showing respect.

The second problem with this whole silliness about Obama sending Churchill home being an insult, is that there are TWO busts of Churchill in the Whitehouse and the second one didn't get sent home and is in the Whitehouse residence. So, the place where Obama LIVES has a bust of Winston Churchill. I think D'Souza chose to use this because there was confusion over the Churchill bust at first because there were two of them. So there are news articles saying, "SEE! They said they didn't send it back, but they DID!" but it was just because there was confusion about the two busts. D'Souza is betting on the confusion and the ability to get conflicting information on the Internet. I think he feels safe lying about this topic because he knows that people who want to believe his thesis will see the news articles which seem like they give support and will ignore the debunking ones that come after. 

Second, D'Souza claims that Obama snubbed Britain by supporting Argentina in their dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands. The Falkland Islands are a British Colony. However, Argentina feels the Falkland Islands should belong to them because it's an island off their coast and at some point in the past the British took it from them. D'Souza lies during this segment saying that Obama supported Argentina, which did not happen at all. Even the Prime Minister of Britain stated that President Obama supported the status quo (the status quo being that the Falklands remain under British rule). As I've had to explain to some conservatives with whom I've discussed this movie, I'm not denouncing D'Souza because I like Obama and am being partisan. I'm revealing D'Souza's lies here because they are lies. I personally disagree with Obama on this. As Americans, we should support freedom around the world and we actually SHOULD be anti-colonial. However, Britain is our ally and with that comes obligations to support them. I hope that's the reason Obama supported the Falkland Islands remaining a colony, but we can't know for sure.

D'Souza also claims that Obama has "blocked oil production" in the USA while at the same time sending tax money to Mexico, Brazil and Columbia so they can increase THEIR oil production. *cue scary music* 

The truth?

Obama hasn't blocked oil production in the slightest. The number of rigs in U.S. oil fields has more than quad­rupled in the past three years to 1,272, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. Including those in natural gas fields, the United States now has more rigs at work than the entire rest of the world. Obviously, some of those permits were issued before Obama took office. I'm sure Obama hasn't been approving any permits, right? After all, Michelle Bachmann said that the Obama administration had only approved ONE drilling permit.... Nope, that's utter bullshit. Pants on fire.  

The only time Obama put a moratorium on oil drilling was after the Deepwater Horizon clusterf--k and that was for a short period of time and only for rigs drilling at extreme depths. 

He repeatedly talks about Obama doing nothing to stop Iran from getting a nuke, but Obama has instituted crippling sanctions on Iran to starve it of oil money.

And I would be a bad nerd if I skipped Stuxnet. Stuxnet is a computer virus that was created and targeted at Iran's nuclear centrifuge systems. It caused them to spin out of control and physically break. I can't explicitly claim that the US did this, but it is widely assumed that Stuxnet was a joint venture between the US and Israel.

D'Souza warns that Obama is cutting our nuclear arsenal and "leaving us vulnerable." *more scary music*

2016: Nuclear Fears from Kenny Wyland on Vimeo.

Of course, Ronald Reagan did exactly the same thing. The cutting of nuclear weapons is part of the START (STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty). START-I was put together by Reagan and finally signed by George HW Bush. It reduced US nuclear stockpiles from about 10,500 to about 6,000 with reductions in the Soviet arsenal as well (from about 10,000 down to about 3,800). As we all know, Reagan was a big liberal, pot-smoking hippie who was trying to make us less safe and he, of course, hated America... right? Obama and Medvedev negotiated a renewal of the START which would further reduce BOTH American and Russian stockpiles. D'Souza lies to you and says that Obama is reducing our nuclear stockpiles without requiring anyone else to draw down, but that's abjectly false considering that the STARTreaty is an agreement that Russia will draw down as well. He doesn't show in the above scary animation that Russia's total at 1,500 warheads is AFTER they would implement the reductions from the renewed STARTreaty. Even after the reductions are complete, the US will still have 1,500 nuclear warheads, enough to destroy the world, and potential enemies will still only have about 90 warheads. For those of you who aren't good with numbers, that means our potential enemies will still only have 6% of the nuclear capability that we have. 

There are two other points in the above video which are just brilliant manipulation. First, Iran is added to the list of nuclear countries with a big scary question mark. OH NO?! And when the map zooms out, the number of warheads in the US drops all the way down to zero. Scary! Now, of course, the clip he plays of Obama talking about a nuclear free world are about a nuclear free WORLD -- not dismantling all of the American warheads while everyone else builds more. However, if you wanted to believe everything D'Souza was telling you when you started watching this movie, by this point he has scared you enough that your brain has literally suppressed the rational thought processes. 

Something D'Souza never discusses is that these nuclear reductions are VITAL to our security. Russia, due to the break up of the Soviet Union, has the largest number of potentially unsecured nuclear warheads in the world. If you are scared that a terrorist or rogue nation is going to get a nuke and use it against us, then you should be vehemently in support of this proposal because it reduces the likelihood of such an event.

Any way you slice it, D'Souza's thesis fails. If Obama actually is anti-colonial (and if that was somehow a bad thing), then Obama really would have supported Argentina, but he didn't and even the Prime Minister of Britain confirms that. If Obama is anti-British, he wouldn't have supported Britain, but he did support Britain remaining sovereign over the Falkland Islands. If he was trying to cripple our oil production to try to give 3rd world countries an advantage, then he's doing a pretty shitty job of it by issuing so many more drilling permits at a time when US oil companies are posting record profits quarter after quarter.

I hope that you already understand this movie is a festering pile of crap, but I have one more post related to 2016: Obama's America, in which I talk about one of the final SCARY arguments that D'Souza introduces at the end of the film: Debt as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Check back in a day or two.