'Obama's America 2016' Movie: If Obama Wins a Second Term, Where Will We Be?
Exclusive Interview with Author and Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza
Despite it being a limited release film, "Obama's America 2016" is creating buzz at just the right time. By the time it opens to a wider audience in the U.S. in early August, the film – based on two books authored by conservative activist Dinesh D'Souza – just may play a part in the campaign against President Obama's re-election.
The film examines the question: "If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?"
Produced by Gerald R. Molen, who was the producer of the Academy Award Best Picture "Schindler's List," the film shows D'Souza "immersed in exotic locales across four continents" as he "races against time to find answers to Obama's past and reveal where America will be in 2016."
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Filmmakers say that during D'Souza's journey "he discovers how Hope and Change became radically misunderstood, and identifies new flashpoints for hot wars in mankind's greatest struggle. The journey moves quickly over the arc of the old colonial empires, into America's empire of liberty, and we see the unfolding realignment of nations and the shape of the global future."
The Christian Post conducted an exclusive interview with D'Souza, who was a policy analyst in the Ronald Reagan White House. He is currently the president of The King's College in New York City.
CP: Can you give us a look into the part of the movie that answers the question you pose, "If Obama wins a second term, where will America be in 2016?"
D'Souza: The movie is divided into two parts. One looks backward into Obama's past and the other looks forward into what we can expect over the next four years. There's roughly equal time in the movie to both themes. The movie is also based on two books – my earlier book, The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), and a new book I have coming out next month called Obama's America. The earlier book looks back and the new book looks forward, and the movie combines both.
CP: Can you give us a hint as to what the movie tells us about 2016 under Obama?
D'Souza: One of the themes in the movie is the anti-colonial goal of downsizing America in the name of global justice. 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. He wants to reduce America's footprint in the world because he thinks we are stepping on the world. He wants to redistribute money away from the rich and toward the poor. But we are not talking about the rich and the poor in America solely. We are talking about a redistribution of income away from the rich countries – America included – toward the poor countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, and so on. This is where I think we misunderstand Obama when he talks about the 99 percent. We think he means the 99 percent only in America. He doesn't. He actually means worldwide. It's important to realize that the middle class or even poor Americans are rich by global standards.
CP: How is this shown in the film?
D'Souza: It's shown in the film as a narrative. We basically follow a journey to discover Obama. In that journey we follow Obama's own journey to find himself. We find people that knew his father, his mother, people who are related to him, who knew young Obama. We also follow Obama's own description of his ideological odyssey. We then trace what his beliefs are and we match them against what he is doing so it's kind of a comparison to see if the jigsaw puzzle fits. It turns out that it fits rather well. Unlike my book, which came out in 2010 and had only 15 months of the Obama presidency to look at, we now have a full four years to look at. We have a full four-year record on which to see if we got Obama right and also to make reliable projections about where he is likely to go in the future.
CP: For those that have seen advanced screenings, what has the audience response to the movie been so far?
D'Souza: I would describe it as powerful, energized, tumultuous, ferocious, almost revelatory. I've seen people weeping as they come out of the theater. There have been people that want to hug me, people that look dazed, every kind of extremely kind of powerful response. We are only open in a few markets, but August 10 is when we go more broadly to at least two to three hundred more markets.
CP: Does this film have the potential to make a difference in the election? Why or why not?
D'Souza: Well, the film is intended to [offer] a debate about what's the future of America. Nowhere in the film do we mention the election. We certainly don't tell people how to vote. The film is about the American dream and Obama's dream. In some ways it's about my dream, which is the immigrants' dream. Also, worked in there is Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream and the dream of the founders. In that sense it's very different. In some ways I was inspired to do this by Michael Moore. I feel embarrassed to say that because Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" is an intellectual disaster, but nevertheless that film was about a controversial president and it was received at a time when one half of the country was for the president and one half was against him and it was dropped in the middle of an election. So that gave me the idea to make a film under similar conditions – controversial president, one half of the country is for him, one half is against him, and drop it in the middle of this year's debate. But I wanted to make and have made a very different kind of a film that is not fast with the facts and is intellectually and factually very sound. So far, no one has alleged the contrary.
CP: What do you hope moviegoers will come away with after seeing this film?
D'Souza: I can assure you that whatever your politics may be you are going to leave this film shaking your head and saying, "Wow. There's a whole lot in here about Obama that I had no idea about." I can guarantee that viewers whatever their politics will feel that way.
