Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Newt Gingrich's Voodoo Politics: Barack Obama Ruled By Absent, Dead Father's Ghost



I couldn't resist.

The New Right and the Newt Gingrich, faux intellectual Dinesh D'Souza, "birther" crowd should simply be honest and say that a black man is de facto illegitimate as President of the United States. It would be much more parsimonious and would save us all a great deal of time.

As I told my class on Barack Obama yesterday, 2 years ago I never would have imagined that grown men and women would dress up like George Washington, follow a self-professed rodeo clown by the name of Glenn Beck, and march on Washington. Now, I can add another data point to my list of political absurdities in the Age of Obama--voodoo, zombie politics and a Manchurian candidate President ruled by his father's ghost who ostensibly commands him from the afterlife.

This would be funny if it were not so sad. Is this how low the Republicans and the New Right have sunk? Where are the adults in the room? Who would have imagined that one day we would yearn for a return of William F. Buckley, Bush the Elder, and James Baker?

Courtesy of The Washington Post:

Newt Gingrich Rips Obama as 'Kenyan Anti-Colonial' Thinker

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who is considering a bid for the presidency in 2012, told National Review Saturday that he believes President Obama is operating from within a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. Gingrich, whose harsh rhetoric in the mid-90s transformed him from a Republican leader into a bogeyman, cited Dinesh D’Souza’s “stunning insight” in the Forbes article “How Obama Thinks” for the giving him the idea.

D’Souza’s article, which Gingrich told NR was the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama,” said:

Our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. 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.

The Forbes article draws on several disputed descriptions of America’s foreign policy to make its argument, including a Times of London article alleging “the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of … the Lockerbie bomber” which the State Department took unusual pains to refute, making public a pre-release diplomatic letter from the U.S. Embassy in London stating that the U.S. “is not prepared to support Megrahi’s release on compassionate release or bail.” The article also conflates Obama’s years in Hawaii with his time abroad and alleges that he is “a man who spent his formative years–the first 17 years of his life–off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan.” Obama spent four years as a child living in Indonesia and visited Pakistan for three weeks as a college student when he was 20 years old, according to FactCheck.org.

Gingrich’s remarks came in an interview with National Review’s Robert Costa after the Sept. 11 premiere of the Gingriches’ new movie, “America at Risk: The War with No Name,” in Washington, D.C.

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asked, according to the report. “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 said.

“I think Obama gets up every morning with a worldview that is fundamentally wrong about reality,” he added. “If you look at the continuous denial of reality, there has got to be a point where someone stands up and says that this is just factually insane.”

The idea that Obama is fundamentally foreign because of his Kenyan father is a view most closely associated with individuals known as “birthers,” who assert against the evidence that Obama was secretly born or raised in Kenya, rather than Hawaii, and therefore is not eligible to be — and illegitimate as — president. The D’Souza-Gingrich argument represents a new approach to calling the president’s ideas foreign and unAmerican.

“We have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history,” D’Souza wrote.

The remarks suggest that Gingrich, know for his fiery rhetoric and provocative ideas, is unlikely to moderate himself in search of the presidency, should he decide to run.

12 comments:

!&# said...

Bush the Elder? We long for Bush the Younger these days. He never would have let this nonsense go on the way it has.

Of course, the Democrats can't confront racism because they don't want to alienate the white racist vote. (c.f. Hillary Clinton's campaign to win white working class voters who wouldn't vote for a black man.)

jakcamp said...

I grow ever more fearful for my country, Mr. DeVega. Prudential making extra profit by subterfuge, taking advantage of KIA families. $90 billion in arms sales and "aid" to Saudi Arabia. The asslike masses say nothing. They are utterly in the thrall of these ruthless, hateful, powerful forces and there are a lot more of them than there are us. The idiots will rise up and take us all and far sooner than most think.

RiPPa said...

Look Chauncey, everybody knows that Barack Obama has a Fortress of Solitude somewhere at the North Pole right next to Kenya. The brother goes there every once in a while and drop those crystals... oops, I meant to say "blood diamonds", into that thing-a-ma-jig so he can retain council with his father. You think they call him Super Nigger for nothing? Oh, my bad, that was Richard Pryor.

Werner Herzog's Bear said...

In these Tea Party days I do say I have a hard time remembering why I disliked Bush the Elder so much back in the day.

Let's not forget that Newt wrote his dissertation on the Belgian Congo, from the point of view of the colonizers. Yet as an American "patriot" the anti-colonialism of the Founding Fathers was a-OK. Oh, that's right, I forgot: colonial independence is only for white people!

chaunceydevega said...

@!--He never would have got into this nonsense? That is the irony, he probably would have been able to reign in the monsters he partially created as a member of the GOP.

@Jak--Divide and conquer.

@Rippa--Barack the magical supernegro?

@Werner--I did not know that. Did Newt defend King Leopold and that charnel house he created?

Plane Ideas said...

Nobody in my circles give a fuck about the opinions of these 2 slugs ..Why should anyone give them the time of day is what my grandparents would say...I trust their wisdom always...

Mark @ Israel said...

It wouldn't be a surprise if D' Souza and Gingrich say that Obama's decisions are dictated by his dead father and that he's too Kenyan to be an American President. So many people these days are finding ways to discredit and criticize Obama. Some even labeled him as an anti-Christ. Others look at him as a Muslim. I don't really like Obama but publicities like this should be thoroughly verified.

Thelonious said...

This country may just be too stupid to survive.

Anonymous said...

I had almost forgotten about that lapdog Dinesh D'Souza. It may be armchair psychoanalysis, but I've met other South Asians like him- desperate to be part of the 'white' club, frustrated at being 'white with brown skin,' etc. One guy I worked with in London was from a wealthy Indian family and would have sold it all for light skin. He spoke with the most exaggerated upper crust British accent, so that he made the Queen sound like a Cockney dock worker.

MilesEllison said...

So an anti-colonial perspective is bad? My head hurts.

ish said...

Except that these teabaggers identify with the white colonialists in Kenya. They're worried Obama's going for his machete.

http://thecahokian.blogspot.com/2010/09/gingrich-mau-mau-obama-threatens-white.html

Urs said...

I'm wondering how D'Souza gets these "insights". Does he have special access to Obama that others don't?