September 15, 2010

"The Roots of Obama's Rage"

You can read much of Dinesh D'Souza's upcoming book, The Roots of Obama's Rage, on Amazon. Just click on "Click to Look Inside!"

See if it reminds you -- a lot -- of any other book of recent years, but just sort of dumbed down and PCed up.

67 comments:

ricpic said...

If he weren't president no one with half a brain would hesitate describing what makes Obama tick. He's all about racial revenge. Put more simply still -- Get Whitey!

Anonymous said...

yeah, your harry potter book

Anonymous said...

D'Souza the plagiarist!!!

You should really take this up with him, he cannot do this.

Or, at least he should give you credit!

I'm going to email that a-hole.

Anonymous said...

When I started an ISP, I was amazed at all the free software for unix computers, all the amazing things it could do and the fact that the authors would help you in "newsgroups". I quickly noticed that Microsoft would thake the functionality of some free software and sell it to the yokels.

Lynx and netscape were early free www clients. MS added Internet Explorer to Windows but although it was not charged for on its own, one had to buy Windows to use it. Sendmail was free and powerful, MS charged for some sort of Exchange mail server for enterprises. Apache was the mos popular web server in the world and free, Microsoft created a web server and added a few features and charged for it. I was amazed that Microsoft could charge for what wae free.

Someone with the greater access to the public mind can take your ideas and popularize them. Ideas are not property, under copyright or patent. Ideas are free.

syon said...

Yeah, I would definitely say that Mr D'Souza has, shall we say, glanced through your provocative tome. Of course, a less charitable individual might say that D'Souza, lacking any substantial ideas of his own, has strip mined your book for insights. Actually, Steve, I notice that kind of thing with increasing frequency.Some pundit, searching for material, grabs a few juicy ideas from your site, then publishes them under his own name, only after, of course, rendering them suitable for consumption by a PC readership. Steve, you must be the most read political "untouchable" in America.

Jokah Macpherson said...

Probably not The Audacity of Hope...

Anonymous said...

You can't go on about how your observations were obvious to anyone who actually sat down and read Obama's book and than imply that anyone publishing similar ideas stole them from you

Anonymous said...

His publisher's lawyers have probably carefully gone over it to protect themselves, but it's still an obvious ripoff. Sue anyway and see if you can get some hush money.

Anonymous said...

Second sentence in and he's already kissing up to King!

Anonymous said...

How the HELL can you guys say Obama hates white people? He had a white mother for the love of God. He was raised some of the time by his white grandparents. He has some white friends.

dsfasdfasdf said...

Interesting. There is real rage beneath the cool, Obama's main weapon. A book on the ROOTS OF OBAMA'S COOL would be interesting too.

One funny thing. Dinesh, as a NR boy, cannot and will not touch on liberal and leftist Jewish influences on Obama. That is TABOO.

asdfasdfasdf said...

"Yeah, I would definitely say that Mr D'Souza has, shall we say, glanced through your provocative tome."

This may very well be but Dinesh has been writing about third world leftist ideology since the 80s. He's very familiar with this territory.

Anonymous said...

How the HELL can you guys say Obama hates white people? He had a white mother for the love of God. He was raised some of the time by his white grandparents. He has some white friends.

"Some of my best friends are black."

See how it works now?

Anonymous said...

If anyone still has any doubts that this guy is so full of himself and drunk on power read this book. He totally forgets that he is half white and throws his Caucasian relatives under the bus. Many people think he is a cool, calm character, but I think he is like a deer in the headlights that doesn't know what to do. Makes me wonder how long he can keep his smoke and mirrors act going. His house of cards can't stand for much longer.

If you can get past the abominably poor language and grammar, composite characters, changed names, dramatized events, and fictionalized dialogue, your reward is...a tedious, overwrought, melodramatic, self-serving memoir about nothing from a 34-year old dilettante. Whether your politics place you on the left or right, the fact is DREAMS FROM MY FATHER is a clumsy, amateurish effort with little insight and even less truth, and it probably would have been more compelling and weighty had Obama waited until later in his life, after he actually accomplished something, to reflect on and write about his formative experiences. In contrast to the image propagated by mythologizers in his campaign and elements of the media, Obama demonstrates little skill as a writer and his work here falls far short of publication quality. DREAMS FROM MY FATHER shows that it's probably best for Obama that he didn't pursue a career as an author, though inarguably not so for the country.

Mercer said...

Steve, Souza says that Obama does not care about race on page eight. That is very different from what you wrote in your book. It also different from what Obama wrote in Dreams.

Anonymous said...

Sadly, it now seems that Mr. Obama had the book ghost written by neighbor Bill Ayers. Christopher Andersen's new book Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage due out soon says that Michelle said when the deadline was approaching Barrack shipped his files and tapes out to Bill Ayers to write the book.

His creditability would have been enhanced by admitting this upfront just as many, many famous "authors" do.

Chris said...

How the HELL can you guys say Obama hates white people? He had a white mother for the love of God.

Think of his white half as a member of the "anti-racist" movement.

Anonymous said...

"Anti-racist" movement? What's that?

Bantam said...

Yet one more NYT's writer appears to be indebted to your musings.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Someone with the greater access to the public mind can take your ideas and popularize them. Ideas are not property, under copyright or patent. Ideas are free."

Ideas may be free, but still, somehow, D'Souza will make more money off these particular ideas than Steve has. That's probably what rankles Steve, as indeed it would rankle most people.

Anonymous said...

About "Dreams:"

In one chapter, he talks about change, but he never says what he wants to change, he just wants to change. This narrative of course remains the same. He still talks of change but no one can figure out what he wants to change. He even admits he doesn't know what he is talking about when he says, "There wasn't much detail in the idea."


In the chapter he talks of change was during Reagan's tenure. He talks of Reagan, his minions and his dirty deeds. He wants change during a time of great change for the better. Reagan was responsible for creating optimism after the inept Carter years. Obama talks about change in the mood of the country. This period was a very optimistic time in American history. Reagan was responsible for ending the cold war without firing a shot, lowering interest rates from double digits, and creating an unprecedented economic boom. He also won almost every state in the union. I don't get it. What is it that Obama wanted to change?


When Obama listens to the "The Audacity of Hope" speech, he sees himself in this world of pessimism and despair. But, Obama's world was nothing like that. Obama never lacked for anything. This is the dichotomy of Obama's world. He lived a life between the privileged and the middle class, and he went to the top universities, but he envisions himself in John Kerry's two America's where he is one of the have-nots scratching his way to the top.

Bantam said...

At least we should feel grateful Obama's rage is carefully softened by Michelle"s notorious benevolent attitude.

OneSTDV said...

I'm assuming he doesn't give you a citation.

[BTW: Your book was an absolutely wonderful read - an incisive and interesting analysis of Obama. It had a lot to do with my then incipient consciousness of racial issues.]

Anonymous said...

Do you think he has been one of the numerous Indian commenters here?

Anonymous said...

That's our Steve! Bitter about Dinesh D'Souza riding a less-racist yet even dumber version of his thesis to riches, but still passive-aggressive.

Anonymous said...

"How the HELL can you guys say Obama hates white people? He had a white mother for the love of God. He was raised some of the time by his white grandparents. He has some white friends."

Sigh. Try to think outside of these tired cliches (ie, some of my best friends/relatives are X...so I can't "hate" them).

For example, half of my family is Irish and the other half is British. I wasn't raised Irish-American so I don't identify with "the Irish"; I identify with the English or Anglo-American liberal (in the old sense of the word) cultural and political heritage. I don't "hate" the Irish, but I do sometimes find them slightly annoying.

Now apply that to Obama with the black/white thing. Consider who Obama identifies with, and why, and consider also that the white half of his family were "anti-racists", that is to say, self-hating whites (and if you don't believe that many "anti-racists" are self-hating, self-loathing white people, than you need to get out more). So both sides of his family "hate" whites in some sense - Obama is simply going down the path he was set on by his parents.

headache said...

Steve,
maybe you should check out the book for plagiarism?

headache said...

Many people think he is a cool, calm character, but I think he is like a deer in the headlights that doesn't know what to do.


Nothing new here."Leaders" like Mugabe, Mandela and any of the black liberation dictators were/are clueless when it comes to running their countries. Whenever reality catches up with them they resort to chasing whites, killing members of competing clans, and milking whitey for more money. The rest of the time they spend in endless discussions, driving around in their Bentley's, gorging themselves in their fancy homes, and arranging celebrations of themselves. Obama is just a more sophisticated version of the African Strong Man.

Anonymous said...

Hardly a first for D’Souza. See Jared Taylor on Dinesh D’Souza's The End of Racism:

The final version shows other signs of — dare we say it? — bigotry. In his book, Mr. D’Souza makes many of the same arguments about the follies of race relations that I do in Paved With Good Intentions and he often uses the same examples to support them. In a book that bristles with thousands of footnotes, as his does, it is at the very least odd that my book not be referenced even once.

In fact, there is an amusing indication that this is deliberate. When Mr. D’Souza cites a magazine article his rule is to include the name of the author in the footnote. In a reference to an article I wrote for National Review, the name of the author does not appear. Mr. D’Souza seems to have been so determined to keep my name out of the footnotes that he broke his own bibliographic rules. Since he had decided to offer me up as a prominent bigot, he could hardly give the impression that he might have learned something from me.

Mr. D’Souza’s contemptible tactics did not even work. He has been pelted with absurd charges of racism, and there is no reason to think the accusations would have been any wilder if he had not savaged the AR conference. One newspaper has actually seen through his ruse. Writing in the Oct. 1 issue of the Washington Post, a book reviewer who is black writes that although Mr. D’Souza claims to be unbiased, he has obviously learned a great deal from his “mentors,” Samuel Jared Taylor and Michael Levin!


B.B.

dearieme said...

"Barrack shipped his files and tapes out to Bill Ayers to write the book." In which case BHO made a bigger contribution to "his" writings than JFK ever did to "his".

Anonymous said...

You should talk to Jared Taylor about this.

Not only was Taylor's organization extensively plagiarized by D'Souza for his book on race, both AmRen and Taylor were portrayed as the the most garbage-like Neo-Nazis in the pages of the same book! Talk about using every part of the buffalo.

From where I'm sitting, you got off easy.

l said...

Anonymous said...
How the HELL can you guys say Obama hates white people? He had a white mother for the love of God. He was raised some of the time by his white grandparents. He has some white friends.


Sometimes I wonder if Steve fabricates idiotic Anonymous comments like this, just to get people riled up. If so, well played, sir.

jem said...

Steve, here's a fashion analogy for you. You're like a talented, obsessed, iconoclastic fashion designer who refuses to water down his line for frumpy American housewives. Other opportunistic designers come along and modify your ideas until they're less outrageous and more marketable. Of course, they become millionaires and land gigs on Oprah.

Anonymous said...

I second what Mercer says above. I seem to recall that your book was all about Obama and race, whereas from what I read in the online excerpt, D'Souza sees Obama's motivation as being an anticolonial one.

Of course, that's not to say that DD might have ripped off some of your ideas, but it's probably a good idea to read the whole book first, hmmm? And anyway, if you're annoyed that everyone seems to be plagiarizing your work, how about investing a little more effort in marketing yourself to a mainstream audience? I.e. did you really need to publish America's Half-Blood Prince through the VDare foundation (and not, say, Regnery or Basic Books)? The inability to get the quotation marks right (uniformly "smart," and curling the right way), the rendering of all references as URLs, and the annoying mark that precedes all reference numbers in the main text, added a further amateurish quality to the presentation of your book.

Peter A said...

If he weren't president no one with half a brain would hesitate describing what makes Obama tick.

In reality it is just the opposite of course. If Obama weren't President no one would even think of him as particularly black. It's time to drop this contrived talking point about "racial revenge." Obama has less racial anger than most Irish people I know.

George said...

Sam Francis had that clown pegged years ago. He used to call him "Distorta D'Newsa". Hilarious!

Outland said...

Steve,

In the future nobody will remember Dinesh D'Souza; they will remember you though.

airtommy said...

Reagan was responsible for ending the cold war without firing a shot, lowering interest rates from double digits, and creating an unprecedented economic boom. He also won almost every state in the union. I don't get it.

You sure don't.

Reagan was the unwitting recipient of lowered interest rates and the economic boom, which were the result of Jimmy Carter's policies.

Reagan famously expanded and extended the Cold War, until he finally decided to end the charade as he became mindful of his legacy as his Presidency was winding down.

Kylie said...

Bantam said..."At least we should feel grateful Obama's rage is carefully softened by Michelle"s notorious benevolent attitude."

So Michelle think's it "hell" being First Lady? Well, it can't be any fun for her to stand around the Formerly White House in one of her garish floral outfits and be mistaken for Mamie Eisenhower's upended sofa.

(If you think I'm being catty, you haven't clicked on the link.)

Thomas said...

Face it, Steve: you are basically Emmanuel Goldstein.

Nelson said...

D'Souza's wikipedia page states that he has dated Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter. I guess the world of Republican Party hacks is a small one.

eh said...

Idiotic title.

Anonymous said...

The commenters posting about Microsoft versus UNIX is apt. There are thousands of techies who believe to this day that various "free" software systems like UNIX or Linux are good and virtuous and that Microsoft Windows is evil. They think Bill Gates turned to the Dark Side.

Bill Gates didn't invent BASIC but he made his first money from it. He didn't invent MS-DOS either but he sold it to IBM and again made a lot of money. The same is true of Microsoft Word and many other products. If you think marketing and packaging are evil activities then Gates makes an ideal villain.

Much of the modern PC and Mac technology was actually invented or initiated in Xerox PARC. Yet Xerox did not prosper from these innovations - Apple did, Novell did and Microsoft did.

Similarly Steve has not and probably will not prosper from his many ideas and writings. If Steve really wanted to be rich and famous he would choose another outlet, write another book, appear on radio talk shows, or run for office. Writing a blog is a lot of work but it's not the kind of work that gets you ahead.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

"How the HELL can you guys say Obama hates white people? He had a white mother for the love of God. He was raised some of the time by his white grandparents. He has some white friends."


Love the irony.

Anonymous said...

"How the HELL can you guys say Obama hates white people?"

I thought it was just a vehicle, a pathway to power. Everyone's got to have some shtick, you know. Or, he has heavily identified with his black ancestors for some reason. People do that, you know. Makes 'em feel special.

helene edwards said...

What does Obama want to change? If you're a community organizer in Chicago, or Oakland or any other black urban area, the message you get from your clients is that they want to be "respected," and this means being respected simply for being what they are, black. "Change" means letting go of this notion that respect is somehow tied to trying, doing, achieving. Black people feel the beat. That should be enough. You know when you're stopped at a red light and the black driver behind is swaying and bouncing and grooving in your rearview mirror. Respect that. And this whole notion of a cash down payment. That ain't respect.

Anonymous said...

i'm curious Mr. Sailer, why is it that you never seen to empathize with the struggles of ethnic minorities?

do u find them too uppity?

or do u think they are ingrateful?

Truth said...

"...no one with half a brain would hesitate describing what makes Obama tick... -- Get Whitey!"

I think someone with half a brain just did.

Anonymous said...

I suspect that O wanted to title it The Authority of Hope, but someone persuaded him that The Audacity of Hope sounded better.

Truth said...

"Sigh. Try to think outside of these tired cliches (ie, some of my best friends/relatives are X...so I can't "hate" them)."

Double Sigh. It's not "some of my best friends/ relatives" it's his fucking MOTHER.

Claverhouse said...

An Anonymous said:

i'm curious Mr. Sailer, why is it that you never seen to empathize with the struggles of ethnic minorities?

do u find them too uppity?

or do u think they are ingrateful?



Dunno about Steve, but personally I think they spell like morons.

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

Hmmm, sport. I can't seem to tell how mommy dumping her bastard in favor of native basket weaving/ceramics/whatever could cause this little bastard, once he became a big bastard, to resent her (and her race), sport. That's the twoof, and nothing but the twoof, sport.

David Davenport said...

... Reagan famously expanded and extended the Cold War, until he finally decided to end the charade as he became mindful of his legacy as his Presidency was winding down.

As was the Berlin Wall and the CCCP, no thanks to Western "liberals" or "Progressives."


///////////////////

Obama has less racial anger than most Irish people I know.

Reading that, one starts to empathize with the historic English disdain of the Oirish.

Curvaceous, etc. said...

"Double Sigh. It's not "some of my best friends/ relatives" it's his fucking MOTHER"

Soooooooooo?
Plenty of people hate their mother and take their revenge out on other people in stead.

They say Jack the Ripper offed all those Whitechapel hookers because he was killing them as proxies for his hated mother.

I'd just as soon not be the proxy who gets to bear the brunt of little Barry's rage at Stanley Ann for abandoning him to trot off to Indonesia.

Anonymous said...

"i'm curious Mr. Sailer, why is it that you never seen to empathize with the struggles of ethnic minorities?"


Everyone in the world is in an ethnic minority except the Han Chinese.

OneSTDV said...

Writing a blog is a lot of work but it's not the kind of work that gets you ahead.

Yes. Steve and Auster put out hundreds of insightful posts (many of them essay length) per year, yet they remain mostly shunned by the mainstream.

While guys like NYT Op-Ed columnist Charles Blow or Newsweek columnist Raina Kelley put out about 20 inane, very short columns per year and get to write for those publications.

Life ain't fair.

OneSTDV said...

i'm curious Mr. Sailer, why is it that you never seen to empathize with the struggles of ethnic minorities?

Has this guy actually read any posts here?

nsam said...

I have to agree with Mercer that DD's take is quite different from yours. Namely that Obama isn't really about race. Still he could have mined your book for useful tidbits and some psychological insights (does he speculate about his smoking and manic depressive cycles like you did?) and probably doesn't give you any credit. Anticolonialism was very very common among intelligentsia in the developing countries in the 70s and 80s with Fanon et al. DD writes remarkably well even granting the editing and research help he commands.

This book is going to be a runaway best-seller.

Truth said...

"Plenty of people hate their mother and take their revenge out on other people in stead."

I don't remember Barry saying / writing anything that vaguely suggested that he "hated" his mother -- could this be another case of "projection"?

headache said...

Mercers take is disingenuous.

Anti-colonialism is just code for racism.

Wherever black liberation movements took over power, they turned on other races, whitey first. In Uganda Idi Amin chased out the Indians in addition to the Chinese, after first cleansing out the whites. In other African countries Indians, who often filled the void left by whites, were chased out. Liberation movements are per definition racist movements. So anti-colonial movements, which are always liberation movements, are racist movements.

If it were not so, the only requirement of anti-colonialism would be that the local population rule a country. But why then did blacks grab power at the expense of whites, Indians and colored in all southern African countries? Coz its about race and ethnicity.

D'Souza is just using anti-colonialism as a mask for racism coz anti-colonialism is fashionable amongst the liberal elite, whereas racism is out. So in this manner Obama can be masked as a closet racist but be paraded as an anti-colonialist, i.e. he gets to eat his cake as well.

Curvaceous, etc. said...

"I don't remember Barry saying / writing anything that vaguely suggested that he "hated" his mother -- could this be another case of "projection"?"

I don't remember Jack the Ripper writing about his mother-hatred either.

There's this thing called "circumstantial evidence."

Psychopaths are generally quite good at not trumpeting their true intentions.

Anonymous said...

D'Souza talking about Third Worlders and Beck talking about Liberation theology all miss the point: Obama is a Marxist, with an overlay of black power Marxism and anti-colonialism Marxism. That's it. It's that simple. But they don't want to say he wants to bring white people low so they deal with these indirect and only partially accurate description of his views. Wimps.

Truth said...

"Obama is a Marxist, with an overlay of black power Marxism and anti-colonialism Marxism."

Hey, you forgot "a Muslim", and "The Anti-Christ"!

John said...

headache wrote: D'Souza is just using anti-colonialism as a mask for racism coz anti-colonialism is fashionable amongst the liberal elite, whereas racism is out.

Exactly. The whole book is about race. Cleary, colonials=whites and anti-colonials=non-whites. How that is not patently obvious is a minor miracle.

So in this manner Obama can be masked as a closet racist but be paraded as an anti-colonialist, i.e. he gets to eat his cake as well.

Much like he used Auma as a proxy to express hatred for whites and those African blacks he regarded as cowtowing to whites, while trying to portray himself as sympathetic to Auma, but remaining non-threatening himself. He's a transparent fraud. He's simply a more polished version of Jeremiah Wright.

I think his highest goal is to break the white (DD's colonial) power structure. In that, I think DD nails it. (I'm sure Half-Blood Prince does too, I've just not read it yet.)

Wrt DD borrowing liberally from Steve, you're most probably right. I read Ending Racism ages ago and thought it very good. We in the HBD sphere all swim in the same waters, so smart guys like Steve and DD are bound to come to the same or very similar conclusions. DD probably can get away with his views (i.e. get published) on Obama in this book, and on blacks in Ending Racism where Steve cannot, simply because DD is not white, and Steve is. Sad, but true.

More and more whites will wake up, and in the end, Steve may get his just recognition.

lacey said...

' "...no one with half a brain would hesitate describing what makes Obama tick... -- Get Whitey!" '

Truth: "I think someone with half a brain just did."

Very good Truth. He doesn't tick anyway. He still needs to visit OZ for his inner works.

Malcolm said...

Many (if not most) of the most prominent anti-white blacks have been of significantly white ancestry (a point which others have written about).

Not surprising if you consider that it is usually the ones with significant white ancestry that have inherited enough white IQ to actually accomplish something, and they probably also share some of the same psychic battles as our dear president. They are forever enraged that they are not white enough to pass as white in white society, so must detest that which they cannot be to ease the internal conflict, and doubly make an effort to be black enough to be accepted in black society.

insight said...

I find it fascinating that D'Souza has clearly revealed Obama's anti-colonial rage that he adopted from his Kenyan Father. The difference here is that Obama is waging his anti-colonial war against our country's oil companies, banks, and insurance corporations (if not all major corporations). The fools in the electorate have allowed a thin-skinned, narcissistic, petty politician into the country's highest and most powerful leadership position. Now they are whining about what Obama said he would do throughout his campaign (redistribute the wealth, submit to the unions and get a health bill passed that is now going to destroy our national economy if it is not drastically changed or repealed). And then we have the far left continuing to lament Obama's failure to Europeanize our country (a far left that really belongs in Europe and not here).