Whatever Dinesh D'Souza's malicious intent may be, if his facts are correct, I'd turn his propaganda on its head and say, "Let Obama be Obama." If he really is an American leader who has an experiential and familial insight into what it means to be on the receiving end of colonial or neocolonial oppression, occupation and invasion, then he should use that insight more forcefully in the bully pulpit he has the good fortune to own.
And we concerned American citizens should do as FDR famously told a lobbying group who wanted more progressive action from him:"You need to get out there and make me do it."
Nothing would advance the United States' future interests in the world more than a realistic re-evaluation of who we are in the world and who we have been in history. In this realm, everything is a dialectic. Neither the left nor the right has all the answers.
As Jon Stewart recently told Rachel Maddow, the struggle may be less right versus left than it is an issue of corruption and how corrupt forces distort our society and democracy. And, in the end, how to confront and beat back the forces of corruption.
Since all Americans are immigrants from somewhere, President Obama's unique background could be a powerful place to start a serious dialogue about all this.
D'Souza and Gingrich are wrong: The problem isn't President Obama's secret plan to undermine America coached from his father's grave -- "the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s."
The real problem is, while the right slams him on it, the fact is President Obama hasn't done enough in the reformist, progressive realm. As Paul Krugman points out in The New York Times, progressive citizens who voted for Obama have come to realize "He could do uplift -- but could he fight?" Krugman writes, "So far the answer has been no."
If, as D'Souza and the right suggest, Obama is this internationalist American in spirit, now is the time to stop hiding it and use it to educate a population deluded with patriotic fantasies and myths of American exceptionalism.
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