Obama's America Unmaking the American dream

Conservative writer D'Souza (Godforsaken, 2012, etc.) further explores why he considers President Barack Obama "[t]he most dangerous man in America." The president of King's College in New York City and a former policy advisor to President Reagan, D'Souza co-wrote and -directed the financially successful 2012 documentary 2016: Obama's America, which painted Obama as being driven by an anti-American and anti-colonialist ideology. In this book, which expands on the author's The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), D'Souza continues this line of attack, claiming that this ideology has made Obama "the architect of American decline" who "wants America to be downsized." The younger Obama, asserts the author, absorbed this virulent anti-colonialist worldview from his (largely absent) Kenyan father, as well as his Indonesian stepfather, both of whom D'Souza describes as "Third World, anti-American guy[s]." (He also portrays Obama's American mother as prone to "sexual adventuring.") The author plays up the influence of such familiar Chicago figures as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers, whom D'Souza terms "Obama's terrorist pal." All of these influences, writes the author, have shaped Obama's policies profoundly, particularly in energy and foreign affairs. Unfortunately, the author does not provide any solid evidence for his arguments, instead trafficking largely in guilt-by-association and apocalyptic predictions of "America's decline and fall." D'Souza has been criticized by liberals and mainstream conservatives for his strident theories; it seems highly unlikely that any minds will be changed by his latest book or by such statements as, "If Obama were white, he would have virtually no chance of being re-elected." Shallow and speculative at best, paranoid at worst.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.