To those of you who would dismiss Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Roots of Obama's Rage, as a waste of time, a pernicious collection of lies and thinly veiled racial attacks, a monumentally stupid and unintentionally comedic exercise in right-wing demagoguery -- well, you're right. And this passage from pages 200-202 is pretty much all the evidence you'd need to prove that argument beyond any shadow of a doubt.
After repeating the nonsense right-wing attack on NASA administrator Charles Bolden for saying that the president tasked him with outreach to the Muslim world, D'Souza writes:
No surprise: most people think of NASA's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Even some of Obama's supporters expressed puzzlement. Sure, we are all for Islamic self-esteem, and seven or eight hundred years ago the Muslims did make a couple of important discoveries, but what on earth was Obama up to here?
One of England's great colonial figures was the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes, one of the few people in history to get a country (Rhodesia) named after him. Rhodes is today remembered for the diamond mining company he founded, De Beers, and also for the Rhodes Scholarship. But in his time he commanded something of a private army, he got mixed up in the Matabele Wars and the Boer War, and his political and economic tentacles reached across most of southern Africa. At the peak of his power, Rhodes was asked by a journalist how far he intended his influence to spread. He replied, “I would annex the planets if I could. I often think of that.” This is the colonial mindset carried to the final frontier: even possession of the whole earth is not enough! You can imagine how the anti-colonialists reacted to Rhodes. Rhodes's comment can help us understand how the anti-colonial mind perceives America's space program -- it is a projection of American power and arrogance into the solar system.
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If Obama shares this view, no wonder that he wants to blunt NASA's space program, to divert it from being a symbol of American greatness to a more modest public relations operation that builds ties with Muslims and other peoples. Even when the Muslims aren't involved, Obama wants to make sure the Russians and the Chinese share the credit. Space, you see, is for human and not merely American exploration. Plug in our anti-colonial model and what at first seems inexplicable -- converting NASA into a community outreach program for Muslims -- suddenly makes complete sense. Remove the theory and it is almost impossibly difficult to account for what Obama is doing.
D'Souza actually wrote this. And he was actually serious when he wrote it. He believes that President Obama, being of the anti-colonialist bent, wants to “blunt” NASA's mission in order to prevent America from realizing Cecil Rhodes' dream of colonizing space.
It's no wonder that Glenn Beck finds this book to be so remarkable.