July 26, 2009

"Quarterly Review" on "America's Half-Blood Prince"

Here are excerpts from the long review in the Quarterly Review of London of my book, America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's "Story of Race and Inheritance."
Hidden in Full View -- The Racial Obsessions of the 'Post-Racial' President

Robert Henderson relishes a revealing study of Barack Obama’s life and character

Steve Sailer is that great rarity in modern America, a white intellectual who publicly confronts political correctness. Most courageously, he is willing to be forthright even when dealing with the subject which intimidates educated American whites more than any other, namely, race. This latter attribute allowed him to perform a task in America’s Half-Blood Prince which should have been undertaken by the American mainstream media and Obama’s political opponents long before the late presidential election was concluded.

That task was the dissection of Obama’s pathological obsession with race as evidenced by his own writings, primarily Dreams From My Father (DFMF), and the crashing discord between this Obama and the one put before the American people in 2008. Sailer does this tellingly whilst marvelling at the sociological phenomenon which caused the entire American political and media mainstream to ignore this central aspect of the new president’s mentality.
Sailer hits the nail on the head with his opening sentence:
“The fundamental irony of Sen. Barack Obama’s Presidential candidacy is that no nominee in living memory has been so misunderstood by the press and public, and yet no other candidate has ever written so intimately or eloquently (or, to be frank, endlessly) about his “deepest commitments”.

... The deepest Obama commitment of all as Sailer sees it is to his race (or more correctly to half of his racial heritage): “Obama’s primal need for team triumph explains much about his life, both its dramatic political ascent and its pervasive racialism. To Obama, the black race was always his team, and he would do anything to see them win.” (p92)

As someone who has trudged wearily through Obama’s DFMF and The Audacity of Hope (AOH) in minute detail, I can vouch that this goes to the heart of the Obama phenomenon. His act as the post-racial unifying candidate during the presidential election is comically implausible when compared with the personality who emerges from DFMF, which is that of a deeply neurotic, very insecure person who is forever agonising about his place in the racial and cultural hierarchy – his perpetual question is ‘Am I black enough?’ – and who displays a disturbing pathological paranoia about whites. The irony of Obama’s post-racial stance is that unless you can believe that he has miraculously undergone a Damascene conversion in the past few years – and his retention of the bombastic anti-white Jeremiah Wright as his pastor until he became a political embarrassment suggests otherwise – he is the exact opposite of colour-blind.

Sailer sums up neatly Obama’s mentality in DFMF:
“Obama’s worldview is simplistically black and white. In Dreams’ conceptual framework, there are three races: Black, White, and Miscellaneous. Despite all the years Obama spends in Indonesia and in heavily Asian Hawaii, Asians just don’t play much of a role in Obama’s turbulent emotions” (p210).

… The book’s title derives from what Sailer views as Obama’s portrayal of himself as representing post-racial America being akin to a dynastic marriage, the joined partners in Obama’s case being black and white: “Obama launched himself on the national stage at the 2004 convention by devoting the first 380 words of his speech to detailing the two stocks, black and white, from which he was crossbred. He implied that, like the mutual heir to a dynastic merger of yore – think of England’s King Henry VIII, offspring of the Lancaster-York marriage that ended the War of the Roses – he is the one we’ve been waiting for to end the War of the Races.” (p31) Obama repeated the message in his “A More Perfect Union” speech: “I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas”.

... Sailer explains adroitly how Obama managed to avoid the mainstream media and his white opponents treating him as they would have treated a white candidate: “The New Obama is the candidate who is half-white when whites think about voting for him. Yet, he remains all black, and thus off-limits to polite public skepticism, when anyone tries to get up the courage to criticize him more harshly than by merely saying he is inexperienced.” The potency of this mentality can be seen in the failure of McCain to use Obama’s own past against him and his preventing other Republicans from doing so. McCain’s response to a local Republican ad which had the bad taste to denounce Jeremiah Wright was “There’s no place for that kind of campaigning, the American people don’t want it, period” (p189).

And there's a lot more that's quite complimentary. Read the whole thing. For balance, though, here's the negative section of Henderson's review:
If the book has a weakness it is the author’s tendency to build intellectual castles in the air to explain Obama’s motivation and development. For example, Sailer explains Obama’s obsession with the multicultural creed by attributing this to his parents: “The terrible irony of Barack Obama’s life is that he was taught the new multiculturalist ideology by his parents, who were so representative of the egotistical Save the World Sixties People who now preside over our Education-Media Industrial Complex. There was never a truer believer in this propaganda than young Barack. Yet, what he truly wanted deep down, even though he could never quite admit it to himself, was for his parents to stop saving the world, come home, and just be his mom and dad” (p96).

I find this implausible. The father could have had little effect simply because he was absent, while the mother, as Sailer notes, apart from being absent for long periods, was held in no little contempt by Obama.

Obama’s account of his mother is of a Margaret Mead-type anthropological naif who constantly fed him with anti- American and pro-black propaganda. Even if true, and we have already seen that Obama’s veracity is uncertain, it is difficult to see why someone Obama did not respect at best and was angry with for deserting him at worst should have such a profound and lasting effect on him. A much more likely response would be rejection of the mother’s views. Add the testimony of his schoolmates already given that he was not the sullen, unhappy, rebellious boy depicted in DFMF and it is a reasonable guess that Obama’s resentment was something which developed in late adolescence or early adulthood, not during the four years in Indonesia which Sailer views as seminal.

As for why it developed, I suspect that the banal truth is that it simply seemed a more exciting way of living to the young Obama than following a middle class career path.

But this is a small quibble. This is a book which is essential reading for those wanting to understand Obama. It does not really matter why Obama is what he is but what he is – and that is what the book indubitably tells you, probably better than anything else available.

ROBERT HENDERSON is a freelance writer based in London.

I think it's safe to say that my second chapter, on Obama's mother, is either the best or the worst chapter in the book. I present an unexpected theory of how his mother's resentment of the growing influence that her nice guy Indonesian second husband was having on his stepson led her to raise little Barack to be a black race man like his biological father as a passive-aggressive attack on the unsatisfactory Asian husband whom she soon dumped. I believe that's the most reasonable interpretation of Obama's own account of his relationship with his mother, but, clearly, we're in some psychological deep waters here.

You can buy the book here ($30), download it on Amazon's Kindle ($9.99), or download the PDF here ($10).

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Must be pretty cool to be the only person on the planet to have pegged Obama correctly, and in print. Dude, you're historical! If humanity lasts another 100 years they'll be talking about Steve Sailer, not the chumps who comprise today's MSM.

Big John Bagshaw said...

Obama’s account of his mother is of a Margaret Mead-type anthropological naif who constantly fed him with anti- American...propaganda. [...] A much more likely response would be rejection of the mother’s views.

Would certainly fit Bobby Fischer.

As for Bob Henderson, he's quite the character.

The Elite One said...

Just to show you weren't the only one on to Obama before the election I want to share what I wrote at the SWPL blog a few days before the election, off the top of my head, in about 5 minutes:

Guy’s family is living in poverty while he lives in a million dollar home.

Threw one grandmother under the bus and the other lives in a shantytown.

Accepts donations from his illegal alien aunt that he doesn’t even know is living in the USA.

Admits he wants to “bankrupt” the coal industry which provides 50% of American power.

Marxist, and a follower of a man who dedicated his playbook to Lucifer.

Racist pig who dumped his girlfriend because she was white.

Affirmative action case who couldn’t cut it in the private sector.

Lets his mother die on food stamps after he graduates Harvard Law.

No accomplishments.

Race hustler, whose race hustler wife gets $300,000 a year from taxpayers.

Dirty Chicago politician.

Palpable antipathy toward all things white evident in his autobiography.

Obvious dislike of the decent “white folk” who raised him after he was abandoned, twice, by his African father and Marxist mother.

Son of a drunk who would give Henry Earl a run for his money and whose parents sent Obama’s mom’s parents a letter saying they didn’t want their son’s blood to be “sullied” by a white woman.

Running on meaningless platitudes of “hope” and “change”.

Ran on anti-war platform only until Hillary was out of the way, now considered even by neo-cons such as Bill Kristol to be about the same as McCain on foreign policy.

Thinks America should invade nuclear armed Pakistan. Pledged three times to AIPAC to do “everything” to prevent sovereign state of Iran from developing defensive weaponry.

Anti-religion, in a country over 90% religious.

Thinks the government should seize citizens’ guns.

Illiterate affirmative action wife’s thesis released revealing deep hatred of white society, says she’s not proud to be American.

Will probably make females eligible for draft.

Wants to introduce expensive new social programs such as a national babysitting program during economic downturn.

Bought and paid for by mortgage and loan industry.

Humorless, can’t take a joke even from fellow Marxist Mo Dowd.

Wants to release tens of thousands of felons on to the streets and give criminals a free pass if they enter rehab.

Full-on “Israel First”er who will let American policy be driven from Jerusalem.

Wants to extend affirmative action to women at a time when American firms are already struggling to compete internationally.

Socialized medicine.

Not very honest, or bright, overrated as a speaker.

Will likely declare an amnesty on black prisoners, black supporters are already talking about counting on a fellow brother for pardons.

Empty vessel whose blackeness is used as a human shield by the Axelrods and Ayerses of America to make America even more Marxist.

Uses his kids as an electoral prop on Entertainment Tonight.

Few if any accomplishments, disturbing habit of voting “present”.”


http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/11/04/114-america/?cp=all#comments

As I wrote later in the Vespa thread:

I believe this to be the most complete, most dominant critique of Barack Obama written anywhere by anyone prior to the election, an accomplishment for which I feel no small amount of pride.

I also confess to feeling near-Canadian levels of smugness at the moment, which is pretty much the only solace I find in the decline of America. Anyone who supported this fraud should have their assets confiscated to pay for the debt he has forced upon America.

Look, it’s so bad other countries – far shittier countries at the moment – are laughing at America. Laughing. If they feel anything for America, it is pity at best.

To the people who voted for Obama and who supported him: we have your names, we know where you live. You owe us a few trillion dollars and we’re calling in our loan, pay up. Now.

Anonymous said...

"Deep psychological waters..."
Indeed. The President is most essentially Ann
Dunham's son. He gives scant
evidence of ever having himself confronted , and made choices relevant to, this schizoid woman and the formulated life she set in motion for him. Race, for him, is the tailored glove within which an Oedipal agenda plays itself out. He has never had anything remotely resembling an American Black experience. She appears to have had little success in elective human relationships of any duration and related to people mostly, if at all, within her busy body activities that distracted her from the deeper issues of her own life. Her central obsession in her relationship to Barry (then called ) was that he would become President of the United States. Many mothers have appropriately made mention of such a possiblity.
She harped upon it. It is not an obsession with race, but rather with Mama and Mr. Oedipus.

Anonymous said...

"Racist pig who dumped his girlfriend because she was white."

You're probably the only isteve reader who dislikes Obama's choice of black women over white.

Anonymous said...

In AHBP Steve inaccurately forecast that Obama would be a moderate liberal in his first term, unveiling his radical agenda only after reelection, whereas Peter Brimelow correctly predicted that President Obama would immediately attempt to steer American onto a path of socialism and racial Marxist lunacy.

In Obama, Steve perceives a worthy intellectual adversary, but I think Obama is probably just a mildly autistic Walter Mitty figure who has stumbled into his big dreams in much the same way that Susan Boyle stumbled into the finals of Britain's Got Talent.

OT, I wonder how Steve's book on the diversity recession and minority mortgage meltdown coming along?

Anonymous said...

"You're probably the only isteve reader who dislikes Obama's choice of black women over white."

And you're probably the only one stupid enough to so badly misunderstand what I wrote. Ugh, the illogic, it is hideous.

Anonymous said...

Historical, indeed.

So, what kind of donation is needed for me to be able to send you my book and get it autographed?

The Why? is interesting to discuss as the other question, "Is he really that way?" has been well answered. My theory is that in the same way that a child's religious beliefs and attitudes come largely through the father with little input from the mother, so it tends to be with race/family. Obama is his father all over again, but much more tempered, literally, and without the chip on his shoulder for Asians. And that's only because Asians loomed so largely in Sr.'s mind as the obstacle for the tribe back in Kenya.

Lloyd G. said...

Obama's time with his grandparents in Hawaii tempered his egomania/sense of entitlement. Imagine being a (half) black child raised by Unitarians: Constant praise, no criticism.

Anonymous said...

Just to show you weren't the only one on to Obama before the election I want to share what I wrote at the SWPL blog a few days before the election, off the top of my head, in about 5 minutes.

Obviously you think pretty highly of yourself. But I'm pretty sure I heard everything you wrote at one point or another from Savage, Limbaugh, etc., so putting it together wasn't that much of a trick.

Gotta say that Steve is a heroic figure and deserves all credit and praise he gets for his courage as much as for what he writes. Can't even imagine the hate mail he must get. He doesn't hide behind a silly tag like "The Elite One", and that is a large part of his stature as far as I'm concerned.

Anonymous said...

"And you're probably the only one stupid enough to so badly misunderstand what I wrote. Ugh, the illogic, it is hideous."

As a general statement he is right. Guys here are creepy insecure about black men and white women.

Anonymous said...

As a general statement he is right. Guys here are creepy insecure about black men and white women.

Because the mating game is a no-holds-barred Darwinian struggle and we all know those white losers can't hack it against their black competitors. Suck it up, talk to the hand etc etc.

When said white losers suggest upping the stakes and extending that competition into other arenas - science, education, engineering, running a functioning society - trivia like that. Suddenly it turns out that, no, actually we dont want a no-holds-barred Darwinian struggle after all. Turns out therer are these nuances about fairness, collective guilt, legacy of slavery, disparate impact, God knows what else..

Funny how that works.

John Seiler said...

Greatest Generation Americans, most now gone, would say of Obama's Mom that she was "a real piece of work."

Alas, now the rest of us have to live in the Funhouse run by her son.

John Seiler said...

Obama's Gates comments are a prefiguration of something inevitable: a public meltdown. Possibly after being prodded by Michelle.

Let's hope he at least puffs a couple of coffin nails before his finger gets too near The Button.

Anonymous said...

It's more so the case on Stormfront. Sometimes it seems like the only thing driving those guys is their anger towards black men who sleep with white women.

The Elite One said...

"As a general statement he is right. Guys here are creepy insecure about black men and white women."

White women don't particularly like black men. Absent AA, and if we were allowed to say things like blacks have 27 times higher STD rates and white women who marry black men are 9 times more likely to be assaulted by them, I don't think they'd be so eager to date them.

Younger women are some of the most anti-black people out there because they haven't been indoctrinated yet, and they have to live with the consequences of boomer idiocy that boomers turn a blind eye to. Black men have afros and smell differently than white men, and don't earn nearly as much money, not without AA anyway. We can compete with them, to say the least, and if they were so awesome they wouldn't need so much protection by the state and propaganda from the media. White women, absent brainwashing from the teevee, want babies with blond hair and blue eyes, black men can't do that.

"Obviously you think pretty highly of yourself. But I'm pretty sure I heard everything you wrote at one point or another from Savage, Limbaugh, etc."

You listen to Savage and Limbaugh? Ugh, why? Couldn't pay me to. Anyway, one is a straight faux-con, the other espouses "happy meal" conservatism, and both were and are way too soft on Obama; you most certainly did not hear most of what I wrote on their shows because they were stupidly going on about his birth certificate and calling him the Messiah and the One instead of calling him out as the affirmative action scrub that he is.

"Gotta say that Steve is a heroic figure and deserves all credit and praise he gets for his courage as much as for what he writes. Can't even imagine the hate mail he must get. He doesn't hide behind a silly tag like "The Elite One", and that is a large part of his stature as far as I'm concerned."

As Andreotti once said, I'm aware of my limitations but I look around and I'm not exactly surrounded by giants.

If you're a regular iSteve reader you'll recall that not long ago Steve opined that if he had to do it all over again he'd do it under a pen name; who am I not to learn from his mistakes?

headache said...

Steve's currently ground zero on US reality, and more.

Anonymous said...

The only fault of this book is that it came out like one day before/after the election.

Anonymous said...

"Younger women are some of the most anti-black people out there because they haven't been indoctrinated yet"

Gotta disagree. Younger women definitely seem more clueless to the baggage.

Black men don't behave like white men. Black professional men also don't behave like white professional men but they can conceal luggage a lot better. The difference between them and white counterparts was mostly to their advantage.

At my biglaw firm, there were two black associates in my class. They had various dates with them at functions. They were all attractive and some gorgeous. These guys were smooth, dominant, and everyone publicly at least loved them. At a bar outing, I watched one of them approach a 9 and he made it look like he was Usain Bolt dropping in at the bar.

I realized around then that black professional men occupy an Ashkenazi like place on the personality magnetism bell curve.

David Davenport said...

Let's hope he at least puffs a couple of coffin nails before his finger gets too near The Button.

While O.'s having a beer at The House with Prof. Gates, and Officer Crowley, they can share a pack of ciggies.

Kools or Lucky Strikes?

Truth said...

"ou'll recall that not long ago Steve opined that if he had to do it all over again he'd do it under a pen name; who am I not to learn from his mistakes?"

Yeah but Steve has talent.

The Elite One said...

"Yeah but Steve has talent."

I believe in your culture the appropriate rejoinder here would be "don't hate, appreciate".

Don't be bitter that I called out the affirmative action scrub before he was elected and almost nobody else did, just try to be better next time.

One day before the election I was curious to see if Obama was an affirmative action case, something that I don't think even Steve touched on (could be wrong), not in its entirety anyway.

I searched "obama affirmative action" at Google and came up with something the combined forces of all of America's media (and the entire blogosphere) could not find and did not report upon: Obama admits that he needed affirmative action to advance academically (I believe this was brought to your attention already).

Try this link, sport, and you can see for yourself.

But the link doesn't work!

Shaddup, you already tried that excuse. Now, note how I reported that on November 8th here (and elsewhere prior to that):

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/11/04/114-america/?cp=all#comment-84739

See, this is why I find the accusations that Obama is "elitist" to be bogus; he's admitted, publicly and in print, that he is an affirmative action case, hardly the stuff of an elitist. The One and The Messiah my ass, try The Mediocre Affirmative Action scrub.

Truth said...

"I believe in your culture the appropriate rejoinder here would be "don't hate, appreciate"."

Well, it would have been 10 years ago Sport, now it's the appropriate rejoinder in your culture.

"But the link doesn't work!

Shaddup, you already tried that excuse."

Well it's usually considerd a fair excuse when the link doesn't work. In this case, it happens to work so I would not use it.

"he's admitted, publicly and in print, that he is an affirmative action case,"

Practically everyone at Harvard who has a family member who has predated him, who attended an elite (good word, look it up) New England prep school, or who's daddy dropped a load on the endowment is an "affirmative action case." Now how many of them do you hear admitting it?

Besides, it's tough out there! AA has gotten him the presidency, Supreme brilliance and talent have gotten you...what again?

Anonymous said...

"Supreme brilliance and talent have gotten you...what again?"

Um, "playa" you still "be" "hatin'".

Protip: for a better, more complete Anglo-Saxon bashing experience based on the duck science of psychology that my people don't recognize, try working in a reference to my toilet training, I think it's on page 32 of your Alinsky playbook (you know, the one dedicated to Lucifer), second paragraph from the bottom, IIRC. HTH.

Nanonymous said...

As for Bob Henderson, he's quite the character.

Yes, he is. He still posts amusing things regularly on Usenet. Today, this post (Message-ID: tFPqPTatptbKFw$x@anywhere.demon.co.uk ):

>>>>
Subject: Repeat after me ...most Britons are poor


Repeat after me:

Most Britons could not live on their savings for more than a month

Approximately 50% of Britons have no private pension provision

Approximately 33% of Britons live in rented accommodation

Trickle down does not work

Wealth is about the power relationship between the rich and the poor as
well as absolute wealth.

Most Britons are poor. RH
<<<<

Templar said...

Guys here are creepy insecure about black men and white women.

LOL

These accusations of "insecurity" are amusingly suggestive of a burglar chiding a homeowner for wanting to install locks on his house.