Who Are You Barack Obama ?

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Experts in child development will tell you that children are molded by early memories and familial attitudes and actions. When considering "who" Barack Obama is and how he relates it is crucial to explore this aspect of his development. Specifically the attitudes of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunning, and the influence that her beliefs and attitudes had on him. As stated by Barack in an interview, "the dominant figure in my formative years. . . . The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."

Ann, as she is called, was born in Kansas, but completed her high school education in Seattle and Mercer Island in the state of Washington. At this pivotal point in her education she was heavily influenced by teachers that had their classes read such things as "The Communist Manifesto". One classmate recalls what it was like in the classroom corridor of the Mercer High School that the English instructor, Mr. Foubert, and the Philosophy instructor, Mr. Wichterman. :

"Wichterman taught philosophy. The hallway between the two classes was known as "anarchy alley," and students pondered the challenging notions of Wichterman's teachings, including such philosophers as Sartre and Kierkegaard. He also touched the societal third rail of the 1950s: He questioned the existence of God. And he didn't stop there."

The Chicago Tribune has an excellent article on Ms. Dunning and Barrack's grandparents entitled "Not Just A Girl From Kansas". Mr. Obama seniors family were quiet unhappy with the marriage between Ann and Barack, Sr.. " Barack, Jr. recalls in his book, "Dreams" of his grandfather that , "He didn't didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman."

Ms. Dunning married Barack's father, Barack Obama, Sr., while in Hawaii where they both were attending college in 1960. Barack was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. This marriage to Barack's Muslim father, who had another wife in Kenya, resulted in divorce in 1964 as the two of them drifted apart while Barack's father attended Harvard. Barack was not close to his father and spent no time with him. Friend's of Ann felt that he did not want the bother of having a child. Non the less. Ann and Barack, Sr divorced in 1964 at which time he had very little to do with his son and this was a pattern that persisted through out Barack's father's life.

Ms. Dunning then married another Muslim man from Indonesia, Lolo Soetero, in 1967. She met him while he was a student at the University Of Hawaii. When Mr. Soetero had his student visa revoked, for unknown reasons, Ann followed him to war torn Indonesia with six year old Barack. While living in Indonesia Mr. Soetero enrolled Barack in a Wahabbist madrassa that he attended for two years before Parochial School.

Mr. Spengler of The Asia Times has written a stunning story about Barack and the women in his life. It is very much well worth your time to read and discusses Michelle Obama's and Barack's mother's influence on him.

"Barack Obama received at least some instruction in the Islamic faith of his father (Barack' s biological father Barack senior had nothing to with Barack at this time in his life. I surmise by "father" he is making reference to Mr. Soetero) and went with him to the mosque, but the importance of this experience is vastly overstated by conservative commentators who seek to portray Obama as a Muslim of sorts. Radical anti-Americanism, rather than Islam, was the reigning faith in the Dunham household. In the Muslim world of the 1960s, nationalism rather than radical Islam was the ideology of choice among the enraged. Radical Islam did not emerge as a major political force until the nationalism of a Gamal Abdel Nasser or a Sukarno failed."

Mr. Spengler in his article goes further in saying this:

"Be afraid - be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack utters the word "hope", they instead hear, "handout". A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as "something for nothing". Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over."

"Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised. "

Ms. Dunning was an anthropologist with the dubious distinction of marrying men that came from the societies that she was studying. While in Indonesia, and as a student, she was said to be a "fellow traveler", a euphemism at the time for someone that espoused communist ideology or sympathies. Ms. Duning, Barack's mother died in 1995 of ovarian cancer without her soon to be famous son at her bedside.

The main stream media has done us a disservice by not reporting openly and honestly on Mr. Barack Obama, II's early upbringing, societal ideology, or his past record. We can see a small glimpse of his empathies with his long time attendance of a church that believes in "Black Liberation Theology" and in his relationship with an unrepentant former member of "Underground Weatherman". Does the hand that rocks the cradle make a difference in what a child will become and believe as an adult? Let us all hope not.