Authors: Glenn Beck

Liars (23 page)

BOOK: Liars

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Prolific and creative, he moved in progressive circles in the 1930s and '40s, writing columns for various Communist-line publications and castigating America for its racism, colonialism, and imperialism. “The United States was the only slaveholding nation in the New World,” he wrote, “that completely dehumanized Africans by considering them as chattel, placing them in the same category of
horses, cattle, and furniture.”

He mocked the notion of “the American way” as a slogan peddled by “flag-waving fascists and
lukewarm liberals.” He was angry, bitter, and seeking to change the world.

In 1948, at the urging of Stalin sympathizer Paul Robeson, Davis left Chicago for Honolulu, seeking a more inviting
home for his interracial marriage. The legal barriers against interracial marriage in most American states only furthered his lifelong view of the United States as irreparably racist.

A literal card-carrying member of the Community Party USA, Davis was deemed a big enough threat that the FBI created a file on him that
ran to six hundred pages. His Communist agitation culminated with
testimony in front of the U.S. Senate in 1956 in which he pled the Fifth. From that point on, however, he lived out his days largely undisturbed in Hawaii, writing poetry and taking provocative
photographs of nude women. He also took pictures of Hawaii's shorelines, which drew the interest of the FBI and others who suspected he was planning to send the photos to Soviet leaders
should Hawaii ever need to be targeted.

Among his friends on the island was another Kansas transplant by the name of Stanley Dunham. The two friends would often play games like Scrabble and
drink together. Mr. Dunham had a grandson who, as it happened, shared many things in common with Davis. His name was Barack Obama.

Young Obama also spent much of his adolescence in a profound identity crisis. The boy living in liberal Hawaii was suddenly conscious of the fact that he was at the intersection of very different worlds: black and white, African and American, foreign and near. His lack of identity, combined with the void created by the absence of his late father, accentuated the standard teenage angst of a sixteen-year-old.

Later in life, Obama described the context of his internal struggle during a library talk shortly after his book
Dreams from My Father
came out. “I end up coming into adolescence at a time when the tensions between the races even in a place like Hawaii are becoming more pronounced,” Obama told the audience, “and sort of the identity politics that is so pronounced today was already starting to come to the fore.” He went on:

I'm a very angry young man at the timeÂ .Â .Â . partly because my father is absent. Partly because I'm trying to struggle, “What
does it mean exactly to be a black man in America?” Partly because I'm sufficiently isolated in Hawaii without a large African-American community, without father figures around that might guide me and steer my anger. What I end up relying upon are the images and stereotypes that are coming through the media. And I'm having to patch together and piece together exactly what it means for me to be both
African and an American.

It was in this frame of mind that Obama absorbed the lessons of his grandfather's drinking buddy, Frank Davis. After one instance in which Obama claims he felt particularly alienated about race, he sought out Davis for help and had “a discussion with him about the kind of frustrations I am having and he sort of schools me that I should
get used to these frustrations.”

This was one of many conversations the two would have. It was Davis who helped Obama sort out his feelings about race and who gave heed to his fears, hopes, and ambitions. Davis later explained that “
black people have a reason to hate.”

Davis remained a critical character at every turn of Obama's life journey. According to Davis biographer Paul Kengor, Obama memorialized his legacy in his first book:

In
Dreams from My Father
,
“Frank” is mentioned twenty-two times by name, and far more via pronouns and other forms of reference. He is a consistent theme, appearing repeatedly and meaningfully in all three parts of the book. He is part of Obama's life and mind, by Obama's own extended recounting, from Hawaiiâthe site of visits and late evenings togetherâto Los Angeles to Chicago to Germany to Africa, from adolescence to college to community organizing. “Frank” is always one of the few (and first) names mentioned by Obama in each mile-marker upon his historic path from Hawaii to Washington. When
Obama at last arrived in Chicago, where he would find himself politically, professionally, and ideologicallyâprecisely as Frank Marshall Davis had 50 years earlierâthe first thing he did was think of “Frank,” literally visualizing him,
picturing him there.

That a Communist Party member had any impact at all on the young, impressionable future president is disturbing in and of itself. But it is clear that Obama yearned for and needed direction. He was lacking a father figure to provide guidance, perspective, and wisdomâto help him find his identity. Davis was all too willing to play this role.

During a 2007 speech at the Communist Party USA archives at New York University, Professor Gerald Horne spoke about the parallels between these two men:

At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack's memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis's equally affecting memoir,
Living the Blues,
and when that day comes, I'm sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that U.S. imperialism createdÂ .Â .Â . but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing
planet on which we reside.

Perhaps anticipating this very comparison, Obama
purged Davis's name from the abridged audio version of
Dreams from My Father
.
The progressive president had learned well. He had “sacrificed the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep
satisfaction of radical ends,” as his environmental czar Van Jones would term it.

That, however, hasn't stopped Obama from carrying a torch
for communism wherever he can find it. In 2016, he headed to Castro's Cubaâthe very same Castro and Cuba that John F. Kennedy had risked his entire presidency to confrontâand offered the notorious Communist dictatorship his hand in friendship.

Days later, he told an audience of young leaders in Argentina, “So often in the past there's been a sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist. And especially in the Americas, that's been a big debate, right? Oh, you know, you're a capitalist Yankee dog, and oh, you know, you're some crazy communist that's going to take away everybody's property.”

Then he told the students something astonishing. “I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works,” he said. The clear implication is that communism can workâeven though history has shown repeatedly that it can't.

Socialism, communism, capitalismâthere's no real difference to Obama, and we can owe that view in large part to Frank Marshall Davis.

QUIZ: ARE YOU A PROGRESSIVE?

1.âHow strongly do you agree/disagree with the following statement: “Economic inequality is a major problem in modern industrial societies”?

a.Â Strongly Agree

b.Â Somewhat Agree