Dinesh D'Souza’s film 2016 shows that Barack Obama comes from a dysfunctional family, and the results of that him. The dysfunctionality can be defined as being “due to the absence of a father, either physically or emotionally, or both.” Obama’s father abandoned him early in life, at age 2 when he left Obama’s mother and returned to Africa. In his memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama described Barack Obama Sr. as a gifted but erratic alcoholic who never lived up to his intellectual promise. Obama’s half brother, Mark Ndesandjo, confirmed that. In his recent book Nairobi to Shenzhen, he said their father was an abusive alcoholic who beat his mother and him.

Obama’s experience of abandonment was compounded by his Indonesian stepfather, who married his mother Stanley Ann Dunham and took her and Obama to Indonesia, but later left her when Obama was 10 and never reentered his life.

A child needs two parents for mental health and wholeness. Boys need a father or father figure who provides emotional nurturance, moral guidance and positive male role modeling. In their absence, boys grow up with a gaping emotional void. A need to fill that void, to seek constant adulation and approval, often drives them into careers – such as politics and other power-holding positions – to compensate for the love and approval they never received from their fathers.

That is what’s behind Obama’s socialist politics. That is what’s behind his wish to take care of everyone from cradle to grave in the way he must feel no one took care of him – at least in significant ways.

How best to accomplish that goal? Offer government programs, tax-free welfare and other forms of “spreading the wealth” that will earn him the Great Provider moniker he seeks so that he becomes, figuratively, “the father of our country.” (Move over, George Washington.) That way he will be able to ease the pain of his father’s and stepfather’s absence and to exorcise the uneasy presence of that influence.

Or so he unconsciously thinks. However, it is a badly misguided attempt to find the love and approval which his father and stepfather failed to provide. (Incidentally, you can’t “fix” a person’s pain by making them endlessly childlike and dependent! Most dependents end up hating the “benevolent” giver, precisely because that so-called giver reinforces his or her feeling of inferiority.) That is why biracial Obama regards himself as a black man (after his father) rather than white (after his mother or grandparents). He has said publicly that he self-identifies as a black man. That is also why he adopts the victim identity of black-liberation theology, both of which are his cries for love and approval from his father – who is deceased and therefore can never provide what Obama lacks and wants – and his stepfather.

That puts Obama in an unsolvable dilemma: unconsciously yearning for something he can never have, yet not daring to recognize – first personally, then publicly – the nature of the problem because it might destroy all he has done to compensate for it.

In Dreams from My Father, Obama makes clear that he adopted his father’s ideals and social philosophy – which essentially was Socialism-on-the-way-to-Communism. Why does he want to be like his father? Is it because he thinks that adopting his father’s worldview will somehow yield him the paternal love, approval and guidance he never got?

In the Father’s Day 2009 edition of Parade magazine, Obama wrote about being a father. He said, “My father left my family when I was 2 years old, and I knew him mainly from the letters he wrote and the stories my family told. And while I was lucky to have two wonderful grandparents who poured everything they had into helping my mother raise my sister and me, I still felt the weight of his absence throughout my childhood” (21 June 2009, p. 4).

He continued, “I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence – both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility is one that no government can fill.” And he concludes, “That is why we need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.”

Finally, he goes on to declare that he doesn’t want that sense of abandonment and emotional distance to happen to his daughters and therefore he is recommitting himself to “those duties that all parents share.”

Self-insight and self-understanding are fundamental to maturity and happiness, and it is to Obama’s credit that he stated what he said above. But it is to his discredit that he avoids all mention of his father’s politics as the basis of his own. Is it deliberate or does it reflect a failure to recognize and assess his father’s irresponsibility and shortcomings? Is it a lack of maturity in Obama which prevents him for seeing that the Emperors in his life had no clothes?

For all his words about what makes a good father, Obama doesn’t see – or perhaps is simply unwilling to admit – that both his father’s and his own political philosophy, as expressed in the vast socialist governmental actions he has already taken and proposed, is the foremost contributor to the dysfunction of the black community in general with which he identifies.

To the extent that the black community is functional, it is because of two factors. First, many blacks have let go of their race-based identity enough to assimilate into mainstream America and take advantage of the opportunities available to them, and have recognized that the only colors which really count are red, white and blue. Second, black religious institutions such as churches and mosques insist on moral behavior and self-restraint.

Remove that and what’s left? Dysfunction verging on anarchy and chaos! Bill Cosby’s recent criticism of the black community blames bad parenting for:

– the high rate of crime in the black community
– the high rate of incarcerated black men
– the high dropout rate of black high school students
– the high rate of unwed mothers and one-parent households
– the coarse behavior, vulgar speech and slovenly dress of black youth
– the failure of many blacks to move up the socioeconomic ladder

Cosby declared that parents are primarily responsible for these social ills – not their slave heritage and not white oppression – and therefore they must change their parenting behavior to provide moral guidance and socioeconomic upward mobility for their children.

The root cause of crime in America is the breakdown of the two-parent, marriage-based family which is responsible for socializing their children and teaching them morality, personal responsibility, respect for personal property, and respect for law and order. Of course, that is true, regardless of race or color.

And why has the two-parent, marriage-based family broken down? The welfare system – the “long march” into cradle-to-grave entitlement to just about everything for the “poor” and “underprivileged” and “disadvantaged” at the expense of taxpayers. In 1994, when Minority Leader Newt Gingrich introduced his Contract With America and recaptured Republican control of Congress with his trailblazing idea to put the welfare system out of work, millions of formerly dependent welfare recipients got job training and jobs, effectively raising the self-esteem and independence of multimillions of black Americans who had suffered under the Democrat-controlled indentured slavery welfare system for decades. That system had created a permanent government-funded underclass which was predominantly black.

In fact, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and its extensions by federal and state governments has been one of the greatest social-political failures in U.S. history – and probably the costliest. It led directly to the breakup of families and to driving fathers out of the home, so that young people grow up without a male role model-authority figure in their lives.

The welfare rules first encouraged unwed motherhood and then encouraged unwed mothers to have more children to get more welfare money, in essence subsidizing promiscuity! The rules also penalized the mother if there was a male (wage-earner or not) in the household by reducing welfare payments. As a result, kids were running in the streets, getting into drugs and crime and other antisocial behavior. In a socially destructive spiral, babies were having babies, and poorly educated and poorly socialized children were having children who were then even more poorly educated and socialized – all at the expense of the taxpayer. In other words, the government was subsidizing poverty!

Moreover, when the children’s parents were derelict in their responsibilities, the government stepped in to make the children wards of the state, rather than relatives or private charity taking responsibility. The state then became the authority-father figure as provider and protector. It’s impossible to bond to that kind of “father,” but you sure can get addicted to the welfare payments and state-provided benefits.

But Obama refuses to recognize or acknowledge this shameful history of government-controlled family life. His “solution” calls for more of the same unworkable approaches which are destroying America as a land of prosperity and opportunity, and transforming it into a socialist state in which the father-provider is nothing but faceless bureaucrats and the family-recipients have no responsibility other than to keep their hands out and wait for the welfare check because they’ve come to believe that entitlements are rights.

Freud said, “Happiness is the fulfillment of a childhood wish.” It isn’t a wish for power, wealth or fame, but for loving nurturance in a stable two-parent family. Citizen Kane’s last word, “Rosebud,” reflected his failure to find happiness through power, wealth and fame – because happiness can never be obtained through them. Under President Obama, America is being turned into a socialist state in his vain quest to capture what he never had. The state will become a nice nanny, taking care of everyone. And the love and approval and appreciation for all that will go to The Great Provider.

But it’s widely recognized that a government big enough to give you everything is a government big enough to take everything you have. The nice nanny becomes Big Brother. The white glove comes off to reveal an iron fist beneath it.

Beyond that, however, the unrequited yearning for a father’s love continues to grow in the only way possible – the deification of Obama as The Messiah. He has never renounced the childish public adulation he’s received as the The One, The Messiah. Patriots recognize how foolish and even satanic it all is, but Obama’s mindset goes beyond replacing the Father of Our Country. It goes all the way to replacing God the Father. If he is reelected, watch out for signs reading “In Obama We Trust” and “One Nation under Obama.”

John White is author of 15 books about consciousness research and higher human development, including, The Meeting of Science and Spirit and What Is Enlightenment? Currently, he is completing America, Freedom and Enlightenment about the Declaration of Independence as a spiritual document. He and his wife Barbara have four children and five grandchildren, and live in Cheshire, Connecticut, USA.