Analysis

Obama-Produced Movie Reveals The Future Liberals Have In Store For Us

ANALYSIS
GREECE-US-POLITICS (Photo by MENELAOS MYRILLAS/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images)

(Photo by MENELAOS MYRILLAS/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images)

Gage Klipper Commentary & Analysis Writer
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The corporate media has spent the past week cheering the latest Netflix-Obama collaboration, “Leave the World Behind.” While it’s been touted as the former president’s first foray into fiction as a producer, this psychological apocalypse thriller is not too far off from what Democrats have already put the country through. And it can’t be a good omen for where we’re headed.

If you subscribe to Netflix, you’ve likely been fed trailers for the streaming giant’s latest blockbuster. When I clicked on the app on a Saturday night, a teaser for the film immediately began to play. You see an A-list cast navigating an unspecified disaster, as a black family and a white family struggle to trust each other when they’re forced to shelter under the same roof.

One thing the trailer conspicuously leaves out is that it was produced with heavy involvement by former President Barack Obama, who, according to director Sam Esmail was on call to “ground [him] a little bit on how things might unfold in reality.” I decided the film looked better than most of what Netflix has on offer, and opted to give it a try — unaware that I was about to enter a liberal fever dream the likes of which only the most deranged MSNBC viewer could imagine.

The first two hours don’t reveal much more than the 90-second teaser does. Tension builds slowly after wealthy financier George (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth show up in the middle of the night at their Long Island mansion, which is being rented by middle class couple Amanda and Clay (Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) and their children. First the cable and internet go out, then the lights, then everything seems to be shutting down as planes literally fall from the sky.

Animals gather strangely around the property as if they know what’s coming. Attempts to escape back to the city are thwarted by a bunch of rogue Teslas and clues begin to trickle out. Is it aliens, terrorists or a natural disaster? We are led in contradictory directions. (RELATED: The Latest ‘Eat The Rich’ Film Shows Hollywood Can Still Make A Damn Good Thriller)

All told, it’s not a bad thriller when you’re stuck home on a rainy Saturday night. But the last 15 minutes reveal what it had all been building to.

Spoilers ahead

Perhaps I was naïve to imagine Netflix would portray anything other than a right wing coup. George — apparently acting as the mouthpiece for Obama’s take on “how things might unfold in reality” — explains the process that coup would have to follow.

The first step is “isolation,” to “disable” the country’s “communication and transportation.” Step two is “synchronized chaos” — “terrorize [the public] with covert attacks and misinformation” leaving them vulnerable to “extremists in their own military.” Then, “without a clear enemy or motive people will start turning on each other. “If the country is “dysfunctional enough,” step three would happen on its own as the people tear each other apart: “coup d’etat, civil war, collapse.”

Mistrust is the central theme of the film from the outset. The two families serve as a microcosm of the larger American public. Often, disaster movies show how people come together under existential stress, but Obama’s dim view of American bleeds over into these characters. George suspiciously tries to downplay his reason for showing up unannounced, but Amanda doesn’t buy it. She thinks he and Ruth are lying from the start. Meanwhile, Ruth believes her father is being too magnanimous in allowing the white renters to stay.

Because, of course, the racial element plays a huge role. For all she knows, Amanda insists, George and Ruth might be a butler and maid pulling off an elaborate plot to swindle them. In the style of “Get Out,” Clay serves as her incredulously earnest counterpoint. They embody that insidious, quiet racism that liberals imagine is lurking in the hearts of all bourgeois, liberal white people. How could a black man really own such a nice home and drive a Bentley, Amanda says without saying. Ruth, on the other hand, makes her mistrust of white people much more explicit in the scene that has gone the most viral on social media.

The irony is that the two families never really move past the mistrust even as it becomes clear that mistrust was the goal of the attack. The terrorists win because we let them.

Obama clearly thinks America is vulnerable, but that the threat comes from without rather than within. Taking the broader context of current events into account, this means a uniquely right wing threat. In one telling scene, George admits they fled the city after being tipped off by a powerful client high up in the Department of Defense.

Is he “behind what’s happening here?” Amanda asks.

“No, nothing like that,” George responds. “A conspiracy theory about a shadowy group of people running the world is far too lazy of an explanation.” No, “no one is pulling the strings.”

“The best even the most powerful people can hope for is a heads up,” he concludes ominously.

The message is clear: there’s no “evil cabal,” no exploitative elite, no power centers seeking to play Americans against each other. The only problem we face as a country is that we are too stupid to listen to the message Obama and Co. have been telling us since Trump came down the golden escalator.

The ostensible message is that we need to trust each other and our leaders — as if Obama would never steer us wrong.

Yet despite all the liberal messaging, the movie works best as an allegory of what those same liberal elites put the country through during COVID-19.

The first step was “isolation,” making sure everyone was trapped in their homes and unable to converse online without aggressive censorship.

Step two was “synchronized chaos.” The government spread “misinformation” far and wide: masks work, vaccines stop the spread, the virus came from a bat. You had to stay home, unless you wanted to “terrorize” the country in the name of Black Lives Matter. Many blamed racism, white people, science deniers and Trump for the chaos unfolding. Others rightly blamed domestic agitators, China and power hungry elites. But without a “clear enemy or motive” people began “turning on each other.” (RELATED: Hollywood A-Listers Accidentally Tell Us Why Their Movies Suck)

While not a “coup d’etat” in the traditional sense, Democrats rode the chaos they facilitated into victory in 2020. We’ve now seen a “collapse” in any semblance of equal justice or respect for representative democracy among our ruling elite.

Far from issuing a message of unity, the film creates more of what it claims to rebuke. It divides viewers into those who credulously imbibe the message it’s selling — that there’s a group of deplorables who fall for misinformation and hate — and those who see it for the naval-gazing bullshit that it is.

It’s impossible to know whether Obama really believes this moralizing nonsense or if it’s just cynical propaganda. While it’s hard to believe that anyone could lack such self-awareness, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. He, along with the rest of the Democratic Party, believes that liberalism can and must win the day against anything that stands against its total victory. He has convinced himself that the means justify the ends. The utopian vision is just out of reach; all he needs is the power to reach out and grasp it.

With 2024 fast approaching and their right to rule falling further into doubt, Democrats will pull no punches as they desperately cling to power. Expect more division, more distrust, and more disingenuously preening movies falsely claiming to abhor both.