Obama Explains His Ominous ‘Death Star’ in Chicago

Whatever else Barack Obama’s new “presidential center” in Chicago is intended to be, it looks as ominous and forbidding as the man himself looked on January 20, 2017, when he took the Oath of Office as president of the United States with all the grim determination that any Marxist apparatchik has ever felt as he undertook the destruction of another bourgeois principality.

Obama’s non-library library is truly an eyesore. It looks more like an urban prison, or a fortress, than like a center that is actually planning on welcoming people to visit and presenting an enlightening and inviting overview of the Obama presidency. The obelisk-like structure has almost no windows, as if those who planned it were envisioning a day when outraged Americans would storm the building in their rage over the damage that the Obama years brought to the United States, while an embattled cadre of defenders inside hunkered down for battle, using the structure’s few windows to return fire without being exposed to too much fire themselves.

Surely not, right? Surely the architects of this peculiar building are all earnest patriots from whom the very thought of such a day would be anathema, and who were proud to work on this monument to Barack Obama’s presidency, which they intended to memorialize in a suitable fashion the transformative era of this great man. Right?

And whether accidentally or on purpose, they really did create a fitting monument to Obama’s presidency: ominous, forbidding, drab, vaguely menacing, the Obama presidential center is not only oddly fitting as a visual expression of what the Obama years were like; it is also a tribute to all the colorless, monotonous architecture that one finds in the socialist regimes that most resemble Obama’s vision for America.

The New York Post reported Friday that all is really well: “The odd design of former President Barack Obama’s new presidential center is supposed to evoke unity and not Darth Vader, according to an Obama Foundation official, who explained the bizarre look of the austere building.”

There was a great deal to explain, for “the $830 million monolith — slated to open in Chicago next year — has drawn comparisons to the ‘Death Star’ on social media, and some locals have described it as a ‘concrete tomb’ and a ‘monstrosity.’” But in the time-honored tradition of leftists demanding that you believe what they say rather than your lying eyes, Obama Foundation Deputy Director Kim Patterson explained that the gray, prison-like structure is really a welcoming, inviting, chummy structure.

“The shape of the building,” Patterson explained smoothly, “was actually meant to mimic four hands coming together to show the importance of our collective action.” Collective action. So they’re admitting that it expresses some socialist ideal, but the idea that it looks by any stretch of the imagination like four hands coming together is another one of those Orwellian two plus two equals five gambits of which the left is so inordinately fond.

And why so few windows? Oh, it’s to protect the priceless Obama artifacts, doncha know: “There are not a lot of windows on the building, but that’s intentional because sunlight is just not a friend to the artwork and the artifacts that are going inside of the building.” You don’t want that tan suit to fade, now, do you? In any case, this excuse won’t wash, for according to Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett, “rather than housing physical copies of Obama’s presidential records, the library will contain digital files because Obama was the first president to digitize all of his papers from the White House.”

So again, why so few windows? We may never know. We do know, however, who is responsible for this ugly building. Jarrett, the former éminence grise of his disastrous presidential administration, admitted that the center looks the way it does because that’s just the way the great man wants it. “I wish that people could be a fly on the wall,” Jarrett mused, “to see how many times in the course of the day that I hear from President Obama about ideas for the center, tweaks, programming, what we can do for the design. I sent him the menu for the restaurants. He cares about what food we’re offering. Is it affordable? Is it tasty? Will children want it?”

He even cares about the food we eat! Oh, great leader, please bestow your fatherly gaze upon us!

Jarrett also boasted that the Obama Foundation had hired “racially diverse businesses” to get the center going, and really, that’s all that matters, “Because we believe inclusion is actually a strength,” she says. Of course it is, Valerie. It makes much more of a difference that your contractor is a lesbian of color than that she actually knows anything about constructing buildings properly.

And that may turn out to be the Obama presidential center’s saving grace. Maybe it’ll collapse of its own accord after just a few years of marring the Chicago landscape. DEI, in the end, has its advantages.