Wannabe Dictator

By Alan Caruba

When President Obama said, “I’m not a dictator” on the day the sequester was activated, March 1st, he should have finished the sentence, “but I intend to be one.”

Obama has never treated the office of the presidency as his predecessors did. They knew it was a temporary job, based on one term or two. They understood it was political in that they were expected to work with both parties and that involved compromise. Obama has shown no desire to compromise on anything and routinely has changed the terms of various agreements in order to negate them.

In politics, especially at that level, a man’s word is his bond and Obama’s word is dirt. He cannot be trusted. This may account for Speaker of the House John Boehner’s barely concealed contempt for the President. It does not help when virtually all the Democrats join in the festival of lies that passes for political dialogue these days or their rote repetition by a supine media, though this is beginning to decrease as even their adoration diminishes.

On taking office in 2009, Obama created a shadow government of “czars” answerable only to him. His cabinet choices have implemented policies that led to the first reduction of the nation’s credit rating, reductions in access to the nation’s vast oil reserves on federally controlled land, and social engineering within the military including women in combat roles.

Obama has no real interest in the “give and take” of politics. Bypassing Congress at every opportunity, his favored form of “rule” is the executive order. Current executive orders grant Obama total power over every aspect of life in America in the event of an emergency or attack.

Where does one start with this President? Like all wannabe dictators, Obama has made it clear even when he was campaigning in 2008 that he is anti-gun ownership and, after the Newtown shootings, he issued 23 gun control executive orders. Ensuring that citizens have no means to protect themselves or pose a threat to a regime, dictators take guns away.

On July 2, 2008, speaking in Boulder, Colorado, Obama advocated a “Civilian National Security Force” that would be “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded as the U.S. Military.”

Alarms are rising about the unprecedented purchase of ammunition of the Department of Homeland Security. An astonishing 1.6 billion bullets are stockpiled, mainly 40 caliber and 9 millimeter. News of the purchase of 2,700 light-armored tanks suggests that the Obama federal government anticipates an armed rebellion by the citizenry.

Writing in Investors Daily, Andrew Malcolm noted that is enough “to shoot every American about five times, including illegal immigrants.” Other government departments, including Social Security, are reportedly being armed in a similar fashion.

Nationalizing all power in the central government, Obama’s Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, did that for the nation’s healthcare system, requiring everyone to purchase insurance or pay a fine if they do not. Though patently unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled that ACA was “a tax” and permitted it to go forward. Government bureaucrats will now decide who gets medical care and how much.

Obama has consistently rid the top ranks of the U.S. military of any generals who are seen to oppose or disagree with his policies and politics. The heaviest budget cuts have affected the Department of Defense, increasing the vulnerability of America to attack and restricting its ability to project power globally.

The power to tax is also the power to impoverish Americans and Obama has never ceased to demand increased taxes while refusing to offset government funding with reductions in government spending. Americans have seen their personal wealth diminished due to his economic policies. Millions remain unemployed.

Obama has never accepted blame for any of his policies such as the multi-billion, failed “stimulus.” Instead he spent his first term blaming former President George W. Bush and as his second term begins, he is blaming Republicans who control the House of Representatives, but have seen their economic and other measures defeated or ignored in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

If the nation survives Obama’s second term without martial law or its equivalent, historians will look back on him as the worst President to have ever held that office.

© Alan Caruba, 2013