The media likes to talk about politicians' "job performance." So I will, too. However, when the media does it, they start with the ridiculous premise that the politicians are trying to serve the people. (You might as well talk about how well the nation's carjackers are "serving" America's drivers.) I, on the other hand, rate aspiring tyrants (politicians) based upon how effectively they extort, control and otherwise oppress the masses. After all, that's obviously their goal. So let's see how well Obama is serving his own lust for power and the agenda of the tyrannical puppet-masters who own him.

Overall, I can only give Obama's megalomaniacal efforts a "C." It's obviously not for lack of trying or lack of ambition; the guy makes Stalin look like a moderate. Yes, he's a psychotic, profoundly dishonest, narcissistic, power-happy, delusional control freak of the highest order, but frankly, he's been a really ineffective tyrant so far. It's not that he doesn't want to rule the world; it's just that he's not very good at it (which is a good thing for those of us who like freedom).

A few people who have read my first book, "How To Be a Successful Tyrant," have jokingly asked whether I think that Bush or Obama has read my book. If they did, they weren't paying attention. They inherited an almost perfect social and political climate to enact complete tyranny, but, with the help of Clinton and George Bush, Sr., managed to completely botch it up. Personally, I'm thrilled about that. Had they not been so short-sighted, delusional and inept, this country would be in a lot more trouble. Let me give a few illustrations:

1) A successful tyrant doesn't appear as a tyrant to his victims. He is seen as a protector and savior who is trusted and loved by most, if not all, of his subjects. You can't remain a tyrant for long if the peasants can see that you're a tyrant. If you want an example of a very successful tyrant, try Abraham Lincoln, and to a lesser extent, FDR. They are still revered by most people (Lincoln more so than Roosevelt), despite having been sadistic, power-happy, homicidal, sociopathic megalomaniacs of the first degree. Clinton and both Bushes, on the other hand, are only revered by the most delusional among us, and Obama is well on his way there, too.

2) A competent tyrant uses propaganda to train his victims to feel adoration and unquestioning loyalty to him, and can keep that going even while severely oppressing them. Obama, during the campaign, did a good job of using empty emotionalism to fire up lots of people to blindly rally behind him. (Considering the gullibility and cluelessness of his target audience, however, that was really no great accomplishment.) But he didn't seem to have any long-term plan for how to transition his vacant "hope and change" mantra into support for his totalitarian agenda. Instead of continuing carefully crafted, effective mind-control disinformation tactics, he seemed to just charge right into trying to enact all manner of totalitarian, communist "programs," without first getting public support for them. 

3) A successful tyrant is patient, slowly and methodically depriving his victims of their freedom, at a rate that doesn't make them panic or resist. Obama has no patience, and no tact. For example, his obviously hurried attempt to leap directly to complete socialized medicine scared the heck out of a lot of people, including most doctors. And talking about mandatory "national service" for all young people, which Obama and one of his top tyrant helpers--Rahm Emmanuel--have been openly advocating, is raising a lot of eyebrows, even among leftists usually loyal to the American Socialist Party (commonly known as "Democrats"). The multi-billion-dollar handouts to huge banks and other corporations (by Bush and Obama) also shocked a lot of the peasants out of their usual oblivious complacency, which is not something a smart tyrant would ever do.

4) A successful tyrant, before doing any power-grab, will find something--whether it's real, exaggerated, or completely fabricated--which will scare the people into accepting the latest increase in oppression. But Obama failed to scare the public about anything, but instead just lunged forward and tried to force his totalitarian agenda through the legislature. Without some "crisis" or "emergency" (usually completely made up by the tyrants), the people might actually want to think about some new proposed power-grab before supporting it, as we're seeing with the "swine flu" hoax, the attempt to socialize the medical industry, and so on. Every tyrant worth his salt knows that you first have to deceive the peasants into wanting to be oppressed, but Obama has utterly failed to do that.

5) A good tyrant looks like he's on the people's side, "fighting" for them. While Obama duped a lot of people into thinking that during the campaign, he seems to have all but dropped that charade since he got into power. The huge corporate and bank bailouts, the attempt to nationalize healthcare, the huge proposed tax increases, all make him look like the megalomaniac he is, with only the flimsiest facade of good intentions to try to hide it. A tyrant that does not appear as a savior and protector is not going to accomplish much. And the astounding number of firearm and ammunition purchases which occurred immediate after Obama's election give a pretty clear indication that a whole lot of people certainly don't see Obama as being on their "side."

6) A good tyrant knows how important it is to keep up the charade that he is representing "the people." Obama did a fairly good job of exploiting the anti-Bush sentiment, but then almost completely dropped the act once in power. By continuing much of the fascist agenda of the prior administration, such as continuing to lock people up indefinitely without charges, continuing to condone torture, continuing all of the other fascist garbage of the "Patriot Act," and not only continuing the military occupation of Iraq (after pretending to be morally opposed to it), but escalating the conflict in Afghanistan, Obama effectively slapped in the face all of the anti-war protestors (left and right) who thought he was on their side. He seems to be so short-sighted that he really thought that getting elected was all he had to do in order to get away with whatever collectivist oppression he wanted. A smart tyrant knows better.

7) Making and breaking promises is not necessarily a bad thing for a tyrant to do, but it must be done carefully. When infringing on individual freedom, the successful tyrant will make up a really good excuse, and will pretend that it pains him to do so. On the other hand, when a control freak makes dramatic promises to get elected, and then immediately and casually ignores them, without even a half decent excuse, that clearly conveys his contempt for the very people that he is pretending to "represent." George Bush, Sr., did this with his stupid "Read my lips" promise, and Obama copied him, by promising that not a single kind of tax would be raised, "not one dime," for anyone who wasn't making over $150,000 a year--a promise that was flushed down the toilet in a heartbeat once Obama took office.

8) Generally speaking, it doesn't take much for a tyrant to gain and keep the blind loyalty of the people who get paid to do his bidding. Both "law enforcement" and military personnel, who are always used to increase and maintain the power of their masters (the politicians), will usually inflict almost any amount of oppression on their neighbors, provided the oppression is first declared to be "legal." When some of the tyrant's own mercenaries start to question the wisdom of his commands, as is happening with Obama (and began under Bush), the tyrant is in serious trouble. When, for example, you get even a few cops and soldiers openly declaring ahead of time (as the "Oath Keepers" are doing) that they will refuse any order to disarm Americans, or put Americans in detention camps, that spells serious trouble for the control freaks.

9) Obama is a communist. I don't mean that as a meaningless insult, as most people use the term. I mean it as a perfectly accurate description of his political philosophy. There are two kinds of communist tyrants: the ones who know how utterly idiotic the notion of communism is, but who use the boneheaded philosophy as a tool to gain power for themselves; and the ones who actually think that communism is a good idea economically. Obama appears to be the latter. Needless to say, being the supreme, all-powerful dictator of a barren wasteland inhabited by a bunch of starving vagrants isn't much to brag about. That is why a smart tyrant will make sure that he doesn't "kill the golden goose." He needs the peasants to be just free enough that they keep producing, so the tyrant has something worth controlling and stealing. Even the most barbaric slave-master wasn't stupid enough to take 100% of what his slaves produced, or they would either revolt, run away, or starve to death, leaving the "owner" with nothing. And so it is with tyrants: Only the most moronic megalomaniac would do things which would destroy the entire economy of the land over which he rules, and Obama is well on his way to doing just that. Aside from the stupidity of trying to rob people who are destitute, a tyrant also must understand that desperate, impoverished peasants are infinitely more likely to openly rebel than those who have a lot to lose.

10) The single biggest mistake any tyrant can make--and the mistake that eventually brings down every single one--is not knowing when to back off. When the peasants are starting to grumble about losing their freedom, and starting to complain about what the tyrants are doing to them, the stupidest thing a tyrant can possibly do is try to grab more power. Yet that is what almost all tyrants do, and it is what Obama is doing, even more dramatically than the prior incompetent tyrant, George W. Bush, did. A smart tyrant would back off a bit, giving significant "tax cuts," paying lip service to freedom, and loosening the shackles enough for the peasants to notice it. Then, of course, he would go back to very gradually tightening them again. But when the people start showing real signs of discontent, almost every tyrant in history has tried to jump to complete control, which only triggered panic and a vicious backlash from his subjects. And Obama is in the process of doing exactly that, by trying to tax, regulate, and/or nationalize everything in sight, as quickly as he possibly can. Just like every other short-sighted megalomaniac, he seems to think that if he can just quickly slam the door and lock it, he will achieve perpetual, unlimited power. But that's not how reality works, and, fortunately for those of us who still value freedom, Obama is about to learn that the hard way.

Months before the election, I said that I wanted Obama to win for just this reason: because he would grab for complete power too quickly, and by doing so, would implode the entire Washington control machine. And he is in the process of doing just that (though Clinton and Bush really started that ball rolling). In short, Obama is an incompetent, ignorant tyrant, and that is a very good thing for the long-term future of humanity.