How to Be a Dictator, Part One: Create and maintain a sense of constant crisis

Your first executive order banning Muslims is blocked by the courts?

Then issue a second executive order?

It's blocked as unconstitutional?

Ban electronic devices from flights originating in those same countries.

This morning, the TODAY SHOW interviewed a so-called "security expert," who stated with absolute confidence that U.S. intelligence agencies must have "very precise information" ... which, of course, they can't share for national-security reasons.

Well, perhaps.  Or perhaps we are seeing a classic gambit to gain power by creating a crisis where none exists.

According to FORBES Magazine (yes, FORBES, not MOTHER JONES), "Dictatorships are often unexpected.  They have arisen among prosperous, educated and cultured people, who seemed safe from a dictatorship...."

This article goes on to say, "Hitler's main talent seemed to be as a speech maker, so he began giving speeches that appealed to Germans embittered and disillusioned...."  Anything about that sentence reverberate in the national scene today?

Another good article I've found this morning asserts, "Psychologists and sociologists who study terrorism say dictators are able to spread fear among their people, and place themselves as their only salvation."

And then, of course, there is the dictator as magician.  Don't look at the hand that holds the red ball (Russiagate?).  Look over here at my other hand (exploding iPads and laptops?).  If "Obama tapped my phone" didn't get any traction, maybe this will.

And, if all else fails, create a constant state of war.

"Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One(formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation."  

A glimpse into our future?