There was Hannah Arendt who analyzed tyranny, and then there is Thomas Friedman. Here is his deep, profound analysis of dictatorial rule: "How do dictators survive? They tell lies. Muammar Gaddafi was one of the biggest liars of all time." I was thinking: imagine if you are a teacher and your student wrote this in an undergraduate paper. Would you not inform the student that such analysis is so unsophisticated and so simplistic?