Obama vs the People, 2016

Is it normal for the President of the United States of America to threaten the People with military force? In his State of the Union speech, Obama said:

Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You will be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military … and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it. (link)

He said this only a few hours after allowing Iran to capture two Navy boats and their crew, to take the Navy sailors prisoners and compel a female captive to wear a hijab, and to force them all to kneel before Iranian National Guardsmen.

I know that before Obama, it was other way around: the armed forces defended America against foreign threats, instead of being pawns to “debate” their own citizens. This “debate offer” is something from the repertoire of African dictators, but even Obama’s fellow dictators do not threaten their subjects so overtly on behalf of foreign powers. And I doubt that many of them use weasel words like “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide in the air is not pollution, but plants’ nutrients, and of course carbon constitutes most of the dry mass of a human body.

Will this horror end after the November 2016 elections? Judging by the current trends, I am not so sure there will be elections at all.