Throughout history, the fall of a democracy and its replacement by tyranny is typically preceded by a period
of contempt for the parliamentary process by the parliamentarians themselves. For a democracy to work, its politicians, however passionately devoted to their self-serving goals, must nonetheless be willing to recognize that those with opposing views might have a point, and that for the government to function, both sides have to be willing to yield and compromise at times. If any of the major players insist on having their own way all the time and demonize the opposition, the parliamentary process breaks down, the government is paralyzed, and the people grow weary of and finally reject their democratic government, leaving the field open for a dictatorship which at least “gets things done.” It wasn’t an attack by a tyrannical outside force but Julius Caesar’s creation of chaos and neutralization of the Senate that enabled him to subvert the Roman Republic, just as the Bolsheviks got themselves elected to positions in the Kerinsky government following the fall of the Tsar, not to help govern but to prevent the elected legislature from functioning, the same formula Hitler and his Riechtag Nazis followed in their willful destruction of the Wiemar Republic’s democratic processes.
In today’s Washington I doubt if the new breed of Republicans are consciously preparing the way for a dictatorship, but their refusal to collaborate in any way on any issue with the Democrats, their choosing to filibuster every bill, however trivial, their requirement that for any bill to get through the Senate it must have not 51 votes but a difficult to achieve 60 votes, together create gridlock on Capitol Hill and this in turn has led to growing discontent and disgust by the populous for their democratically elected government. In short, by acting in a way that makes it impossible for government to work, these intransient ideologues are setting the stage for the fall of democracy in America and its replacement by some form of autocracy.