| 1. | Are Republicans in power? | |
| YES | 2. | Were the policies that the previous Democratic government was able to enact popular with the public? |
| YES | 3. | Claim to support the aims of the policy while using your power behind the scenes to undermine it. * |
| NO | 4. | Repeal the policy with great fanfare, claiming that you are strengthening the entities (usually corporations) whose abusive behaviours (usually harming the interests of individuals) the policy was meant to deal with for the betterment of society (usually corporations). |
| NO | 5. | The Democratic President offers the country a policy. |
| 6. | Does the policy have broad public support? | |
| YES | 7. | Lie about what is in the policy. ** |
| NO | 8. | Insist that the President must change the policy to bring it in line with the will of the people (which, coincidentally, happens to be the Republican Party’s will as well). |
| 9. | Is there now a broad consensus that the policy must be changed? | |
| YES | 10. | Demand that sections of the policy be removed, even if it undermines the ability of the policy to actually solve the problem it was proposed to solve. Especially if it undermines the ability of the policy to actually solve the problem it was proposed to solve. *** |
| NO | 11. | Enlist the Conservative media echo chamber to spread the lie. |
| 12. | Has the government dropped the part of the policy that you and your media allies have relentlessly attacked? | |
| NO | GO TO 7 | |
| YES | 13. | Might the legislation be effective even with the changes you have forced the government to make? |
| YES | GO TO 7 | |
| NO | 14. | Is this an election year? |
| NO | GO TO 5 | |
| YES | 15. | Use the watered down legislation you have forced upon the Democrats to prove that they are incapable of solving the nation’s problems and, more generally, that government regulations are bad and should be avoided. If you are feeling particularly frisky, argue that the best policy is, as always, tax cuts. Then, GO TO 1. |
Notes
* There are several ways of doing this. Although legislators pass laws, they are often interpreted by bureaucratic rules; simply change the rules behind the scenes, changing the way the laws are interpreted and enforced. Or, appoint somebody to head the agency that enforces the law who is fundamentally opposed to the policy – somebody who had recently worked in an industry that the agency, by law, is supposed to be overseeing is always a good choice.
** There are many examples of this, as well. Claiming that a compassionate provision in the health care reform bill that would authorize the use of government funds to pay for end of life counselling was about “death panels” that would give the government the power to “kill grandma” was one. Claiming a provision in the financial reform bill that would require banks to pay into a fund that would be used to liquidate those that failed was a perpetual government bailout was another.
Lying in this way would appear to assume that a substantial amount of the electorate is too stupid to be able to see the truth. Republicans prefer to think of their supporters as “factually flexible.”
*** By removing the provision in the financial reform bill that would have had banks paying for winding their own failures down, the Republicans may have ensured that the government would be on the hook for future bank catastrophes. Astute readers will notice that Republican obstructionism may cause what Republican rhetoric claims the party is against. Yeah, that happens a lot. Fortunately, the legislation is Democratic, so they can be blamed for problem.
Hee hee.
In a democracy, elected representatives are supposed to enact laws that, broadly speaking, benefit a majority of the people. What can you do, then, if you are a representative who is beholden to the corporations that contributed greatly to your election campaign? Undermine the basic relationship between the government and the governed, of course. But, how best to do this? Hmmm. Give us a moment… Yes. Yes. Oh, right. Over the years, politicians have evolved a system whereby the masses are led to believe that oligarchic corporate interests are, in fact, their own, democratic rule be damned.
As always, the How to Destroy Democracy Algorithm is an attempt to show how politics actually works, not how it should work, without editorial comment (except, perhaps, for the title). If you do not like the reality that it portrays, WHY THE HELL DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?