Governance has two sides to it. One is the visible one, government, law, rules, procedures, institutions - nouns. The other is the hidden dynamics - reactions and interactions, relationships - verbs.
It should not be expected that introducing new law is going to immediately change how society works inside. Replacing political system with another one, or removing political system entirely, is not going to work as intended at first. Even when changes are violent, some things will stay the same - one neighbor you trust, the other you don't, it's not going to change easily.
The other way is similar. If people play with the thought that maybe women could get the right to vote, it is going to take time and energy to actually make it happen. Not easily, not straight away, but one side influences the other.
And sometimes it's easy to see how both sides amplify things that should rather be left in the past.
Fear and uncertainty of the future (because modern world is fast and who knows if tomorrow we will have jobs and food) allow certain type of politicians to thrive. They get elected and, because they are who they are, and because they come in full package of their friends, associates, similarly-minded bunch, they become the loud voice of of the fear. They amplify. And then, feedback loop, more fear is created. And out of fear comes violence, and reaction. Sides are chosen, weapons are ready, madness starts. Even those who'd rather stay calm and see that this is leading us nowhere nice, even they have no choice.
I see it happening in Poland as well. Exactly the same thing. I don't really care for "democracy" being hijacked, it's not what is really happening (well, it is what is superficially happening at least), the really dangerous thing is that the society is more and more divided into "us" and "them". It doesn't really matter how we define "us" (good catholics, conservatives, "rights") and "them" (liberals, ex-communists, "lefts"), what matters is that at some point there is no such thing as polite conversation on a bus or post office. The first question is "who did you vote for?" and, depending on the answer, it's war or alliance. Emotions are running free. Neocortex is in shutdown mode, and higher reasoning is off. What happens then is pure aggression fueled by stupid ideologies, which see the world through broken mirror...
...and our masters are happy, because slaves fighting among themselves are good for business, and the worst nightmare of any master is about the slaves uniting.
