Its simple towards the end of the Republic, the Roman Senate more time squabbling and absolutely no time fixing problems. They were too busy preserving their old failed policies and programs and would just refuse to fix them.
Remind you of anyone?
Eventually things turned violent. Not all out civil war at first, just alittle here and alittle there. However, by the time Ceasar and the Triumvirite came around, the Republic was already used to this civil conflict. so when Ceasar took over and named himself dictator for life, the people werent really that shocked or upset over it, although his political opponents were, which is why they killed him. I dont think we are this far yet, but we are certainly moving in this direction.
Look at Congress, even when we elect people specifically to reform things there are too many politicians too entrenched in the old ways to get anything done. Not only that, how many of the things we done are going to be reversed by the new congress?
And then look at the political violence. still relatively minor. Vandalism mostly property damage. but it is getting worse each election cycle. On top of that we've had a major political party trying to undermine our elections every political cycle claiming they are untrustworthy or acting as though there is fraud without any evidence of such.
History repeats itself, although its hard to notice where in the cycle you are.
