What you describe can be boiled down to lack of enlightenment. Like, the thing our ancestors fought really hard for in the past 500 years or so (historians please correct me), the very foundation on which things like a stable democracy are build upon.

The USA always had really weak education and overbearing religious tomfoolery, but now it blew up to a damn crusade against everything enlightenment stands for. For the foolish it's "one-upping the libs", for the uneducated or indoctrinated it's "doing gods work", the powerful see it as an opportunity to shift power to their own "rightful" rule. Meanwhile the only thing it actually is is a damn tragedy that leads to suffering and death.

Sorry if my english is somewhat clunky.