It's just the nature of power: Because governments are powerful and therefore attract people who want to grab control of that power, you're never going to see a big, powerful government that's not doing some large amount of naked fascism. Russia, China, and the US all succumbed to it to some degree, regardless of what high-minded rhetoric went into their formation. It's always going to take a significant battle by "the little guy" to make them behave in any at all reasonable fashion.

We're always going to have to be putting some sustained energy of resistance, activism, politicking, good works outside the machinery of pure politics, what-have-you, into the system in order for it to behave in any way that's not just naked oligarchy. It's just a natural result of what powerful people will tend to do in order to grab the reins of government to continue and extend their power: If there's nothing counterbalancing their pressure, then they'll win. It's a lot easier in the US than in Russia or China but it's definitely not easy.

Put another way: If showing up one day and pushing one button to choose a clearly better option over a clearly worse option is too much to ask of you, then there's absolutely 0 chance that you have the energy for the amount of work that would be needed to create an actually good government like the one you're saying the US should have (which, absolutely yes, I agree with you.)