You've said a lot here that I agree with, but ultimately the responsibility is on the voters to be competent, critical thinkers that at least attempt to be informed. And they (we) are not. But unfortunately this just appears to be an entropy point built into our current system. And it facilitates one party over the other. Republicans are an ideologically unified authoritarian block that denies critical and strategic thinking in its platform and is structured only to identify problems but not sustainable solutions. They've always been this. The current Democratic party, otoh, is a big tent party focused on long term solution plans to nuanced problems and has many stakeholders that are ideologically opposed such that actual compromise may be fundamentally impossible. I honestly don't know if this CAN be overcome. It's a tough spot to be in. What i do know is that the next 4 years, at a minimum, are going to be mad dash of regulatory capture and federal collapse the likes we haven't seen since the 20s.