It seems to me that US politics took a turn for the worse in the past 20 years, and my response has been to disengage. Randomly, I picked up The Politics Industry by Michael Porter and Katherine Gehl, and I found it pretty convincing:

(a) The system of elections and legislation is responsible for the poor outcomes we see. It's not the specific personalities.

(b) That system's rules were written by the Republican and Democratic parties to entrench their power. It is NOT encoded in the constitution or otherwise set in stone. Both parties are winners with the status quo -- they do very well financially by drumming up tribalistic competition instead of cooperation and problem solving.

(c) The result of the current rules is that a politician's ONLY job is to appeal to primary voters, which is why they take an ideologic or hard line stance. "Reaching across the aisle" results in a primary challenger that costs them their job.

As an "average voter" that thinks the best route is probably somewhere in the middle (the world is complicated, and government is neither omnipotent nor impotent), me and everyone like me are not represented.

They present a surprisingly straightforward remedy:

(1) Adopt non-partisan primaries with Final Five ballots, which a couple states have already passed variants of (Final Four just passed in Alaska!)

(2) Ranked choice voting to remove the Spoiler reason ("don't throw your vote away") that keeps independents or third parties out.

I came away optimistic about the future. Highly recommended!

Here's their site if you'd like to learn more: https://gehlporter.com/