I think this is overly cynical. There are, I think still plenty of politicians who get into politics to make things better for people, I really do. But they are faced with complex, hard-to-fix issues where there is nuance and compromise needed, and people get really pissed off about the nuance and compromise
We can't vote out the people. The people are angry, at each other, in ways disproportionate to the nuance and compromise. It becomes self-reinforcing.
I'll be blunt that I think some people are more at fault than others. But I don't know how to stop that.
I wish it were just the politicians, or even just the media. Then there would be things that I could do. But when the people hate each other -- and I genuinely believe they do -- I can't think of any options.
Two individuals in a room are more likely to find common ground than hate until you bring up the right sport they happen to be on opposing teams for.
I don't care what they are like in person. I care what message they send to their elected officials, who have the power to harm me.
Most people aren't ogres in their own story, but that doesn't make them not hypocritical or callous. I've been a jerk many times to people I was in a position of power over in ways that felt justified and correct to me at the time but weren't either of those things in retrospect. The fact that people find justifications that let them sleep at night doesn't mean they're not screwing people over.
> and people get really pissed off about the nuance and compromise
I don't think it's quite so simple as "people don't accept nuance". That is true, especially in the era in which we live, but it isn't the whole story. Because that was true a generation or two ago, too - it might have even been more true then than it is now.
I, and as far as I can tell a large proportion of other people, don't have a problem with nuance and compromise in principle. We're just tired of seeing nuance and compromise used as an excuse exactly when they're convenient and only in ways that favor slowing down or preventing solutions (and not in ways that might ever limit the unlimited pursuit of power and wealth). Selective application of a principle is no principle at all.
As a concrete example, you've probably seen people do this with scientific studies. Study supports their view? Well, obviously it's true! Study supports the opposing point of view? Well, you have to remember it's just one study and bias is possible and there are numerous methodological issues so we shouldn't adjust to much from a small number of data points and hey there's this alternative explanation I just thought of it's probably that and...
Or look at your standard industrial or engineering postmortem. I'm sure whatever developer introduced that CrowdStrike bug is not going to have a job in a week, because pressure from your boss is no excuse to ship something broken, you have to stand up and do what's right! But is the same going to happen to the leadership? Is anyone going to say "being distant from the problem and operating in the fog of war that comes with leadership is no excuse to run a bad ship"? No, they aren't, and everyone knows it. The elite gets to profit off of their lack of concern for building something safe, and be insulated from the consequences when it fails.
That's not being nuanced, that's pretending (perhaps even to yourself) to be nuanced as a rhetorical tool. In isolation, there's no good way to distinguish the two, so once this tactic becomes sufficiently widespread, distrust for nuance is a reasonable response.