You've just described PMs pretty much everywhere.
The PM role kind of forces people to become political players. Unlike engineers, a good PM often has trouble distinguishing her work from that of a bad PM that is just good at politics. A good engineer can't get away with being garbage if the engineering manager has half a brain. On the other hand, a bad PM can mask his lack of work and talent pretty easily if he can master the political games of a large organization.
A lot of the value add of a good PM is the intangible organizational and communication stuff that is difficult to quantify. A good PM can make an organization respond better to customer needs. A bad PM can still take credit for anything good that comes out of an organization.
PMs can easily shed blame for organizational failures, especially if there are multiple layers of bureaucracy and scapegoats that haven't mastered politics. In places like Google you'll see the most skillful PMs line up people to share blame with by taking on collaborators mid-way through projects; similarly, they can spot a success story in the making and engineer their own late involvement to benefit from the halo effect of a successful project.
At the highest level, the CEO can filter the shit from the gold in the PM ranks, by personally taking an interest in projects ... but a CEO can't get into the weeds of all corners of the organization. So even in companies with great CEOs there are lots of shit PMs sprinkled throughout the organization.
Many engineers learn to just live with it. You learn that political skill will be rewarded in large organizations. Its the nature of the world, just like jackals and vultures eat for free after the wolves do all the hard work. Wolves don't get depressed about it.
But there will always be some naive kids from college that don't understand the way of the world. And they just can't deal with some PM getting paid well for doing nothing but politics. Instead of making peace with the world the way it is, they leave and go to start ups, thinking that is a refuge. But if the start up has success, the same cycle begins again as the team grows larger and larger.
The only way to avoid politics is to become a hermit ... or the tech equivalent ... the solo consultant/gun for hire. Or I suppose, you could start your own company.
Another possible solution is Holacracy:
https://medium.com/holacracyone-blog/holacracy-vs-hierarchy-...
I've never worked in a place with Holacracy, so I have no idea if it actually works.