“Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.”
I think it’s pretty fair to say that the more you learn about American democracy, the less faith you’ll have in it it.
There is still some good political reporting out there, from the likes of The Hill, Nate Silver, or if you’re OK with left-leaning, Politico, Salon, NPR, Democracy Now, The Intercept, etc. Al Jazeera is also very good at looking at US domestic affairs; I wouldn’t necessarily trust them as much on Middle-Eastern affairs.This Media Bias chart is in my opinion pretty fair.
But the news – all of it – lives and dies by sensationalist short-form articles, not the kinda context you get over years of paying attention to what’s going on, holistically, in a country. That sort of thing can probably only be driven into a culture of civics that we don’t have much of (at least didn’t until 2016), starting from grade school and continuing into self-informing, critically-thinking adults. Americans by and large have a high enough quality of life that they don’t really want to get involved in the nitty gritty of our politics. That opens us up to easy manipulation, unfortunately.
I think self-destruction is the most likely outcome, or cooptation in favor of despotism. But that’s probably better suited for another thread (there’s been several along those lines recently).