There's a burden of compromise that will always be there. Right now, since it essentially requires us to choose between two candidates, the burden of compromise

There's a burden of compromise that will always be there. Right now, since it essentially requires us to choose between two candidates, the burden of compromise is mostly on the voter - we have to sift through a lot of thinking and decide which choice is better than the other. If that burden were lifted from the voter and we were able to vote multiple parties into legislative bodies, then it just shifts that burden into the legislative body. Voters would find their representatives engaging in various alliances with other parties that the voter might not like. For the voters who dislike compromise entirely, they wouldn't like it - it would be trading one problem for another. The other thing is that proportional representation governments are generally seen as being "more responsive" - they change more quickly, yielding larger effects from year to year (probably back and forth as different parties gain power). This means less stability. The founding fathers found our slower, less responsive form of government more of a feature than a bug. They were aware of parliamentary forms of government but chose otherwise. Switching to parliamentary system is not a panacea, it has its own set of problems. I think the problem with the US system is just that over time, partisans have discovered that lying about their beliefs is in their best interests. When you have a bunch of politicians claiming that they believe one thing when they know otherwise, their followers are encouraged to actually believe the falsehoods. I don't know if there's a more academic word for "shitposting" but that's basically what it is. (I believe this is more common on the right than the left, but that's beside the point.) I'm not sure how to adjust the system so that the incentives are aligned more towards truthful debate, though. I think this is ultimately about a philosophical struggle that we used to have settled. Back in enlightenment ages, there was broad consensus that reality was an objective thing and that truth was a guide through it. But now it's pretty popular to believe that reality is just what we make it, by continually repeating whatever truth/facts we believe. I think that basically mirrors philosophical history in that romanticism came after enlightenment, but I don't know what that means about where we are now.