I deliberately avoided arguing the normative side of the question and will continue to do so, but I just wanted to reply to say that your position is not unhear

I deliberately avoided arguing the normative side of the question and will continue to do so, but I just wanted to reply to say that your position is not unheard of within Political Science. There are some drawbacks I didn't mention (how institutional / party polarization leads to affective / interpersonal polarization, which is probably good for in-group out-group borders and bad for not wanting to kill your neighbor) but I just wanted to say that you aren't, like, inherently or facially wrong in describing some of the things that have increased polarization actually being good from a civic engagement / representation POV. Particularly, in the mid-century period, EE Schattschneider was probably the single most famous figure in American Political Science, and he used his stature to aggressively argue for what he called "responsible two-party government" wherein each party has a very clear and distinct brand and everyone does what they can to match voters up with parties. You might look at his work and responses to it if you want to see what political scientists in 1955 were thinking about this.