Very good to read this from a European, @zuerich. It is easy to answer this question:

"What's your unconvenient thoughts about our state of politics?"

Long (relatively speaking) ago, during my years of political activism and visiting literally hundreds of people in their homes, I would start our conversation with a simple question:

"If you read in the papers, or in a magazine article, or hear on the evening news anything like 'America is the greatest democracy in the world!' would you agree with that statement?"

Sadly, never ONE time did I receive anything other than some sort of affirmative response. Which led to my next question:

"Would you be surprised to learn America is not a democracy, but a republic?"

Which far too often resulted in something like - "What is the difference?" The damage done by America's public education system was / is hard to overstate.

And on from there ...

There is something profoundly sad about how people will not accept the responsibility of making a well-informed voting decision. No, in their prosperity and resulting comfort, they are far too complacent and apathetic. Using your sheep analogy, if they vote at all, they are "herded" to the polls, to vote the way they have been driven ("everybody knows!") to vote.

Thankfully, we are experiencing some long overdue correction of this sad state of affairs. What will the outcome be against all the challenges raised up to stop it? Only God knows.

As you rightly point out, the future of our children and their children is directly affected. Hopefully, we will be able to tell them some day what we did, while there was still time and opportunity to make a difference.