It wasn’t about individuals being responsible for solving every societal problem they each observe, and it wasn’t about creating an apparatus individuals could use to solve arbitrary social problems.
It was about self-governing individuals negotiating with each other and having the tools to safeguard those agreements against tyranny. Individuals were responsible for themselves, not society. Political society existed as a compact to lift up the individual, not the other way around.
I vehemently disagree. America is a representative democracy. We vote for representatives in the legislature and other parts of government who are responsible for the "everything". All the regular people have to do is vote for whichever representatives they think will do a good job. There is no obligation that everybody be informed in all matters concerning how to run a country. Even congresspeople have specializations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senate_c...
Freedom of speech makes representative politics a market, where effort is a key currency. You may dislike markets in general or think they are inappropriate in some situations, but they are an inevitable consequence of individual liberties.
What do you want me to say? Throw away the constitution because congressmen are idiots, lets do direct democracy and all pretend we're experts on everything? Nobody can be informed on everything; anybody who thinks they are is obviously an obvious idiot who doesn't know his own limitations. No, direct democracy sucks for anything much larger than a canton, and certainly for any group with interests as serious and diverse as America's. What we have now is far from perfect, but it works reasonably well and I wouldn't throw it away in exchange for a nuclear-armed ochlocracy.
The mere thought of that sends shivers up my spine.
If you think something is wrong in the society, fixing it is your responsibility. You can of course ignore it if you think the issue is not particularly significant or if it looks like other people are already handling it. But if the issue is important and contested, you are expected to get involved.
The deeper issue behind polarization is that people don't agree on the principles the society is built on. The Constitution may codify some principles, but too many people consider them insufficient or illegitimate. There is no fix to this apart from the vast majority of people agreeing on some set of principles.
I think everyone should try living a few years as a non-citizen in a foreign country. It gives a different perspective on politics. You live somewhere in the long term and see the issues around you, but you don't have the same rights as most other people and your responsibilities are limited.