Understanding that the only reason the Republican Party still exists is because the Democratic Party's corporate power base benefits from it is one of the two revelations that helped radicalize me.
The second revelation that helped radicalize me was understanding that the only reason the Democratic Party still exists is because they actively keep the Republican Party on life support by being unimaginably feckless, spineless, and corrupt.
The whole two party system is like a bar balanced precariously across a knife's edge and with each passing year the parties own combined negligence and fear mongering is putting more and more downward pressure on each side of the bar. I think people overestimate what it would take for that balance to be disrupted and both parties to tumble away together into obscurity. It's not a question of IF it will happen, but WHEN.