"my crook is great but the rest of these crooks..."

FTFY.

Plenty of voters KNOW their representatives are crooks. But they're crooks on the "right side", so they're cool. They're using their crookedness to push law through ethically void means that often border on legality, which is fine so long as they're usually pushing their constituents agenda in doing so OR simply fucking over the other side. Those people voting for Jewish Space Lasers Marj and Child Sex Trafficking Gaetz know exactly who those people are, as do every single Twice-Impeached, Convicted Felon Trump voter. It's not an awareness issue.

The problem is that while people disapprove of Congress as a whole they tend to like their own representatives.

Gerrymandering is a bigger problem in Congress.

Ranked-choice means nothing if you have single-member districts, other than maybe allowing some third parties to get in. You can still gerrymander and stuff.

What you really want is multi-member districts or just nationwide PR, but that is anything but simple…

"simple"

Majority voting system is the main problem. Electoral college is the version for presidential elections, but it needs to be changed to a proportionate voting system for congress as well.
As the US is very state-based, you could do a version like Germany where you vote for a local candidate as well but the proportion of the congress equals the whole proportion of votes.

While I agree with these, removing the electoral college wouldn't have a direct impact on congress, right?

What are you proposing? A revolution?

He probably should have advocated for a system that wouldn't reault in this bullshit then. Federalists vs Democrat-Republicans became the de-facto state of US politics immediately after ratification of the constitution. You don't get to complain about your dog shitting on the carpet if you never let it out.

So US citizens have no say in picking the legislative, the judiciary and the executive branches.

How's it the democratic beacon of freedom again?

First past the post elections make reps the worst in the world. Both parties agree on one thing maintain power.

Correct. The solution is representatives who support non-FPTP systems. Your options are Democrats (some have some support for non-FPTP), Republicans (passionately oppose non-FPTP because FPTP is the only way they win) and third-party choices who actively support non-FPTP (single digit percentages of voter share).

The only rational play is to vote D while doing everything possible to campaign to make those third-parties viable. Voting R is failure. Not voting is failure. Voting for non-viable third-parties is failure. D is a means to an end, necessary but not sufficient.