This isn't even close to the most divided time in our nation's history since the Civil War.

In 1915, the U.S. was on the verge of tearing apart. Labor/management scuffles were daily news stories, with people on both sides routinely getting killed. Socialism was almost mainstream, more so than it is with Bernie Sanders as its primary spokesman. Today, the employees of America's richest man (Bill Gates - I know he's chairman emeritus of Microsoft now, but here me out) work in air-conditioned comfort and have excellent standards of living. Back then, the richest people in America were one step above slaveowners. When "the working man" thought he was being impoverished, it wasn't an abstraction like it is today.

Imagine if, say, General Motors ignored its contracts and brought in tens of thousands of non-union employees. And that management could call the National Guard in to keep the union forces out. And shoot them in the head if need be. Back then, that was just getting business done. Today, it's inconceivable.

Half the nation was grateful that we'd managed to avoid being embroiled in the greatest war ever known. The other half wanted to get involved. Yeah, the sinking of the Lusitania, etc., but bottom line is we lost the equivalent of 300,000 people (proportional to today's population) in barely a year and a half of fighting.

You had a President get ousted by his own party (Taft). We were occupying countries for no reason other than that they were nearby and has resources we could exploit (Haiti, Dominican Republic).

Relatively polite debate about healthcare or gun control, with no physical attacks, is child's play compared to what Congress looked like a century ago.