I think we are in a unique and dangerous political situation in this country and I dispute those who try to dismiss what seems a very negative and divisive time as “politics as usual”.
I have no idea how to test my argument. I suppose that historians have a way or at least an informed opinion. I suppose there were times when physical fights broke out between politicians of different parties. Anyway, in my life time, I think we are in a unique time period.
I have been a blogger since 2002. I have written several thousand posts to my blogs and Facebook in this time period. I thought one way to evaluate my own impression would be to examine my writing on political issues during this time period. It would have been too much work to review all of these posts, but I did make the effort to look at all posts during the month of October which would provide some info on the run-up to elections and a comparison from off years. The values represent posts on “political” topics.
I am not sure everyone has reacted in this way, but my focus has definitely shifted to political topics.