"Look at the exhausted Treasury; the paralyzed government; the unworthy representatives of a free people; the desperate contests between the North and the South; the iron curb and brazen muzzle fastened upon every man who speaks his mind, even in that Republican Hall, to which Republican men are sent by a Republican people to speak Republican truths–the stabbings, and shootings, and coarse and brutal threatenings exchanged between Senators under the very Senate’s roof–the intrusion of the most pitiful, mean, malicious, creeping, crawling, sneaking party spirit into all transactions of life."
— Apart from the stabbings and shootings (not yet taking place inside the Senate, at least), this sounds like a pretty appropriate description of the current state of U.S. politics. It’s not. It’s a description by Charles Dickens of his first, disappointing visit to America, back in 1842, quoted in the New Yorker piece, Dickens in Eden. Plus ca change.
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