I feel a certain grim amusement when someone in government wishes for a return to the level of co-operation and civility we had in the “Good Old Days.” We are in the final year of the 150th anniversary of the “Civil” War, that left more than 700,000 dead and communities destroyed over “gridlock” on a civil rights argument.

Or do they refer to the period leading up to the war when congressmen went armed for fear of attack by other congressmen? Maybe they refer to Joshua Chamberlain standing off an armed mob in Augusta that intended to change by force a vote result they didn’t care for?

With a population so unable to agree on anything that we’ve got people wearing N.Y. Yankee shirts and/or hats in public, maybe we’re not really doing all that badly.

Tom Heyns

Chelsea