Have we ever not been in political purgatory? Some fundamental political issues such as federalism have been fought over since the founding of the republic. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I don't think it's crazy to say politics now is different and more disfunctional than the past. Congress can't pass anything substantive and needed to change their own rules to even appoint judges, the Supreme Court has overturned many precedents, and it seems like a lot of the actual policy is executive orders (and also what the executive branch chooses to enforce or not). And that ignores things like accusations of election fraud and a million other different points of nonsense that are shockingly mainstream.
The fact it's always been a mess doesn't mean it's not significantly more of a mess now than many times in the past (not that right now is the worst ever, it's hard to beat a civil war, but it's pretty bad).
