Between rabid partisanship, fake news, election doubts and insurrectionist mobs, America’s political climate is so toxic — the refrain goes — that it has never been worse.

A PBS/Marist poll conducted last month found that nearly half of Americans believe the nation has strayed far from its founding principles and 45% say the nation’s best days are behind us. And 37% either agree or strongly agree that violence may be necessary to correct the country’s course.

Greg Jackson, the host of the popular podcast “History That Doesn’t Suck,” heard it so often that the Utah Valley University associate professor decided to do what he does — drawing on a series of 19th-century vignettes to demonstrate that, not only is the current climate not unique, in many respects it is the norm.

Jackson writes in his new book “Been There, Done That” that each time it seemed like things couldn’t get worse, the nation rallied and found a way to heal.

“There’s a new face to it, because technology changes,” Jackson said in a recent interview, “but the underlying issues — things like fake news, deeply partisan news, political violence, contested elections — none of this is new. It’s been a part of the American experience from day one.”

Jackson’s premise is perhaps best embodied in the quote, attributed to Mark Twain, at the beginning of the introduction: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Jackson pulls on those rhyming threads to illustrate the parallels to America today. He traces the covert war of words waged between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in early gazettes; the hotly contested elections of 1828 and 1876 and the claims of corruption and rigging that followed; the vicious caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks on the U.S. House floor, among others.

The author said he intentionally did not build any chapters around the Civil War, aside from the context it provided for other stories, and he steered away from more recent turmoils, like the Vietnam War protests, Watergate or the Civil Rights campaigns. Jackson reasoned that he doesn’t want a reader’s takeaway to be that the political divide Americans face today is a new development. Instead, he proposes, the root causes of division have been stitched into the fabric of the country from the start.

The book opens with the tale of Benjamin Franklin planting a story about a fictitious British massacre in a newspaper in an attempt to sway post-Revolutionary War public opinion against England during the ongoing peace negotiations.

In another chapter, the author tells the tale of The Battle of Liberty Place, which broke out in 1873 after two contenders for the Louisiana governorship both claimed victory, alleged corruption by the other and staged separate inaugurations on the same day.

Over the course of the next two years, tensions built and spilled over as factions of Reconstructionists and members of the White League fought in the streets, each side claiming a rightful cause. A group of some 150 Black men were massacred and gun battles raged in the streets before federal soldiers intervened to quell the violence.

“Perhaps the only thing more shocking than this abject failure of an election in Reconstruction Louisiana and the small-scale civil war that followed is how thoroughly twenty-first-century America seems to have forgotten it ever happened as we insist that everything we are going through is so unprecedented,” Jackson writes.

Each time the nation has been tested, Jackson contends, it held together because engaged Americans forced change at the ballot box, even though the themes would later resurface.

It is a measure of perspective, he said, and a reason to hold on to, at the least, “cautious hope.”

“It’s the recognition that, one, we have a track record of winning,” he said. “And, two, the challenges ahead of us are not any greater than challenges we have previously surmounted and overcome.”

It is also, Jackson hopes, “a bit of a call to action.”

“I don’t care how you participate in this great Republic of ours, but you can’t sit back and go along for the ride,” he said. “We do need a core — a sizable core — of citizens that are invested enough to give of their time and talents and serve.”

He adds, “That doesn’t mean you have to go run for Congress, but we need you to hold down the fort to whatever extent — even if that’s just voting. But please, get engaged, let go of a little bit of the cynicism, and get involved again.

Jackson’s new project is another podcast, “Government That Doesn’t Suck,” with Lindsey Cormack, an associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology, in which they do a deep dive into government programs they say do and don’t work.

He also is featured in “An Unlikely Union: A Storytelling Symphony of America” airing on PBS.