U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, delivered some sobering but not unexpected news during his visit to La Grande Sept. 11, warning his constituents that a government shutdown is likely.

Bentz’s alert, of course, stems from the by now routine political discontent rampant in the halls of Congress.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sept. 12 directed the House of Representatives to start an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden regarding his family’s business dealings. McCarthy said the probe has uncovered a “culture of corruption” around the president’s family.

In short, there could be an impeachment investigation going on even as hard line, right-wing Republicans seek to force a showdown on a government shutdown.

For those on the lunatic fringe in each party, all of this amounts to an epic battle over the course of the nation, and while voters will get a front-row seat in yet another political fight, not much in terms of the nation’s business will get done.

Apparently, that is just fine with voters and many lawmakers. Stoking the fires of division appears now to be far more important than tackling tough issues such as the economy, jobs and our future prosperity.

The political debate in Washington, D.C., exudes a sense of the games at the Roman Coliseum, where spectators can fill the seats and watch another display of gladiators pummeling each other to death. It’s great entertainment if one is disposed to that kind of thing, but in the end, it doesn’t move much politically down the road.

Instead, it becomes brutal entertainment for entertainment’s sake, and pushes real issues to the background where they fester and eventually become septic.

The nation and our state are bitterly divided, and those divisions are fueled by a fanatical ideology on both sides of the political aisle where compromise is a foreign country.

Political infighting is as American as apple pie, but at some point our elected leaders need to do their jobs. That means finding solutions, not creating problems. It means eliminating the zero-sum goal of victory and grasping the middle ground.

That type of behavior was once a hallmark of our nation’s democracy but now seems to be just an interesting footnote of the past.