Book Review of An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics by Greg Sargent

Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, and despite the Republican Party's complicity in his efforts to establish an authoritarian regime in the United States, he has failed to silence journalists, Democrats and courageous people unintimidated by his bullying and unafraid of his mockery.

Greg Sargent is responsible for managing these issues. Known to many for his Plum Line blog in The Washington Post, published in the United States. In "An Uncivil War," he directs readers' attention away from the president's daily descent into the muck of insult and examines the structural problems of 21st-century politics. Unless the American people take action at the ballot box, these problems, which made possible to Trump presidency and a Senate willing to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, will persist long after Trump 's circus leaves town.

Sargene deftly presents the evidence to expose the Republicans' baseless claims of voting fraud, a dispute fabricated to justify voting suppression laws, adopted in many states, which disfranchise the poor, nonwhites, recent immigrants and others likelier to vote for Democratic candidates. Sargent shows why the demography of 21st-century America, which has recently yielded the most votes for Democrats, has nevertheless worked in favor of Republicans. First, because Democrats cluster in cities, many of their votes are "wasted" in overwhelmingly Democratic legislative districts, while more sparsely populated rural areas send a majority of Republicans to state legislatures, the House and especially the Senate, where states such as Wyoming ( whose population is less than 600,000) have a lot to do in California (more than 39 million). Second, the most advanced techniques of gerrymandering state legislative and congressional districts has made it possible for the Republicans since the 2010 Census. This "countermajoritarian" outcome is no accident. It results instead, Sargent demonstrates, from a self-conscious strategy adopted by the Republican Party funders, who is heavily involved in government and gubernatorial contests that the Democratic Party all but ignored. Until Democrats address these problems, hysterical cries of voting will continue to justify voting, and gerrymandering by Republican state lawmakers will continue to generate a GOP-dominated House and Senate.

Even more alarming is the other main focus of Sargent's "Uncivil War": the disinformation campaign that conservatives have mounted in recent decades on television, radio and digital media. As Walter Lippmann first commented in "Public Opinion" (1922), people in mass societies interpret the modern world through the "pictures" and "fictions" in their heads. The "pseudo-environments" they are made comprehensible only through the "stereotypes" that enable them to make sense of an otherwise chaotic reality, and for that reason citizens are more likely than ever to advertise and propaganda.

Having seen that Republicans have self-consciously gamed political and public opinion, Sargent shifts gears. He reflects on the consequences for U.S. politics of the scorched-earth tactics that have become commonplace House Speaker Newt Gingrich first shut down the government in the 1990s. Playing "constitutional hardball," termed Sargent adopts from legal scholar Mark Tushnet, has tempted American politicians since the 1790s. Until now, however, hyperpartisanship has always given way to less rancorous, if hardly harmonious, periods when bipartisanship was possible.

For more than two decades, Republicans have treated Democrats as enemies of the American people. Efforts to find compromised, such as Barack Obama's adoption of a health insurance plan devised by the American Enterprise Institute and implemented by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, have been dismissed with contempt. In an unprecedented move, consisting of the Republicans' sudden reliance on filibusters to block judicial appointments during Obama's presidency, Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, was refused even to a Senate hearing. Voters, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared, should make the decision at the ballot box a year later. With another election in just a few weeks, McConnell decided that the decision to be elected to Senate Republicans, not the public fickle, which might have been swayed by a thorough investigation of the serious allegations against Kavanaugh.

American democracy depends on the willingness of the people to trust the legitimacy of our institutions and the integrity of elected officials. The President is a self-dealing and norm-busting member of the Republic of the United States of America. Sargent concludes "An Uncivil War" by urging caution on the part of the United States. Mutual respect and a willingness to accept disagreement are essential qualities for self-government. "An Uncivil War" merits wide readership, not only because of Sargent's persuasive indictment of the anti-democratic, countermajoritarian and cynical strategies Republicans have employed for decades, but also because of its well-reasoned arguments for continuing to play by – instead of bending – the rules.