On June 17, 2022, Donald Trump addressed the “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville, Tennessee, organized by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. In addition to the former president, other featured speakers included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, then GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel, televangelist and senior pastor at the First Baptist Church in Dallas Dr. Robert Jeffress, and radio show host Michael Medved. With the exception of Medved, whom a 2016 Politico article dubbed the only “vehemently anti-Donald Trump” host at Salem Media (Gold, “Michael Medved”), the roster of keynote speakers confirmed the pro- Trump tone of the meeting as reported on the Coalition's website: “Evangelical activists reinforce[d] Trump's dominance of the GOP” and gave the former president a “warm reception” ( June 21, 2022). In his remarks, Trump attacked the Select Committee on January 6, particularly its finding that he pressured Vice President Mike Pence either to return electors’ votes to the states or declare the 2020 presidential election invalid. As the Committee's hearings continued into the fall of 2022 and a flurry of indictments followed in 2023, other revelations caused defendant Trump—and much of the nation—even greater consternation.

On her June 6, 2019, show, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow characterized Donald Trump's visit to Ireland as “a careening circus of pratfall embarrassments.” Most of the wince-inducing mortifications surfaced in the president's meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar the preceding day during which Trump's ignorance and hubris were on full display. But the trip also exhibited more than low comedy. In the context of American presidents’ appearances in Ireland—Joe Biden's trip to Ireland in 2023 marked the seventh such occurrence—Trump's stay was uniquely disturbing and ironic, especially so given Peter Keegan's vision in Bernard Shaw's John Bull's Other Island of a tranquil and beautiful country transmogrified by the “bustle” of tourists populating expensive hotels and playing golf assisted by child caddies. Prior to his arrival in Shannon, members of fifty political, human rights and anti-racism organizations that formed the Stop Trump Ireland coalition organized to protest his visit. The coalition includes Friends of the Irish Environment, which collected 100,000 signatures for a petition decrying the methods used by the Trump International Golf Club in Doonbeg to prevent erosion.

Such disdain, even outrage, is not unprecedented, as not every American president has basked in the Céad Mile Fáilte (100,000 welcomes) extended to Presidents Kennedy and Obama from huge audiences in Dublin, or felt the “rousing enthusiasm” Bill Clinton, the first president to visit Northern Ireland while in office, enjoyed in Belfast (Mitchell, Making Peace, 26). Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in, respectively, 1970 and 1984, were greeted warmly in the homes of their ancestors but, as I have described, demonstrators in Dublin hurled eggs at Nixon while others burned his effigy at the American embassy. In an impromptu ceremony, eight graduates of Galway's University College set fire to their degrees, and three holders of an honorary doctorate of law degrees returned or “de-conferred” them, in response to Reagan's receipt of his honorary degree (Booth, “Reagan Booed”).

A growing number of Americans fear that Trumpism may ignite a civil war and, as I have mentioned, for some the war has already begun. This grim thesis became more plausible after the FBI's August 8, 2022 recovery of classified documents from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, which prompted many of his supporters to clamor for revenge. But they couldn't agree on what form the vengeance should take, or even what to call it. Apparently forgetting their disgust with the “Defund the Police” mantra heard during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, some congressional Republicans embarked upon a “Defund the FBI” crusade. Ever entrepreneurial when it comes to funding opportunities, Trump's “Save America” PAC sought to extract more money from donors by sending some more than 100 email solicitations in the days after the search featuring such taglines as “THEY BROKE INTO MY HOME” and “They’re coming after YOU” (Garcia, “Trump Supporters”). But in the contest over formulating indignant responses to the search of Mar-a-Lago, “civil war” seemed to garner the most attention, although in the dark corners of cyberspace sentiments like “Fuck a Civil War. Give them a REVOLUTION” attracted their share of support as well.

Part One: Dr. No and the Grim Reaper

As fans of Ian Fleming's redoubtable spy know, Dr. Julius No is James Bond's adversary in Doctor No (1958), a novel that when adapted as a film in 1962 launched the most enduring franchise in the history of Western cinema. Since then, and for the most part, films chronicling Bond's adventures— as well as novels by John Gardner, Anthony Horowitz, Sebastian Faulks and others after Fleming's untimely passing in 1964—have flourished, and such phrases as “shaken, not stirred” and “Bond girls” are now part of our vernacular. So, too, are the names of some of Fleming's villains, with “Dr. No” used to lampoon dour politicians hostile to socially progressive legislation. In Northern Ireland and America, the press has employed “Dr. No” as a nickname for Ian Paisley, the late fundamentalist minister and founder of Northern Ireland's DUP and Senator Mitch McConnell, also known as “The Grim Reaper” and “Darth Vader,” among other sobriquets. For the most part, McConnell seems amused by these inventions; only “Moscow Mitch,” a reference to his indifference to Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, appears to annoy him because of its implication that he is an “asset” of the Kremlin (Hulse, “Moscow Mitch”). Both men's capacity for negativism, the most obvious reason for these names, motivates my juxtaposition of them with Fleming's arch-villain—and with each other.

Outlining the Sisyphean labors of brokering the Good Friday Agreement, George Mitchell in Making Peace suggests such a comparison when recounting Paisley's recalcitrance during nearly two years of negotiations (which were preceded by some six months of painstaking preparatory work). On occasion, this abrasiveness serves as a structuring motif in Mitchell's narrative. In a chapter entitled “No. No. No. No,” inspired by Paisley's outburst at the inaugural meeting of the parties tasked with negotiating the Agreement, Mitchell recalls the DUP leader's “blistering attack” on the British and Irish governments for foisting an American senator on the group.

My twin brother and I were born in Springfield, Illinois, the “Land of Lincoln,” and celebrated our ninth birthdays three months before John F. Kennedy's election as president in November 1960. But even though we watched the evening news attentively on a fuzzy black-and-white television with our parents—a “mixed marriage” of a Protestant father and Catholic mother—neither of us quite understood why the election seemed to matter so much. A few weeks later on Thanksgiving morning, our view got clearer. The day began with helping our mother and grandmother, a secondgeneration Irish American, prepare for the traditional feast. Our jobs included tearing a mound of stiff, day-old bread into stuffing for the turkey, polishing silverware and carrying plates and other necessities to the table. This year was different, though, because not long after we started our chores mother and grandmother, cooking at the stove, began laughing and crying softly at the same time. I remember asking, “Mom, what's wrong? Did something bad happen?” With a smile she reassured us, “No, boys. These are tears of joy, because grandmother never thought she would live to see an Irish Catholic president in the White House. Now she will.”

Republicans are increasingly hostile toward educational institutions, professors, and students in national and state politics, with conservative media portraying college campuses as hotspots of radical leftism while Republican politicians rhetorically and financially target universities. Intellectual opinion journalism has become more influential among liberals over time, exemplified by new online ventures and permeability between media and academia, while traditional venues for conservative intellectual discourse have lost influence to more populist and conspiratorial platforms. As a consequence of these developments, Republican voters no longer trust mainstream media and research to deliver nonpartisan information, preferring to accept and promote the claims of overtly ideological alternative sources. Republicans no longer trust scientists or universities either, with each taking on a more proactive political role. Slow liberal cultural advance is also apparent in nonprofits and advocacy organizations, increasingly aligning more institutions with Democrats. The information environments on each side thus reinforce their diverging electoral and governing trends.

This is a book about change – both political and social change. Over the past several decades, well within the firsthand memory of many living adults, the United States has experienced a series of overlapping social revolutions. Nearly every aspect of American life has been transformed: from the quality of citizens’ economic and educational opportunities to the ethos and leadership of major institutions, and from the demographic composition of the American public to the prevailing norms of culture, language, and behavior.

Government action was not the sole cause of these developments, and their consequences likewise extend far beyond the realm of politics. But ideological debate and partisan competition in America have come to separate those who have accepted or welcomed change from those who have found it costly or alienating.

Democrats prize experts in staffing the Executive Branch while Republicans prefer political operatives and media spokespersons. But across the issue spectrum, policies are increasingly complicated and technical, requiring knowledge of many previous rounds of institution-building and policymaking. New social problems require remixing of complex policy tools, often led by research and experts. Addressing climate change and public health, for example, requires professionalized expert workforces and technical analyses. Even seemingly value-based areas of policymaking such as economic development and racial discrimination increasingly require subject-matter experts and formalized training. And the issue of higher education itself has increasingly divided the parties. Chapter 6 documents how each policy area is increasingly dominated by complex proposals from liberals accompanied by conservative suspicion of expert-led governance. Policy knowledge and evaluation capacity have become increasingly tethered to the Democratic Party, with believably nonpartisan expertise now in short supply.

Increasing educational standards in the workforce have increased the use of experts throughout the economy, leading to processes that more closely resemble bureaucracies and stakeholder policymaking, with an increasing emphasis on culturally liberal values such as diversity, representation, and social responsibility. The guiding industries and workforces of the scientific and technology sectors have enabled a technocratic ethos in government and industry. But public opposition to technocracy and skepticism of meritocracy is growing among voters, allowing conservatism to brand itself as an opposition movement to the extension of government reach and the associated prevalence of “politically correct” messages and practices across educational institutions and in the workplace. The polarized American brand of politics pervades internal debates across organizational sectors, enlarging the scope of activist politics beyond campaigns and government, especially where educational and cultural divides are strongest. The distinct styles of the culture war’s two conflicting sides have become more dissimilar at the national, state, and local levels, even in ostensibly apolitical arenas.

Since 2008, Democrats have replaced much of their previous strategic defensiveness, going on offense in the culture war. Under Trump, Republican cultural appeals shifted their emphasis from religious-based moralizing to ethnonationalist and antifeminist resentment. A thermostatic backlash to Trump’s conservative policies further advanced popular liberalizing social trends during his presidency. But each leftward advance brings counterattacks. Democratic goals often require complicated national direction and implementation, which can be effectively demonized. Social activism on the left increasingly operates within prominent social institutions, reducing demand for the construction of explicitly liberal-aligned alternative institutions while heightening institutional skepticism on the right. These dynamics have reached the topic of democracy itself, with academics arguing that they must highlight risks raised by the American right and Republicans seeing scholars moving toward the rhetoric of Democratic politicians.

Increasing educational standards in the workforce have increased the use of experts throughout the economy, leading to processes that more closely resemble bureaucracies and stakeholder policymaking, with an increasing emphasis on culturally liberal values such as diversity, representation, and social responsibility. The guiding industries and workforces of the scientific and technology sectors have enabled a technocratic ethos in government and industry. Public opposition to technocracy and skepticism of meritocracy is growing among voters, allowing conservatism to brand itself as an opposition movement to the extension of government reach and the associated prevalence of “politically correct” messages and practices across educational institutions and in the workplace. The polarized American brand of politics now pervades internal debates across organizational sectors, enlarging the scope of activist politics beyond campaigns and government, especially where educational and cultural divides are strongest. The distinct styles of the culture war’s two conflicting sides have become more dissimilar at the national, state, and local levels, even in ostensibly apolitical arenas.

The biggest change in the party coalitions since the 1980s has been the movement of high-education whites into the Democratic Party and the defection of low-education whites to the GOP. Drawing on evidence from opinion surveys, election returns, and demographic data, Chapter 3 documents the parties’ changing voters and geographic constituencies. These trends continued in the 2020 election despite Democratic efforts to reverse the party’s declining popularity among noncollege whites, with some signs educational divides will spread to other racial and ethnic groups. Candidates, activists, political appointees and staffers, judges, party leaders, and campaign workers all demonstrate the same increasing divisions as rank-and-file voters. Democrats may suffer electorally because the Electoral College and apportionment of the Senate grants noncollege whites disproportionate voting power, but college-educated citizens punch above their weight in other forms of influence: as thought leaders, interest group activists, educators, media figures, scientific experts, candidates, political professionals, lawyers, and financial donors.

Global trends in the rich world, filtered through America’s unique two-party system, have transformed each party’s coalition and reinforced contrasting views of expertise. Although the rise of social issues and the rising importance of education are transnational, they raise unique challenges for each major American party. Each side has responded by shifting its agenda and public image. Democratic politicians have balanced their instinctive reluctance to alienate culturally traditionalist voting blocs against internal pressure from party members for a socially progressive, intellectually erudite, and demographically diverse party leadership. Republicans have been compelled to defer to a popular conservative media apparatus that promotes aversion to social transformation and hostility to claims of expertise by nonconservative authorities. Barack Obama (the wonky advocate of social change) and Donald Trump (the plain-spoken, nostalgic nemesis of experts) both personify their respective parties. These party leaders repel as well as attract, reinforcing our two-sided politics.