The more cerebral part of my intellect see's the current Trump presidency, and all the disruption it is causing, as the inevitable "disruptive change" event that is the culmination of our hyper-polarized politics over the past few decades. I thus view the current angst, frustration, push back, protests, etc., as hopeful signs that disruptive change will result in a major revision, rebuilding, or replacement of both of our political parties. This "tipping point" was inevitable.
Within this context, I am asking people to nominate books that can help us all understand how we got to this point and ideas on where we need to go. I am NOT looking for kiss-and-tell books or anti-Hillary/Trump books....I am looking for serious scholarship on politics and political science analyses.
I would first like to nominate a book I read in 2008---The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America. It was almost prophetic in how it predicted the Obama phenomena and where we are today. with Trump. I plan to take it off the shelve and read it again.
Here is a brief description of this book: I
In recent years American politics has seemingly become much more partisan, more zero-sum, more vicious, and less able to confront the real problems our nation faces. What has happened?
In The Second Civil War, respected political commentator Ronald Brownstein diagnoses the electoral, demographic, and institutional forces that have wreaked such change over the American political landscape, pulling politics into the margins and leaving precious little common ground for compromise. The Second Civil War is not a book for Democrats or Republicans but for all Americans who are disturbed by our current political dysfunction and hungry for ways to understand it—and move beyond it.
Please nominate other books via my Twitter post regarding this post. We all need to take a deep breathe, read scholarly information from multiple perspectives, and feed our brains and dampen down our emotions---myself included. We now have a #disruptivechangechance. Lets use it. #nominatebooks #morebrainslessemotion
