Another Civil War: Why Our Instincts Choose Trumpism Over Democracy?

by Joonhong Park

How did the current war-like political and social turmoil begin in the United States, long regarded as the home of democracy, and what caused it? Where does the power of MAGA, which wins elections, come from? To find the answers, this book analyzes American history through a new analytical framework. It is the story of two forces that have clashed from the nation’s founding to the present year of 2025, and an exploration of their origins.

In his previous work, The Divided Factional Structures and the Crisis of Democracy , the author introduced the analytical framework of The Faction Theory. Using this framework, he analyzes how political identity in the United States has shifted from rational disagreement to emotional hostility. It explains that modern polarization is driven less by policy conflicts than by emotional blind loyalty to one's chosen side and, perhaps even more intensely, a visceral aversion toward the opposing side.

Democracy is a fragile system. When economic precarity, cultural anxiety, and institutional distrust accumulate, groupness ideology resurges, offering simpler answers and stronger emotional bonds than democratic norms can provide. Trumpism succeeded not because it persuaded Americans, but because democracy's ideological overreach and widespread social alienation activated these ancient human instincts.
Now, democracy faces a daunting to wage this ideological war while seeking a more advanced vision beyond an imperfect system. What is to be done?

157 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2025

About the author

Joonhong Park is a political analyst and independent researcher specializing in the social foundations and structural mechanisms of political systems. He majored in political science at Pusan National University in South Korea.
His research explores how human societies function through the interactions between factions, ideologies, and the human instinct for 'Groupness'.
In his theoretical work, The Divided State: Factional Structures and the Crisis of Democracy , Park explored how group attributes derived from survival instincts shape democratic systems, establishing the framework of 'The Faction Theory'. His latest book, Another Civil War: Why Our Instincts Choose Trumpism Over Democracy , applies this lens to the United States. It analyzes the historical and psychological roots of American polarization—from the Founding to the rise of MAGA—revealing the structural tension between human instinct and democratic ideals.
His other works, authored in Korean, include A Study of the Modern History of Korean Politics through Faction Theory and The Essential Instability of Democratic Systems.

Reviews

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jan. 6 th the heaviness of the air(error)
Catchy that actually happened to you. The conscious niggle that Canadians watch and dare not speak to add to the chaos of jan.6th. I remember parents telling me passively indirectly that the whole situation was being surveillance. Now phones in cross board let boarders surveil your phone before entering for your president made his second term permit with gas lighting

'Opponent' and engages in movement against that opponent for a specific purpose.
Thus, a 'Faction' is a substantive unit of movement arising from human groupness and social antagonistic structures.
The birth of a fraction
You hear the left opposing and you see the opposite furthering a regime hereinafter
Maybe opposing with fear one should advocates for all
"sims"
Although I've never seen such a GOV not listen to its constituents

Factional Notion and Dual Processing of Thought A regime against its constituents
Factional Sentiment and FactionalCognition Competition for Factional Notions in Democratic Systems
Democracy is for fools they ask you or me for their opinion
Rise of the Individual
Establishment of the Individual
Two Ideologies
And if we're being measured by competence of $.
We're being paid the same but republican $ is
Zero- people are worth zero or their dollar zero but they’re being paid the same



From changing the topic from Civil War resolve

To cold war

To Vietnam

And the new onset of the division

As 911 between 1970 to 2016

Reaganism of group ideology

To MAGA preluding to another Civil War in the New World order

The 2020 election president and the denial of defeat the explosion, fractional movement to gaslight the return to power the survival of expansion of Trumpism, which is the utter most submission of a loser with Trump means relying the Republican Party of the returned power response of democracy, ideology and another Civil War

When Trump’s MAGA get held on trial
The cops of democracy to a authoritarianism ICE

Who cares about democracy they ask fools like you or me about other people‘s opinion their alternativism

Is

Authoritarianism

Is MAGA history, repeating itself, conclusion, democracy, after democracy, addressing the under democratic structure of the economic sphere strategies of democracy resilience, the fractional movement of group ideology

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Using this framework, he analyzes how political identity in the United States has shifted from rational disagreement to emotional hostility.

- It explains that modern polarization is driven less by policy conflicts than by emotional forces: blind loyalty to one's chosen side and, perhaps even more intensely, a visceral aversion toward the opposing side.

///////

One of the best explanations for the emotional pressure cooker that started up as things started to decay in the 1980s.....

I'm really convinced that it's Anti-Democray because I think I tend to agree with Huntington's views on the decline of the American Creed, and in fact, how it goes beyond that to all of Western Civilization.

What you see in Samuel P. Huntington's book Who Are We? are all the factors of the unravelling of National Identity, along with Globalization and out of touch elites, and the Progressive (woke) world of anti-intellectualism which is ground zero for visceral aversion.

The ideas of progressive political having a neurotic anti-intellectual hostility has been developed a lot by the somewhat controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson, who's got a lot interesting insights there. (along with the implosion of Canadian politics for the past decade along with a shockingly incompetent array of politicians who don't seem to listen to the voters over the past decade.

There's no Trump in Canada, but the political polarization is worse than what's going on in the United States, because I think the United States is much much less broken and Democratic than what Europe and Canada have de-evolved into.

Maybe the rock group DE-VO was clearly ahead of their time!
I don't think you could play the song Mongoloid on the radio anymore.......

There's a lot of interesting stuff here on the irrationality of voters, and how it's emotional blind loyalty to some 'political ideology' though it's not really policy, but the Politics of Control.

I tend to feel that the Republican Party fell apart after Nixon, and the Democratic Party started to crumble after Jimmy Carter.

and I think too the Liberal Party will fall apart with Mark Carney. He is the Davos Man he warned you all about. And the shallow policies with reckless spending, is going to be as weird as Watergate.
specially in terms of what I feel is going to be massive disillusionment on the level of Huntingon in his book American Politics, when the idealism is misguided and incompetent.

Europe is fascinating in how lost they are, and if the European Union will cease to exist in 15 or 20 years, with odd policies. England seems to be going the way of California, without a GovernorJerry Brown.

As for the States, I think Civil War is petty much impossible, I think all the other Western Nations are the ones that are ones who are truly imploding.

Europe and Canada are going to be the ones that fall to anti-democratic forces and that will be from the center and the left.

the watchword is ungovernable

I don't thing JFK would have been happy with the Democratic Party from the 1980s to the 2020s

/////

- the shift from rational disagreement to emotional hostility.

- modern polarization is driven by emotional forces: blind loyalty to one's chosen side and a visceral aversion toward the opposing side

It's honestly the infantilization of adults, where they have lost the ability to be open minded or mature.

Jordan Peterson for the win, on how this this is the key to it

/////

Key Concepts

I Ideology as a Totalizing Force

Peterson argues that when politics become contaminated with a 'religious impulse', they become a totalizing force that demands absolute adherence, leading to a form of collective delusion or 'mass psychosis'.

II Victimhood and Moral Superiority

He describes the "woke" ideology as one that operates on a narrative where adherents gain moral superiority by identifying as victims or allies of victimized groups.

III Suppression of Dissent and Compelled Speech

A core part of his critique is the belief that 'woke' ideology suppresses freedom of thought and speech.

...................

Ideology - Moral Superiority - Suppression of Free Spaeech

[Alan Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a theoretical structure and an in-depth study of current trends in the United States and elsewhere toward authoritarianism. I’m not entirely sure of its theoretical structure; I would have to engage in additional study of the theoretical questions, including reading Joonhong Park’s earlier book, The Divided State, before offering an opinion on those questions. Similarly, I cannot evaluate the proposed solutions in his concluding remarks in Another Civil War without knowing, in detail, the specifics of what he proposes. That said, Park’s analysis of the trend of the MAGA movement in the United States (and similar movements in other democracies) toward authoritarianism, and the psychological mechanisms attendant to that project, are superb. For example, he states on page 82 (Kindle edition):

Trumpism, however, decisively distinguishes itself from previous cases by advancing to a stage where it attacks the democratic ideology itself. He implied refusal to accept defeat by claiming the election was rigged as early as the 2016 primaries, a stance that materialized after the 2020 presidential election. Trumpism's targets were not external enemies, but the democratic system itself: the electoral process, the judiciary, the media. [endnote omitted] By setting its sights on the system itself and seeking to destroy its rules, Trumpism marked the opening of a new front attacking the very ideology of democracy, revealing an unprecedented realignment of the American factional structure.

I agree with Park that the threat of authoritarianism is quite real, both in the United States and in other democracies. What can be done about this threat is a very difficult question. For the time being, people in the United States can only hope that MAGA or other authoritarianism will be defeated at the polls, as at least seems possible, notwithstanding the blatant MAGA attempt to rig the 2028 midterm elections.

[Anatolii Miroshnychenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book of Joonhong Park is developing his “Faction Theory” described in his previous book, “The Divided State: Factional Structures and the Crisis of Democracy” (which I highly recommend reading). In particular, the concept is applied to the real-life example of recent events in the U.S., attesting the deep crises of modern democracy.
The book is very thought provoking. The author not only describes why existing democratic mechanisms are often not functioning properly or are even “highjacked” by authoritarian or populist leaders but also makes very interesting suggestions on how to resolve or at least mitigate existing problems and achieve “Democracy after Democracy”. They are definitely worth serious consideration.

[Zhou82 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Civil War is a sharp and unsettling analysis of contemporary political division. Rather than treating polarization as a clash of policies or personalities, the book traces it to deeper psychological mechanisms—group identity, emotional loyalty, and the instinct to define enemies. With a calm but incisive tone, it explains why modern democracy is increasingly vulnerable to authoritarian impulses, and why political conflict today feels less like disagreement and more like enmity. This is not a partisan critique, but a structural one, offering readers a framework to understand how democracies fracture from within.