Thread by @SteveSchmidtSES

What replaces democracy for Trumps’ Nationalist Autocratic movement is a perverse commitment to an ideology of identity rooted in racial animus, blood and soil nationalism, and a delusion of shared collective victimization at the hands of a rapacious majority of others. 1/

This is why so many of these people are cheering against the US Olympic Team. They hate our multi-racial, muti-ethnic pluralistic democracy. They look at the athletes, ponder their achievements, their excellence, greatness and all of the qualities of devotion and instead of

finding inspiration, they seethe with resentment. In their eyes, their tribe has been diminished again. Each success by an other, is a defeat to them and a refutation of their greatest delusion; the myth of their stolen greatness. For them the nation is their tribe and they

root for the tribe with the fanaticism of jingoists, not to win, but to revel together as a community, rooting for the only outcome they have ever experienced and shared; failure. They reject excellence because it shames them. They reject grit because they lack it. They turn from

victory because they will never know it. Nationalism and Autocracy are the faith of losers. There is an alchemy of sorts that lights these movements. Losers and extremists merge with opportunists and cynics to take power. They find their way to a demagogue who can bind them

in a marriage knotted by a glue of lies, ambitions, greed and resentments. Money is always attracted to the cause of self interest and before long the siren song of self enrichment attracts a Stephen Schwarzmann, rich enough to spend $40 million birthing a 21st Century Bund, and

callous enough to be indifferent to the consequences. Autocrats and Nationalists talk about freedom but do so with forked tongues. Seeing the world through the eyes of the wolf is a valuable perspective when pondering the people booing Team USA.