Are you a nationalist frustrated by the way Trump is dividing America instead of unifying it? Get used to it, because demonization of the native foreigner, the internal Other, is a feature of nationalist thought, not a bug.
I can see the next thirty years of Douthat and Dougherty’s careers laid out before me like a glimmering highway. Again and again, America will spit out a figure who this time, *just maybe*, might succeed in delivering a nationalism free of bigotry and close-mindedness.
Each time hope will leap anew in their chests — “Finally the Chosen One has arrived!” — only to be dashed again and again. Never realizing that the problem isn’t an insufficient adherence to nationalism’s logic. Quite the opposite.
They deserve it. The rest of us don’t.
