Nationalists are not always patriots. Patriots love their country as it is. Nationalists love their country as they imagine it once was, and sometimes not even then. “There seems to be a thin line between violent, extreme nationalism and treason,” Harold Ettlinger wrote in The Axis on the Air. “It seems that a man is a fascist before he is an American or a Frenchman or a Norwegian, and that he will betray his country in the interests of fascism. One moment, being a fascist, he is violently nationalistic, working for a political creed which involves exalting his own country above others. The next moment, having been frustrated in his aims, he turns against his country and fights for its downfall, or sees to it, if it has already fallen, that it does not rise again.”

This is not to say that Trump is a fascist. He is a narcissist. If Trump is removed from office, is there any doubt that he will root for civil unrest as a way to avenge his wounded feelings? Last week, he said the market would crash without him in the White House. Nothing would please him more. If he suffers, he will try to outsource his suffering to others. In a civil war as in the Vietnam War, Trump will let other people do his fighting for him.