The latest book Ive been reading on nationalism is Anthony Smith's 2nd Edition of Nationalism. I like it a lot more than Hazony's Virtue of Nationalism. But, the two are very different beasts.
Here's a quote from Smith that makes me think that the fracturing of America down tribalized political lines is not a simple flash in the pants idea...
"The nation, in the eyes of nationalists, can be described as a community of history and destiny, or better, a community in which history requires and produces destiny - a particular national destiny. This idea of destiny carries far more emotional freight than notions of the futures.... For nationalists, the nation's destiny is always glorious, like its distant past; indeed, the golden past, hidden beneath the opporessive present, will shine forth once again, through the regeneration of the tru spirit of the nation by the yet unborn."
In evolutionary language, Smith is describing a grand (moral) meta-narrative. More specifically, I think, it is a grand meta-narrative quasi-fable that also encodes the 'scripture' necessary for List & Pettit moral Big Brother alignment. That is to say, the stories nationalists tell about their nation contain enough moralized "data points" for the emergence of a strong Big Brother group agent. If you don't understand the cultural milieu in which the stories are situated you probably won't pick this up.
I suspect this is what is happening with the Democratic Black nation in the States. They are heading down the road of nation building within the US' imperial carcass. That is the deep reason you see Trumpists labelled as insurrectionists and deplorable 'others'. It's not just superficial racism (equity). It's part of the evolutionary process of weak empire splitting.
In fact, the more I read in Smith, the more the US' current politicalization reminds me of Protestant Catholic splits in the1600's. There Protestants created a new meta-narrative fable out of the ashes of imperial-Catholic feudal empires.
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