Patriotism is for saps. Trump seeks "appreciation."

     "We are doing very well with, I think, almost all of the governors, for the most part. But you know, it's a two-way street. They have to treat us well."

Ask what you can do for your country.

     Trump on Fox News, March 24

It is how Trump thinks. He says it out loud. 

Republican voters are OK with it.

Donald Trump was impeached because of quid pro quo. To review: Trump wanted campaign dirt on Joe Biden in the form of an announcement by top Ukraine officials that they were investigating Biden. That would give third party validation for campaign attacks on Biden. To extract that, Trump and his political team held up Ukraine defense authorizations and dangled-but withheld--a public meeting at the White House. 

Democrats considered this indisputable abuse of power, with Trump caught red handed. It was both illegal (withholding appropriated funds) and morally wrong (injuring an ally and cheating in an election.)

Republican voters and their officeholders disagreed. It was no big deal.

On March 27, at a coronavirus news briefing Trump volunteers an answer to a question about Trump's complaint that state governors aren't "appreciative" enough of him.

Trump: 

     "I think the governor of Washington is a failed presidential candidate. He leveled out at zero in the polls. He's constantly tripping and, I guess 'complaining' would be a nice way of saying it. In Michigan, all she does is--she has no idea what's going on. All she does is saying 'Oh, it's the federal government’s fault.'

Watch, beginning at 24:00  Click: CSPAN

     I want them to be appreciative. We've done a great job. 

    Mike Pence, I don't think he sleeps any more. He calls all the governors. I tell him--I'm a different kind of guy--I tell him, 'Don't call the governor of Washington. You're wasting your time with him. Don't call the woman in Michigan.'

     You know what I say: if they don't treat you right, I don't call."

The shocking thing is not that Trump says this. We know this about Trump. What is important to notice is that Republican voters are OK with it.

American political culture has changed. The World War Two and Cold War eras solidified a spirit of national unity. All of America was at risk. Soviet missiles in Cuba weren't just endangering Florida, they were endangering America. Soviet ICBMs were aimed at everyone. JFK could call for patriotic sacrifice and people heard it as stirring words, not satire. 

Obama leapfrogged into national consciousness at the 2004 Democratic convention with words of national unity.

"The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

Words like that worked in 2004 and it still worked in 2008. By 2016 this sounded naive. For all Democrats, but especially within the Democratic left--approximately the Sanders wing--Obama is understood to have been rolled by the Republicans. He tried to negotiate with them on health care expansion, and wasted valuable time. He shouldn't have bothered. Republicans openly stonewalled his 2009 infrastructure stimulus, preferring to prolong the recession rather than let Obama have credit for pulling us out of it. They paid no price for that. Didn't Democrats notice?

The pundits--including the ones Obama referenced in 2004--observe that Republicans played hardball; Obama played beanbag. Hardball worked. Mitch McConnell said the primary goal of Republicans was to make Obama a one term president. He failed at that, but 100% opposition succeeded in denying him a governing majority by 2010 and ability to fill court positions by 2012.

Trump understands the state of American politics. Democratic moderates don't, remaining stuck in a gauzy sentiment. Democrats voted unanimously to spend 2 trillion dollars in a stimulus, much of which will go directly to giveaways to corporations, with Trump writing in a signing statement that he has no intention of obeying the law's provisions on Congressional oversight. Democrats weren't invited to the bill signing. See what Trump did, not what bi-partisan government did. Soon the checks will come, signed by Trump.

Democrats are getting rolled again.

Trump understands that we are a nation divided. The "we" in Trump's America are Trump's Americans, not all Americans. 

Republican voters are unified by what and who they don't like. They don't like Democrats. They don't like Obama, Pelosi, nor Schumer. They don't like woke culture. They don't like know-it-all Harvard experts. They don't like immigrants waltzing in and getting stuff. They don't like people of color getting benefits. They don't like affirmative action. They don't like snooty European globalist types. They don't like environmentalist job killing weenies. They don't like strange gay and queer and transgender people with their pronouns. They don't like Christianity being treated like just another religion. 

They especially don't like being made to feel guilty over the they way they actually feel. They are still pissed off about the changes that arose out of the 1960's. 

They aren't giving up. There is still a Nixonian "Silent Majority" and there is still a 1990's "Moral Majority." Make America great again. They know they are outnumbered in the cities and college towns, but they still have the countryside and a civil war is underway.

They know it. Trump knows it. Democrats who support Biden think we can all get along.