Nations, as the scholar Benedict Anderson put it, are “imagined communities”. America’s crisis is that its imagination is breaking into two. On the one hand there are Donald Trump’s nationalists. On the other are the globalists. These are people who want “the globe to do well, frankly not caring about our country so much”, in Mr Trump’s words. His definition is both offensive and ingenious. It also plays with fire. The improvised explosive devices mailed this week to George Soros, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton might as well have been addressed “globalist”.
正如學者本尼迪克特•安德森(Benedict Anderson)所言，國家是「想像的共同體」。美國的危機在於它的想像正在一分爲二。一邊是唐納•川普(Donald Trump)的民族主義者，另一邊是全球主義者。用川普的話來說，後者希望「全球都過得好，坦率地說，他們不那麼關心我們的國家」。他的定義既無禮又巧妙，同時也是在玩火。上週郵寄給喬治•索羅斯(George Soros)、巴拉克•歐巴馬(Barack Obama)和希拉蕊•柯林頓(Hillary Clinton)的簡易爆炸裝置，也可以說是針對「全球主義者」的。