It could be any of three senses, each of which was expounded by the great American journalist Randolph Bourne in his 1918 essay “The State.”

They could mean America the Country. According to Bourne, when speaking of country or nation:

“We think vaguely of a loose population spreading over a certain geographical portion of the earth’s surface, speaking a common language, and living in a homogeneous civilization. Our idea of Country concerns itself with the non-political aspects of a people, its ways of living, its personal traits, its literature and art, its characteristic attitudes toward life.”

Or they could mean America the State. According to Bourne:

“The State is the country acting as a political unit, it is the group acting as a repository of force, determiner of law, arbiter of justice.”

It is important to note that Bourne’s idea of the State is distinct from his idea of government, which is:

“…the machinery by which the nation, organized as a State, carries out its State functions. Government is a framework of the administration of laws, and the carrying out of the public force. (…) That the State is a mystical conception is something that must never be forgotten. Its glamor and its significance linger behind the framework of Government and direct its activities.”

And in wartime, the State eclipses all else, as the alarmed populace amalgamates into a herd, huddling and stampeding in unison under the guiding rod of government-as-shepherd:

“Wartime brings the ideal of the State out into very clear relief, and reveals attitudes and tendencies that were hidden. (…) For war is essentially the health of the State. The ideal of the State is that within its territory its power and influence should be universal. (…) And it is precisely in war that the urgency for union seems greatest, and the necessity for universality seems most unquestioned. The State is the organization of the herd to act offensively or defensively against another herd similarly organized. The more terrifying the occasion for defense, the closer will become the organization and the more coercive the influence upon each member of the herd.”

Bourne noticed a key problem for clearly thinking about these matters:

“The patriot loses all sense of the distinction between State, nation, and government.”

As a result, these terms have become thoroughly confused.

The terms “patriotism” and “nationalism” as used by today’s arch-conservatives refer to attitudes that used to be called “jingoism.” So, what is today called “country” in the sense of “patriotism” and “nation” in the sense of “nationalism” is actually what Bourne referred to as “the State.”

What is today called “the State” Bourne instead called “government.”

And what Bourne meant by “country” and “nation” is a concept so neglected today, that it doesn’t really have its own name at all.

It will clarify things if we adopt our own set of labels for Bourne's rigorous concepts: one that doesn’t confusingly contradict current usage as Bourne’s does, but also doesn’t have the deceptive Orwellian qualities of standard modern parlance.

Our meaning should be unmistakable if we speak of America the Civilization, America the Herd, and America the Regime.

Those who display the “Make America Great Again” injunction on baseball caps and bumper stickers are specifically hoping for a particular prospective government official to fulfill it. So, they are clearly not saying “Make the American Civilization Great Again.”

Yet they are also saying far more than “Make the American Regime Great Again.” They are not merely concerned with the glory of the Federal government.

What Trump’s supporters desperately want is to Make the American Herd Great Again. And by “Great,” they mean big, imposing, mighty, and fearsome.

In a time of sparse grazing (that is, a deep economic recession), they are irrationally alarmed at perceived economic inroads being made by the Mexican and Chinese Herds.

And in a time of military and diplomatic humiliation (see above), they are irrationally terrified that the Russian, Chinese, and Muslim Herds may someday supplant or even overrun them.

They want their Herd’s military stampede to be irresistible and earthshakingly awesome again, and its huddle (immigration and trade barriers, the national security state, etc.) to be impenetrable and intimidatingly forbidding. And they are looking to Trump to restore these herd characteristics as the new strongman shepherd.

This is why Trump’s vaunted masculinity is so important. His fans want their shepherd to have a firm hand, like a stern but protecting father.

As Bourne explained:

“There is, of course, in the feeling towards the State a large element of pure filial mysticism. The sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one’s desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feelings of protection. It is not for nothing that one’s State is still thought of as Father or Motherland, that one’s relation towards it is conceived in terms of family affection.”

And this is especially true in times of war such as ours. Bourne added that the wartime State’s…

“… chief value is the opportunity it gives for this regression to infantile attitudes. In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock, the quasi-personal symbol of the strength of the herd, and the leader and determinant of your definite action and ideas.”

But in order for this filial piety toward the Herd to really take hold, there usually needs to be a figurehead with a face, a name, and a personality to function as a devotional focal point: a father-figure embodiment of the Herd itself. This was the function of Big Brother in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. And this is the function of Trump in his supporters’ dreams of an American Herd made great again.

If America’s spooked-herd mindset continues to intensify, it could even turn the populist demagogue Trump into Nationalist America’s answer to Nationalist Italy’s Benito Mussolini: our “Il Douche” to their “Il Duce.”