Tribalism is a theme of our era, and a theme of every era, and a theme of my column today. (For that column, go here.) Partisanship, you could say, is the political expression of tribalism. “This is what my party believes today. Therefore, so do I.”

Here on the Corner, I would like to paste, and comment on, a statement made by President Trump yesterday. What is populism? What is nationalism? Those are enduring questions. I believe that Trump’s statement is a near-perfect expression of what you might designate “the populist-nationalist style.”

See what you think:

One complaint I have heard over the years is that too many problems are labeled a “national-security threat.” Education reformers used to say that the woeful state of American education, as they saw it, was a “national-security threat.”

That was probably a rhetorical flourish, meant to get people excited about a problem that maybe they weren’t excited enough about.

Are foreign movies, or American movies made abroad, even a problem? As for “national-security threat” — well, some of us are more likely to think of the mullahs, the CCP, the Kremlin . . .

Then we have, from President Trump, the warning about “messaging and propaganda!” He should know?

Finally, the action: “a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”

(I have had many years to get used to our president’s sense of capitalization. It has not happened yet.)

“Take him seriously, not literally!” people say. At other times, they say, “What, you didn’t hear what he said? He meant it!” At any rate, how are we to take the president’s words on movies from abroad?

Certainly, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, hopped to: “We are on it,” he tweeted. You may recall what Vice President Vance said in Greenland several weeks ago: “We can’t just ignore the president’s desires.”

A last word, from me (for now): The hat reads, “Make America Great Again.” There was one placed at every seat of the cabinet table last week (as you can see here). Leaving aside the question of “again” — what makes America great? I think this question is too little discussed.

Traditionally, and proudly, we have been open to other lands. And populated by people of other lands. And unjittery about movies “that are produced in Foreign Lands.” We don’t think that things from abroad have cooties. America is big, in multiple ways: physical, mental. To my way of thinking, Trump’s statement about movies is so small. Unworthy of us.