A war would underscore his contentions that his critics are weak, his rivals myopic, liberals perverse, immigrants suspect, leftists metastases, journalists -Fox News and Breitbart excepted – subversive, anti-American, knowingly and treasonously and shrewdly deceitful.

A war would make it clear that it‘s not mass casualty shootings by loner white males that makes Americans unsafe. It is, rather, the specter of the swarthy Muslim we have never met, which should keep us up at night – even if that Muslim is in actual life a saint among physicians or a decorated former brother-in-arms of U.S. troops overseas.

Donald Trump needs a war. But not just any war. He needs just the right global non-Christian, all-powerful, all-frightening, non-white, non-negotiable enemy.

He needs a Holy War.