Hungary was great, once. But the heyday of the Magyar empire was a long time ago, and it seems that old dreams die hard.
Two hundred years on Europe's front lines against the Turks didn't help Hungary's world-historical ambitions; neither did the centuries of Habsburg domination that followed. I hadn't realized how truly non-Hungarian the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy was -- the only times at which the Hungarian monarch was not the same exact person as the Habsburg emperor were when both thrones stood empty. Not that this stopped Hungary from some unpleasant ambitions to dominate Eastern Europe even after their Austrian masters went down to defeat in the Great War.
There's something perverse here, an unwillingness to admit that history makes no promises. Hungarian nationalism has blood on its hands, and most of that blood has been Hungarian.