I see a lot of wishy-washy, half-baked ideas here trying to make “patriotism” sound like a reasonable alternative but no. If at any point the heads of the country, or even the whole population of it stood for something unreasonable and/or immoral, would you still be a “patriot”? It’s all very ad-hoc, and extremely unwarranted if you’re in one of those settler/ colonial/Imperial vassal places. The only thing that can unite us in earnest is our beliefs and convictions, and those divisions and connections run through the whole world. Of course, it’s much better than idk, violent jingoism and white supremacy, but it’s still nonsensical. At most, you can just say you appreciate/enjoy/can’t complain much about being X/facets of X/being born and raised in the land of X (and even then if you haven’t in earnest been around Y and Z people you can’t even compare it. Maybe it actually would’ve been better to be born in the Y community, and that can be acknowledged even if it can’t be changed). Any sort of “pride” makes no sense in this context, besides whatever pride you feel by making your community/country better. If you can’t shake off the feeling that seeing things this clearly is somehow a betrayal to your country or people, or that there’s something immoral about it, trust me when I tell you you’re still a bit too propagandised to see it for what it is.
I see a lot of wishy-washy, half-baked ideas here trying to make “patriotism” sound like a reasonable alternative but no. If at any point the heads of the country, or even the whole population of it stood for something unreasonable and/or immoral, would you still be a “patriot”? It’s all very ad-hoc, and extremely unwarranted if you’re in one of those settler/ colonial/Imperial vassal places. The only thing that can unite us in earnest is our beliefs and convictions, and those divisions and connections run through the whole world. Of course, it’s much better than idk, violent jingoism and white supremacy, but it’s still nonsensical. At most, you can just say you appreciate/enjoy/can’t complain much about being X/facets of X/being born and raised in the land of X (and even then if you haven’t in earnest been around Y and Z people you can’t even compare it. Maybe it actually would’ve been better to be born in the Y community, and that can be acknowledged even if it can’t be changed). Any sort of “pride” makes no sense in this context, besides whatever pride you feel by making your community/country better. If you can’t shake off the feeling that seeing things this clearly is somehow a betrayal to your country or people, or that there’s something immoral about it, trust me when I tell you you’re still a bit too propagandised to see it for what it is.