Well, a country is a shared endeavour isn't it? We collaborate together by following our national laws, paying our taxes, follow our customs and traditions and engage in cultural renewal and repair when required. In this way, everyone in the country is responsible for fostering a peaceful and prosperous environment that can prove to be fertile infrastructure for advancements and breakthroughs. Why not take some small measure of pride in this? It's a generational effort.

Isn't it essentially the same human instinct that drives the desire to increase representation in media for underrepresented groups of people? We relate to people who are "like us" in some dimension. Sure, it doesn't make sense in a sterile intellectual sort of way, but why does that matter? It's still real.

> Patriotism is the belief that your country is the best by virtue of you having been born in it

I can't find the original quote but I 100% agree with you that it is pretty odd to take pride in something you have an extremely tangential relationship with