Patriotism can lead to xenophobia. If you ask an American kid what is the best country in the world, he or she will most likely answer that the United States is; and the same would work in other countries. Why is that? Someone, at a point, told them so.
Prejudice comes, sometimes, from questions and answers. The problem in believing that there is a best something is that, by consequence, something will have to be the worst. It is necessary that people understand that different just means different.
Love your country and be proud. There is absolutely nothing wrong with loving the place where you come from, but it is important to understand the concept of love and pride. The definition of love by the Oxford Dictionary is “an intense feeling of deep affection,” and the definition of pride is “a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired." Either one of them mention something about being better or worse.
Xenophobia can lead to many different ways of discrimination. It is not news that countries have fought for power and supremacy in the past, and that things have not changed much since, but they have to. This fight usually comes with the death of many innocent people.
Definitions, like most things, can be a matter of perspective. The recent attack that happened in Nice, France during the Bastille was an act of terrorism, and nobody is questioning that. Several people died and many were injured. But what about the bombs that the United States dropped in Syria a few days later? Is anybody talking about it? The country is claiming that they were targeting an area where a terrorist group meets, but the airstrikes were responsible for the death of 160 civilian lives. Why is this not receiving the same amount of attention as the attack in Nice? Who gets to pick the countries the media should talk about?
People see what they want to see, and they tend to minimize the pain they are not feeling. Terrorism is always terrorism, and it is not exclusive to rich or poor. Citizens of different countries should not judge or measure the pain and discomfort others are feeling; they should grieve and sympathize with what those places are going through. War on terrorism, or any other type of war, should not give anybody a free pass for killing civilians indiscriminately. Patriotism, when used radically, gives the idea that our people are more important than their people, but they are not.
