We might consider the "good" of "all" people above the good of our country.

When that is your mindset, voting for policies that favor your own country, your own well-being can in fact feel wrong, if it is at the cost of other people's well-being.

I am not talking about that. Groups exist for a reason. The biggest reason is that other groups exist. You can either be attacked by those or join them or create your own. Your group can be a political one, which in some cases may end up having their own nation state. If the group can defend a territory and its resources, sustain it, and gain respect, other groups may eventually acknowledge it. You may take these for granted but these things are not set in stone, they're fluid. Many people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Palentine think they are a nation state. Most other nation state don't acknowledge them as such... mostly because they're not powerful enough.

You can deny or devalue your own nationality but what you cannot deny is that nation states exist and they have incredible power, because they have to have at least enough power to defend and sustain themselves. They are definitely not the only organized power structures, but they are major ones. Maybe Open Society Foundation is right. Maybe all borders should be open, everything should be controlled by shared ideals with one world government and efficient open economy. They seem to think they have ways to make that work. Maybe they can. But until and unless they do that, we have to live with the ones we have, which grant the citizens certain rights and protections and subjects them to laws and regulations in exchange.

What I am talking about in my previous comment is not these things. I'm talking about the brainwashing by various forces (Open Society Foundation being one of them), which have made nationalism repulsive... by using simple brainwashing techniques. Most of these people would not be able to have a rational conversation about cost/benefits of having nation states or favoring your nation. They're triggered into an emotional response when the topic comes up.

Anti-nationalist views are much rarer and much less common in virtually all media. In the US you're going to have a hard time finding progressives who explicitly want to destroy America. They may disagree with American policy in a number of areas, but that's a long way from wanting to get rid of the country and its traditions.

Likewise elsewhere. It's probably weakest in the EU because the EU isn't a country so much as a work in progress - and it doesn't even have its own sports teams.

Personally I've never heard of the Open Society Foundation, although it sounds as if I'd agree with their views.

Is it by any chance because he backed the Western side in Ukraine?

Why did I bring up an organization founded by George Soros, a person who believes that nation states should not exist, when discussing nation states? Why do you think?

Think about this for one second and it's obviously not true. A majority? Against "their own well being"?

It's a misrepresentation of the anti-majoritarianism and anti-nationalism that says that it's necessary to consider whether what you're advocating has major negative effects on other people for minor or illusory benefits to yourself.

But that's a different discussion. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about those who aren't able to think rationally through these things because they have been exposed to targeted techniques by adversaries. They're triggered into an emotional response every time they encounter other ways of thinking than they have been programmed to.

Let us think as PR firms for a second. There is a lot of nuances in greater truths which can be tuned to make anything sound reasonable. We can design experiments a certain way, we can frame questions a certain way, highlight certain things and present it to the journalists... who will happily publish our well thought our well reasoned ideas, backed by stats and surveys and facts and experiments. Our biggest problem is the rest of the truth. When people realize that, our messages will be of less value. Other PR firms with other interests who benefit from the other parts of the truth and people can make reasoned decisions as different realities are presented to them by different interests. We'll have to constantly do better and present our side.

That's how the PR industry has been functioning for the last 100 years or so. I think that's all fair.

But what if there was a way to prevent people from even navigating to the other parts of the truth that we, as a PR firm, don't want them to?

There is and it is widely used today. Once the cat is out of the bag, unfortunately, everyone has to play like that... and that is what has been happening. There's a reason why calm well-reasoned ideological discourses are less of a thing now. Everything evokes strong emotions and rational discussions barely happen.

For example they will go to organic shop to 'save the planet' and 'be fair to third world countries', but those shops also exclude the poor and the minorities due to their pricing and thus let them keep their closed communities, while the universalist political message works against the competition from doing the same.

So I'm not convinced your point is correct.

That must be frustrating.

Not never, but it often seems very difficult for certain people. I get emotionally charged reactions, both online and IRL.

You also expect this state of affairs to never change.

What do you mean? I think these things can change. The brainwashing is usually kept in by evoking a traumatic response. If the trauma is healed, the brainwashing doesn't stick around.