Caring about how major changes in the government effect your life has nothing to do with nationalism.

For instance, I'm not a fan of the USA. But I'm still going to vote when I can.

Yeah, I just sort of realized I was thinking patriotism. But I just googled, and the words are basically interchangeable.

Also, I mentioned that it was an extreme. I'm not a big fan of the US either, but I will vote. I understand that you don't have to be a hardcore patriot to vote.

How is considering nationalism useless not caring about how you are governed or even about your country?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/nationalism

Read up.

Nationalism is not the same as patriotism. A patriot shows national pride in moderation.
A nationalist is more radical.
Nationalism has its pluses and minuses. It created modern day Europe basicly. It also caused wars. In fact it led up to World War I. A nationalistic organization called the Black Hand Soceity from Serbia(while it was part of Austro-Hungarian Empire) along with the majority of Serbia wanted there own country, due to their culturally Serbian population. Therefore the nationalist Black Hand member, Gabril Princip, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand sparking World War I.

nationalism is great.

if you don't have something bigger to be a part of, then surely you would feel quite small.

Its good to have nationalism.... but not to make that issue bigger than that to get to a war...

Nationalism is a concept that people just do not get, hence the past couple of posts. Nationalism breeds war, imperialism through acts of russianization(process of moving people to a captured territory and forcing them to breed after exterminating most locals.) and nazis. Ideas of nationalism were spread by napoleon, they haven't been something we've been thinking all along.

Lets use several examples for this:

Ottomans dominate eastern europe, yet do not attempt to say we are better then you because we're turks, they just collect taxes.

Scandinavians: Its kind of obvious they didn't rush to battle thinking "im finnish/swedish/whatever bitch". Instead they killed and raped for money.

2 examples of nationalism:
Nazi germany, hitler looked to exterminate everything that wasn't the nationality he defined was "perfect."

Serbian invasion of bosnia: they werr engaging in ethnic cleansing, so to speak. Killing in the name of preserving their nationality in an area.

I'd add more but its 4:20 am and i'm on my phone

Dictionary.com lists the second definition as:

:/
It then goes to list chauvinism, which is the extreme ofc. Also, the thesaurus lists patriotism as a synonym.

So nationalism is just the extremist version of patriotism?

yeah. It's worse then patroitism in actions but better than racism ofc

I guess a good way to explain it is that patriotism is loving your country, while nationalism is believing your country is superior to all others.

It's the difference between self esteem and smugness.