I can live with the term patriot but I can’t abide by the tag nationalist attributed to me. Batause for me, nationalism is another form of racism. It appeals to your primal instincts for superiority and territorial one upmanship. In this election season where hyper nationalism and the demand for muscular leadership is gaining a lot of traction among the voters, I feel somewhat disillusioned by it all.  The growing intolerance, the thinking that you can shout and bully your way in to whatever it is that you want to achieve and all sense of civility and propriety be damned. Being disillusioned is also a way of caring for your country.  Except that rather than wallowing in disappointment at the shrinking of the liberal space, you cultivate a kind of irreverence for the authority and disdain is the only weapon to puncture a lot of bloated and self-righteous egos.  It is not that by being more religious is fostering some kind of spiritual renaissance in society.  On the contrary, all kinds of mumbo-jumbo is being touted as a panacea for all the ills with such a profound smugness that you can’t help but being mesmerized by the awesome retardness of the human mind.