Just seeing your reply now and wanted to say that I really appreciate your humorous self-reflection. Too often we just argue aggressively against the others standpoint without any self-reflection of our own (I've certainly been guilty of it).
Also the idea of smaller units for creating a closer feeling of belonging is something I've been thinking about quite a few times. I think countries/nations etc. try to use patriotism and a us vs them (because there is often not enough real connection otherwise) mentality to artificially create this.
Maybe there’s an argument to be made that large countries should be broken up in to smaller, more manageable geographic / population sizes.
Trust busting style.