I've never understood that.

There's a lot of things I could feel for an arbitrary geographical area, a government, a populace, or whatever other criteria make a country.

But love? Nah. Nor hate. There's nothing to love about such things. It's too much anthropomorphism for my brain to handle. Smaller groupings of people, yeah I can find love and hate. Mind you, those are not opposites; apathy is the opposite of both.

I am not apathetic to nations.

But there are things I enjoy about nations, including the us.

So it's fair to say that I enjoy some aspects and dislike others. A nation is not monolithic enough to say much more than that for me. It's like loving or hating the milky way.

Maybe if I lived in Luxembourg, that would be small enough to love or hate. However, I suspect that even at that size population and area, I'd still find myself without a distinct strong emotion.

I can't even say I love or hate my town. I like it. But it's like anything else human: fragmented. I can find that I love strolling through parts of my town. I love some of the history, and I love a good portion of the populace.

I might stretch that to bigger locations. Pittsburgh, as an example, is the one city I've ever been to that I didn't hate my stay. I can't say I love Pittsburgh, but there's a lot of parts of it that I do love. Mainly some of the people.

I dunno, what emotions do I have for the whole country? Conflicted is the way I'd describe that. Angry would describe some of the major aspects, particularly the political landscape. I think I can say I feel some joy in some of the people. And I do love the natural beauty of the country as whole. I haven't ever seen a region where the land itself wasn't spectacular, awe inspiring. That tends to turn into love eventually, and has for me.

Man, if you aren't able to explore the remaining unpopulated areas here, I don't know if I can even explain it properly. Every country has natural beauty away from population centers, I'm sure. But we just have so damn much of it, in staggering variety, for a single nation. Comes with being so damn huge.