In my way of thinking, if you love the country where you live in and care for your countrymen then being patriotic and responsible is a natural thing for you. Patriotism can unite people specially during crisis and tragedies where the people help each other to survive.
If a country has become infected with parasites, then 'patriotism' simply helps the parasites. In fact, they need it and rely on patriotism for their own lifecycle. The same applies to fellow countrymen who've become infected.
Now if there is a way to support the healthy tissue and extricate the parasites it make sense to do so, but only up to a point. It's possible for the infection to be so advanced, or the trajectory to be such that the condition is inevitable. At that point you just have to cut your losses and start over. It's just a matter of finding a good 'starting point'.
At some point a parasitic infection is so advanced that what was something is now something else. A festering corpse is no longer a human but rather a bag of bacteria. In that case a 'patriot' is another name for a 'necrophiliac'. I'll not say that this is the situation for the U.S.A. yet...but I won't say that it is not, and it's looking more and more that way every day.
