Why You Should Find the Good in America at Least Once a Year
You don’t have to be a super patriot to reject self-defeating nihilism. Give it a try this Fourth of July.

The building where my band rehearses is an extraordinary pile of shit. The walls are pockmarked with dents and holes, it smells like mildew and stale beer, and there is no heat or air conditioning.
The only light comes from whatever lamps you provide yourself and the only acoustic “treatment” comes from carpets torn up from the floor and nailed to the walls.
In short, it’s dark, smelly, and dingy. Not exactly the most enjoyable environment in which to create.
It’s Not My Fault, So Why Bother?
There’s plenty I could do to address some of these problems, at least in my own practice room. I could patch the holes, install acoustic treatment, put down some rugs, and so on.
But why should I?
These problems predate my tenancy — and the building was never a looker in the first place. It’s not my fault the place is such a shithole. Besides, it’s sitting on prime real estate, so it’s bound to get torn down any day now (if it doesn’t burn down first).
Clearly the logical choice is to make no attempt at improvement and just get whatever I can out of the place for myself.
Opportunity Costs and Opportunities Lost
That’s what I’ve been telling myself since 2013. As of this writing, the building is still standing. I go there every week. And all the problems I mentioned continue to exist. Many have gotten worse.
Imagine what kind of improvements I could’ve made to my little corner of this building over the past decade. Yes, there are bigger, more structural issues beyond my skill or ability to fix, but I could’ve at least made a small part of it better for me and my friends — and I could’ve taken pride in having done so (or at least making the attempt).
Imagine if all the other musicians rehearsing there took a similar stance. And imagine if we all held the building managers to a higher standard? How different would that space look today?
You Can’t Improve a Place You Don’t Care About
Many Americans, particularly of my generation and younger, see the United States the same way I saw my rehearsal space: a crumbling monstrosity wracked with incurable problems. A place that was never any good to begin with and would be too hard to fix even if you wanted to. Better to just get yours while there’s still time.
Maybe it’s because I live in an extremely progressive city, but I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with someone about the good things about living in America. I recently saw a LinkedIn post from an American art director begging for a foreigner to marry her so she could move out of “this hellscape.” An art director. Someone who moves pictures around for a living (a six-figure living, often). I don’t think they have that job in Hell.
Nary a day goes by that I don’t hear something about what a racist, imperialist, late-stage capitalist nightmare America is from tech workers, HR mangers, artists, musicians, trust-fund babies, self-described “foodies,” teachers, professors, corporate marketing execs, and now even young kids.
To be clear, America is not without problems — some of which are very serious. But surely there must be something good about the largest, richest, most culturally and ethnically diverse democracy in the history of the species. Surely there must be something worth celebrating about this place where, for the most part, everything works to a degree that would seem like magic to people even a hundred years ago. Surely there’s something about America that inspires millions of people to attempt to migrate here every year.
America’s Here, Like it or Not. Might as Well Like it.
To deny this is to make the same error I did with my rehearsal building. If you see something as fundamentally broken, bad, or destined to fail, you won’t feel any desire to take care of it or improve it. You have to believe a thing has intrinsic value before you can commit to its upkeep. Otherwise, your only option is to grab at what you can for yourself before it’s all gone.
These are the two options we Americans are faced with now. We can choose to believe that this country should never have existed, has no long-lasting value, and is doomed to failure because of these flaws. Or we can choose to believe that there are some good things about this nation that give it intrinsic value.
No matter what we choose, it’s pretty much a guarantee the United States will continue to exist for the rest of our lifespans. Despite increased strife and division, I don’t think we’ve reached the point where things will truly fall apart in any meaningful way.
Rather, we’re faced with a gradual degradation in quality of life from lack of upkeep. We risk losing more trust in our institutions and our neighbors. We risk breakdowns in innovation and entrepreneurship. We risk losing the American can-do spirit that inspires so many people to pick up their families and attempt to make something of themselves, whether they’re coming from different states or different countries.
In short, we risk losing the optimistic determinism that inspires hope in the future and faith in the fruits of hard work. It’s a terrible thing to lose on an individual level. On a national level, it’s catastrophic.
What Kind of an American Could You Be?
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life listening to people complaining about how everything sucks (and has always sucked and will always suck)? Do you really want to go to work with people like that? Or parties? Or school? Do you want to live next door to the person who doesn’t believe there’s any point in trying? Do you want to be that person?
Of course you don’t.
So this Fourth of July, take one day — just one out of 365 — to think on some things you like about America. Some good things. I bet if you put your mind to it, you’ll find more than you think. We live in a pretty great place, despite its flaws — and there are no places without flaws. You could help fix some of those flaws.
But first you have to want it.