I was recently in Geneva, Switzerland on Ascension Day (40 days after Easter) for flight-attendant reasons. After dark, I headed down from the hotel to the lake-front to see a light show everyone was talking up. I was initially underwhelmed by the spectacle: it was literally just a giant, floating snowflake made up of strings of lightbulbs hovering quietly over the water, while gentle ambient music blared from the loud-speakers. Yet as I jockied for better viewing position amidst the thronging crowd, I did notice that the lights on that un-seasonal snowflake started to slowly yet steadily shift, changing colors and shapes and forms, melding into a wide-variety of designs both abstract and evocative. It was strangely hypnotic, compelling, and rewarding of your patience.

I reflected that as an American, I naturally expected the martial bombast of a fireworks show–or at a bare minimum, the frenetic, restless energy of a laser show. It should not have surprised me at all to see that Switzerland, a country world-renowned for its peacefulness and neutrality in all wars, would likewise prioritize a peaceful light display; nor that a nation of such immense linguistic and cultural diversity (it’s a nation of 8.7 million that speaks 4 languages) would feature a show wherein numerous diverse forms all gently cohered into one.

I’m sure it’s starting to sound like I’m going to express a preference for Switzerland to my homeland America on this Independence Day; and I do indeed respect and honor Switzerland, one of the oldest continuing republics on earth, from whom our own Founding Fathers drew inspiration–including Geneva’s own Jean-Jacque Rousseau, whose concept of the Social Contract directly influenced the wording of the Declaration of Independence. Likewise, having come of age myself during the George W. Bush administration and the monstrous, multi-trillion dollar insanities of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I am even more predisposed to admire the quiet wisdom of Swiss neutrality.

Yet I am also fully aware that it was Swiss banks who harbored the seized-and-stolen Jewish gold deposited by German Nazis during World War II; and the vaunted Swiss guard never actually participated in the liberation of the death camps or Battle of the Bulge or what have you. Certain things one must never be neutral on, and fascist genocide is emphatically one of them. I am also aware of the brutal history of Swiss mercenaries on the continent, and of their compulsory military service (not to mention their army’s famed multi-purpose knives), all of which kind of gives the lie to the stereotype of the peace-loving Swiss.

This is not to say that Swiss hypocrisies are worse than America’s, which they are also emphatically not; only to repeat Seneca’s ancient wisdom that it is not goodness to be better than the worse. Besides, we are all hypocrites; it’s why we all need the Atonement.

All this has been is a round-about way of expressing my own ambivalence on America every Fourth of July. And I do mean ambivalent, in the full breadth of the dictionary definition: “to have mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.” Indeed, that means there are many things I really do genuinely love and admire about these United States! Starting with the Declaration of Independence itself: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”! These are genuinely stirring words! Yet there are also many things I find genuinely shameful and wicked about these United States–namely, our repeated and grotesque failures to live up to those stirring words! Or the fact that those words were written by an unrepentant slave-owner! Go down the list.

I have yet to meet a fellow American, either at home or abroad, who doesn’t feel ambivalent about America–and all we really disagree on is which are the admirable parts of our history and which are the shameful.

Today is not the day I catalogue or litigate which is which. It is only to note that, as someone genuinely ambivalent about America, I have as little patience for the anti-patriotic songs as I do for the patriotic ones; that is, I am as indifferent to bands like Anti-Flag and Propaghandi as I am to Lee Greenwood and John Phillip Sousa. As such, I am drawn more to the songs that express that sincere ambivalence.

Take the above song, “Fourth of July” by Galaxie 500, the opener to their 1990 third and final album This Is Our Music. Lyrically, it scarcely even acknowledges the Fourth of July holiday, and then only to note why he “pulled the shades so I didn’t have to see the sky.” He could not care less about the empty spectacle of Independence Day. Yet musically, it’s all major-key bombast itself, celebratory and soaring; this song is also not a Swiss light show! Galaxie 500 is both totally over American triumphalism, while also fully succumbing to the spirit of the festivities. It’s one of their best songs. During their brief initial run, the only modicum of recognition Galaxie 500 ever gained was in the UK, yet they remained a thoroughly US band at their core–with all the inherent ambivalence that that entails.

I am also, honestly, ambivalent towards the Church (but then, aren’t we all); and given how our own Doctrine and Covenants categorizes the constitutions of the United States of America itself as inspired by God Himself, the two ambivalences overlap with each other frequently. I definitely don’t say all is well in Zion or America. But again, I embrace the full meaning of “ambivalence”–because there are still things I sincerely, genuinely, un-abashadley love about the Church and America! And plenty of things I definitely don’t. I have yet to meet a fellow Church member, at home or abroad, no matter how orthodox or faithful they claim to be, who didn’t feel otherwise. That is as it should be. Ambivalence is not something to be resolved, but embraced, inhabited. Indeed, a willingness to embrace the ambivalence in its fullness is what keeps you from stagnating, from calcifying into settled opinions one way or the other, which will always be myopic and inadequate. I think I have a testimony that God Himself desires us to inhabit the endless and everlasting Ambivalence, right along there with Him.