I’m not much for federal holiday celebrations. I acknowledge the significance of Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. But Columbus Day or Flag Day? Well, not so much.

Independence Day — the Fourth of July — celebrates a historic and important milestone, but all the fireworks and the folderal leave me a bit cold. I was on a ten-day canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Wilderness for the nation’s bicentennial in 1976 — no phone, no radio—so I read about the celebration later (although I correctly predicted before we left that Jimmy Carter would choose Walter Mondale as his vice-presidential running mate).

So I approach the nation’s 250th with some ambivalence.

Part of it has to do with Donald Trump’s attempt to make it into a tribute to himself. The scheme apparently involves fouling the Reflecting Pool and tricking out the nation’s capital with gold filigree, transforming the seat of government into something akin to the lobby of an Atlantic City casino.

This administration’s tackiness knows no bounds. It’s not enough to raze the East Wing, to pave the Rose Garden or deface the Kennedy Center and the Oval Office; no celebration is complete without staging a blood match on the White House grounds, complete with a garish steel canopy and the requisite Greek chorus of sycophants and corporate sponsors.

For me, none of that inspires patriotism. Flag-waving and silly red caps don’t do it for me (although you might persuade me to wear a “Make America Good Again” hat).

And yet, I consider myself a patriot.

I don’t say that lightly. I’m no Pollyanna. We still have a long way to go to achieve gender and racial equality, for example, and I acknowledge Eddie Glaude’s point that the nation continues its long and contentious dithering over whether it wants to be a beacon of freedom or a white republic. (The latter seems to be prevailing at the moment.)

Of the three branches of government that are supposed to provide checks and balances, one is supine (legislative), the second is in overdrive (executive) and the third (judicial) blithely undermines the very Constitution it is charged to protect.

On its 250th birthday, the nation is mired in a corruption scheme so audacious that Warren Harding and even Richard Nixon would turn green with envy (roughly the color of the Reflecting Pool).

Yet, to invoke the famous Peace Corps ads of the late 196os, I prefer to see the glass as half full rather than half empty.

What makes me patriotic is the long sweep of American history, a stubborn but enduring confidence that, despite setbacks and reversals along the way, most Americans still aspire to realize the lofty goals encoded into our charter documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Although even the original language fell short of the mark — “all men are created equal” — and the Constitution limited slavery rather than eliminating it, the story of American history is that we seek to live into our ideals, including respect for the rights of minorities — far too slowly, it much be acknowledged, with regard to women and people of color. Our treatment of Native Americans is another matter altogether.

But it’s impossible to regard the long sweep of American history and not conclude that we’ve made progress. “The arc of the moral universe is long,” Theodore Parker declared and Martin Luther King Jr. often quoted, “but it bends toward justice.”

Yes, it’s also impossible to ignore that the trajectory toward justice is stalled right now, even reversed. But history, once again, provides some solace.

During our bicentennial, we Americans were still reeling from the largest political scandal to that point in our history and a constitutional crisis second only to the Civil War. Cynicism was rampant. Nixon had finally ceded power to Gerald Ford, who was arguably overmatched as president, but he was also a manifestly decent and honest man who tried to restore honor and confidence to a beleaguered nation.

His successor pledged never to “knowingly lie” to the American people, a promise that seemed just as preposterous then as it does now. But it was a promise he kept, and slowly, sometimes painfully, the nation began to emerge from the shadows of Vietnam and Watergate.

The troubles we faced as a nation at 200 pale next to the perils we face today, and I’ve no illusions that repairing the damage will be easy. But I believe in the promise of our charter documents and the durability of our institutions, confident that we will once again align ourselves with the arc of the moral universe.

I think that qualifies me as a patriot.

Randall Balmer, a professor at Dartmouth College, is the author of America’s Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State.