I normally try to make my “Getting Angry” column posts on Sunday or Monday, but I took a much needed weekend off this week in order to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Or did I, really? If by “celebrate” you mean “play Battlestar Galactica Online all weekend and then hiding in my room during the terrifying explosions,” then yes. It’s a source of endless amusement for my friends: due to my time spent in service, every time I hear a firework go off down the street, I get anxious, thinking that someone is shooting at me. So I spent the weekend huddled with my roommate’s nervous dog, cursing the Fourth of July. It’s honestly one of my least favorite holidays.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve found a lot of people who feel similarly, albeit for differing reasons. There are a lot of anarchists and similar here, many of whom decry the Fourth of July as an empty celebration of a country gone seriously wrong. Inequality for LGBT citizens, a government obsessed with war, and corruption at the highest levels of administration are often reasons cited for a disillusionment with American politics and patriotic fanfare, and I can’t say I blame these people terribly.

Things seem dire for progressive-minded people, with Tea Party candidates running amok and government shutdowns being threatened in order to avoid funding social programs. The question is: should we really be that patriotic? Should we celebrate a nation mired in controversy and seeming inequality?

Whether you do or not is up to you. I don’t do much for the Fourth of July for very personal reasons, but I feel that one of the things that we can feel very patriotically proud about in this country is that we can choose to participate in rabidly American sentiment or not. Even though some asshats may label you a “terrorist” for not frantically waving your Stars and Stripes at every given opportunity, we have the ability to criticize (or not) our country’s policies to our heart’s content.

I myself have very patriotic leanings. I served my country and took personal pride in my oath to defend the Constitution, but there are many ways that I feel I continue that service: namely, by writing about important political issues and holding our leaders accountable. It is not out of a lack of patriotic feelings that I take to this website every week to rant about the excesses and unfair policies on the part of our politicians, but instead because I have a deep and abiding love for the United States and its vision.

This seems to be a common sentiment, nowadays. Our current President ran on a platform of change and hope, and while some feel he may not have lived up to his promises on that score, millions of voters took to the poll believing that even though America should change, it can change. When we urge our friends to take better care of themselves, or try to help troubled family members resolve their problems, it’s because we love them! That’s the nature of a new brand of patriotism: because we love America, we’re willing to trashtalk it enough that it changes to become a better place to live.

So I made it through the Fourth okay, and I think, in the end, our country will too. It takes rhetoric and criticism from people unhappy from the state of affairs in our great nation to make our world a better place to be. And dammit, that’s patriotic in my book.

Ian Awesome lives in Eugene, OR and is even sappier on his newsblog, OneAngryQueer.