Looking around at our current political landscape, one can be forgiven for feeling particularly uninspired by the state of the American experiment. 

The fact that our commander in chief is busy hocking a custom fragrance on social media doesn’t make things seem any better — nor does the prospect of a self-described socialist becoming the next mayor of America’s largest city. 

As Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie often likes to quip, a quick perusal through the day’s political headlines can make one feel as if we’re stuck in some Philip K. Dick universe. And all that daily absurdity is apparently taking a toll on how we, as Americans, feel about our national heritage. 

According to a recent poll by Gallup, a record-low number (58 percent) of U.S adults say they are “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American nowadays — a whopping 25 percentage points lower than just two short decades ago. 

To be sure, partisan political prejudices play a part in people’s gloomy outlook of America. 

In the current era of President Donald Trump, Democrats were least proud to describe themselves as Americans (36 percent) with “independents” a bit further behind at 53 percent. Republicans, on the other hand, still take great pride in their citizenship with 92 percent feeling extremely or very proud to be an American — an increase of 10 percentage points over their all-time low of 82 percent during the doldrums of Joe Biden’s presidency. 

However, it’s not all pure partisan inclinations driving such numbers. According to polling data from YouGov.com, a majority of registered voters have thought we’re headed in the “wrong direction” every year since the website started collecting data in 2009. 

Such pessimism is easy to understand, considering the apocalyptic nature of our news cycle, the limitless amount of clickbait found on social media and the nonstop electoral politicking of never-ending partisan campaigns. On any given day, national headlines provide us plenty of reasons to look at the world around us and feel dismayed that this is the result of nearly 250 years of American democracy. 

There’s certainly legitimate reasons for such dismay. After all, outright socialists gaining power in major cities isn’t quintessentially “American,” nor are the Soviet-style deportation raids occurring in Home Depot parking lots. In countless ways and on a variety of policy fronts, a great many corners of this nation are failing to live up to the principles espoused by the Declaration of Independence — idealist concepts such as equality under the law and respect for personal autonomy. 

But since when has this nation ever truly lived up to those high ideals? 

From the very day raucous American colonists divorced themselves from the Old World, our burgeoning nation has been fraught with contradiction and hypocrisy. Slavery festered in the new world; Native Americans were ripped from their homes and marched along a Trail of Tears; segregation, xenophobia and institutionalized prejudice hung in the air throughout much of the 20th century; and even now, the ugly “isms” of other eras hang with us as populists, political panderers and opportunists look to profit off the chaos and confusion of our current cultural upheaval.

However, those wrongs demonstrate something more than the plethora of ways we’ve failed to uphold our lofty goals of liberal enlightenment. Our overcoming of such injustices demonstrates the great distance we’ve marched (metaphorically and physically) to improve and expand our understanding of what it means to be a nation full of free people.  

Or to put it another way, America isn’t defined merely by our ephemeral partisan happenings, but by our long-term expansion of freedom. 

Even the most objectively “unAmerican” policies emanating from our local, state or federal governments don’t necessarily portend an end to this American experiment. America is more than the mere sum of our politics at any given moment, and our pride should depend not on current events, but on how far we’ve come as a nation since our messy separation from the English empire two and a half centuries ago. 

Simply put, America isn’t any single moment plucked from history. Much of our national story has been about the violent, messy and cumbersome process of expanding human liberty — an expansion that isn’t always consistent or robust, but has nonetheless generated a far more egalitarian, tolerant and free society than the one that existed when our “united states” first banded together for independence. 

Indeed, the injustices we’ve overcome as a nation demonstrate just how remarkably effective this little democratic experiment of ours has been at inching closer toward a more classically liberal world order. Sure, we may still fail to embody the lofty ideals of our founding — but we’ve come far closer to a “more perfect union” than when we began, and it’s that resilient ability to keep moving forward that illustrates the mentality behind our democratic republic. 

The exceptional piece of the American experiment — what makes this nation truly great — is that it is never done with the arduous task of improving itself. Its citizens never surrender in their quest to establish a better future for those who come after them, and their occasional success often yields transformational results for the human experience more broadly. 

Regardless of how you might feel about whatever partisan tomfoolery is taking place at any given moment, such a track record should give us all reason to believe our best days still lie ahead of us. We need only to continue working toward those days — even as we (inevitably) disagree with one another over the best way to do so. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.