It’s hard to hold both the mythology of America, its aspirations and promises, and its crimes in my head at the same time. The war on nuance in our politics and culture tries to oversimplify complicated issues: If you criticize the injustices in your country you must hate the troops! or How can you support that candidate when she’s obviously not perfect? Our fear of complexity, our inability to, as my dad put it, “tolerate ambiguity,” is so often one of our biggest failings.
