Sebastian Rotella’s article last week in the Los Angeles Times, “What the French love about America,” reveals some of the complexity of the sentiments we, and others, feel when we think about the United States. Not bad food for thought as we face the remaining hours before we elect our next president.

Rotella’s piece centers around a three-day panel on North American literature, which took place last week in Paris, a city bearing some fame for being a “bastion of anti-Americanism.” Festival America, as the panel is titled, is considered the “biggest of its kind outside the United States,” according to its organizers. Rotella attributes its popularity in France to the centrality of social realism in North American literature, as opposed to the “excessive introspection” many French readers perceive as the primary focus of French authors. In addition, Rotella notes that the range of cultures and types of writing inherent in North American literature fascinate many French readers.

Rotella intimates in his article that it is precisely the diversity of opinion and perspectives coexisting within the United States which is valued by the French, despite their declared disregard for American foreign policy, and enthusiasm for American products, which may seem paradoxical.

“Part of the American dream is about reinventing yourself,” Rotella quotes Danzy Senna, a Boston fiction writer, as saying. “And I think there’s something powerful and alluring about that idea, and something really terrifying about that lack of a fixed identity.”

Rotella’s citation of Sherman Alexie suggests that, despite all that appears to be wrong with the United States, our nation does retain a few saving graces worthy of contemplation:

“I see white American writers on these stages disparaging the country, when everything they have is because of that country. The dream has not died. I am a millionaire because of my imagination. I don’t know if you could find another society that has ever existed where somebody like me could become what he has become.”

The United States is a nation recognized for its diversity and complexity. We’re allowed to hold complex opinions about our identity as American citizens, just as citizens of other cultures and nations may have complex opinions about American culture and the way the United States interacts with the rest of the world. The American Constitution grants us this right.