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It was my mom’s birthday this week and we went to see the play “Good Night, and Good Luck” on Broadway. George Clooney, his hair dyed jet black, plays the newsman Edward R. Murrow, who stood up to Joseph McCarthy during the height of McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts, helping to precipitate the greasy Senator’s downfall. The parallels to our current time were easy to see. The audience, hungry for hopeful bits of history to buoy their spirits in the age of Trump, cheered wildly at every deadpan line about standing up to bullies. But the underlying message of the story is not the simple good-and-evil story that everyone thought they were applauding.
It did, of course, take courage for Murrow to run stories critical of McCarthy. He knew that McCarthy would retaliate by smearing him as a communist sympathizer, and he did. In response, Murrow gave a speech denying any communist sympathy, and proclaiming his love for America, saying that he, unlike McCarthy, believed that people could engage in civil debate with the reds without become reds themselves. Murrow’s ultimate triumph was one of manners, which the public ultimately preferred over McCarthy’s boorish browbeating. The most important lesson in the play, however, lies in what Murrow didn’t do.
America’s most respected newsman told his audience that McCarthy’s most serious violation of decency was the fact that he flung around false accusations of unpatriotism. In defense of the ACLU, Murrow said, “Twice [McCarthy] said the American Civil Liberties Union was listed as a subversive front. The Attorney General’s list does not and has never listed the ACLU as subversive, nor does the FBI or any other federal government agency. And the American Civil Liberties Union holds in its files letters of commendation from President Truman, President Eisenhower and General MacArthur.” He went on to say, in that famous broadcast, “the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism… This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.”
McCarthy called people and institutions communists. Murrow replied that, in fact, they were not communist, they were upstanding patriotic Americans, and that McCarthy’s methods of accusation were out of line. What Murrow did not say is: “It doesn’t matter if people are communist or not.” He did not say: “The conflation of communism with anti-Americanism is a cheap rhetorical trick.” He did not say: “I reject the implication that communism is a threat to American values.” He did not say: “Perhaps the communists are making some valid points.” Murrow’s bravery was real, but its boundaries stopped at the edge of the stars and stripes. He wanted to contest McCarthy on the field of patriotism. He could not bring himself to peer into the hollow heart of patriotism itself. Thus, Murrow’s victory allowed Americans to sleep soundly in the knowledge that decency had prevailed, without ever peeking under their beds at the enormous pile of skulls.
When one child in a schoolyard tries to insult another by saying “You’re gay!”, the proper response is not to cry, “No I’m not!” It is to say, “So what if I was?” To accept the very premise of the slur is to validate it. Grasping this distinction is a mark of moral development. Yet this rudimentary principle has, from Murrow straight through today, always been a bridge that America’s pillars of liberalism could not bring themselves to cross. What held Murrow back, and what still holds his successors back, is their determination to Put America First. They are Americans and they work for Americans and they want (in the kindest way) for America to flourish and they believe (evidence notwithstanding) that America is good in its heart. It is a quasi-religious belief—by far the most popular religion in our country. You can call this American exceptionalism, but let’s call it patriotism for short. Those who presume themselves to be making a case for liberal morality first bash themselves on the head with the brick of patriotism, and then wonder why they can’t quite think straight.
Capitalism of the sort that America practices naturally generates patriotism for the same reason that jockeys put blinders on horses: It keeps things running smoothly. It precludes questions. It channels vision into a single direction with no distractions. It is good for business. This practice has been spectacularly successful for American capitalism. But there is no reason for the people and institutions who are supposed to promote the common good to hobble themselves with patriotic shackles. And yet they do. Murrow, for all of the praise that we lavish him with, could not wrap his head around the idea that perhaps communists—people who wished for a more fair and equal world!—should not be used as a repugnant counterpoint for all that America represents. The decency that Murrow sought existed in a sharply bounded channel of public discourse in which it was more outrageous to label an American as a communist than it was for the American government to launch a murderous global war against the ideology of communism that would destabilize nations, smash nascent democracies, and cause untold suffering over the next several decades. If you accept that America is good and America is free enterprise and communism is the opposite of free enterprise then communism is the opposite of America which means that communism is bad. This kindergarten-level puzzle was all it took for the right wing, the real army of capitalism, to create a social sanction against straying beyond the bounds of patriotism so strong that it still defines media and politics and popular culture today. Indeed, we are all swimming in its fetid political retaining pond right now.
Liberalism, with its embrace of universal values and the rights of mankind, has never truly prevailed in America because most of its alleged advocates have not been willing to release their grasp on patriotism. For fascists, patriotism is a door to pass through; for liberals, it is a wall. They should walk around it, but instead they continue to bang their heads against it. It makes liberals look pathetic, scared of their own conclusions. “We, ah, don’t support the war, but we support the troops, and we certainly support the pilot of the bomber, as an American, but we don’t support the bombs themselves, although we do support the company that makes the bombs, since it’s a pillar of the American economy, but we hope that the bombs don’t kill anyone innocent, but we still hope that American wins the war, though we know the war is unjust, because we love America.”
“We are outraged at January 6th not only because a bunch of poor suckers were dumped by lies but also because breaking into the US Capitol is an assault on democracy, notwithstanding the fact that all attempts to subvert democracy at home and abroad originate there. There are flags there and they must be respected.”
“We believe that Joe Biden is a good man, because he did good things for America, and yes, perhaps he facilitated the violent killings of a few tens of thousands of children, but that is complicated and we are going to therefore act as though it should not be a part of the conversation.”
“We are the free press. We are here to report the truth. In wartime, we run weepy graphics with waving flags and explicitly hope for America to win the war. We are the free press. We do not find it necessary to ask what ‘terrorism’ means, and instead focus our questions on whether, you know, teenage college students actually fit the description. We are the free press. We are here to support freedom and condemn the destruction of property. We call the president ‘sir’ no matter how tyrannical he is. We respect the same institutions that exist to oppress us. We wonder why our truth telling has not caused American democracy to flourish.”
Alas for liberalism, it suffers from an acute lack of public figures with the courage of their own convictions. It is not tricky or complicated to believe in universal human rights, but following that belief to its logical conclusions is quite bad for the progression of your career. “Hello, I would like to be a national newsman. I will not wear a suit and call a man ‘Mr. President’ if I know he has committed crimes against humanity. I will not wish success to the troops if I do not believe they are killing people for just reasons. I will not brand people or organizations or entire nations ‘terrorists’ without interrogating what exactly they believe and what they are trying to accomplish and why they are trying to accomplish it that way. Do they really ‘hate our freedom’ or did we, you know, do a lot of evil stuff to them?” This does not fly. This is a nonstarter. This will bring mockery and job loss and marginalization. It is not that this sort of thinking is some esoteric intellectual secret—it is embraced by everyone from rural Buddhist monks to highly educated academics—but it is not the sort of thing that is allowed to flourish on the stage set that is Mainstream American Discourse. A total rejection of patriotism, which is a prerequisite for an honest discussion of national affairs, is a nonstarter for those who want to be a member in good standing of national politics or the national press. As a result, the conversation that flows out from these places is a warped and stunted version of free inquiry, a field that is fertile for thoughtless nationalism.
And here we are! Once you accept the premise of patriotism, you have already lost. There are those who believe that they can call themselves patriots because they yearn for the promise of America, the higher values that the founders vowed to aspire to, even knowing that we have never achieved them. But this, too, is a trap. What these people are embracing is not patriotism, but fandom. They were born in America and they are fans of it because it is their home and they hope that it will be good. Fine. I am a fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars. I cheer for them and hope they win. That is fandom. But if they lose, I do not accuse the Houston Texans of terrorism and communism and raise an army to subjugate the rest of the NFL to serve the interests of the one true and righteous team, the Jaguars. That would be patriotism. Do not call yourself a patriot if the latter version of things makes you uneasy. That is the final outcome that waving that flag leads to. Do not step on that train, and you won’t end up there. Simple.
Free yourself from patriotism’s burden. Breathe the clear air of universal human rights. It is the inability of the alleged liberals to walk away from the fixed game of American exceptionalism that leaves them always battered and bruised by those who don’t give a fuck about universal human rights at all. Once you stand on the field of patriotism, stealing all the world’s wealth and buying more guns than anyone else and using them to keep the whole world working for us makes more sense than anything else. Each year, the Global North uses its might to expropriate over 800 billion hours of labor from the Global South. Is that bad, for humanity and equality? Yes. But what are you gonna do—advocate for a lower standard of living for Americans to make up for it? Ha! Try rolling that one out at the presidential debate. It is out of bounds. It violates the law of American prosperity above all. Discussion of it must remain relegated to theory rather than practice. The wheedling liberals who try to have it both ways, who try to square the circle of American prosperity with the nice desire to be nice to all the nice people of the world, will always end up sputtering uselessly as strongmen vow to do whatever it takes to keep us rich. Patriotism has lured us to a losing game. As we gape and scratch our heads and wonder why the little steps of progress towards a more just nation seem to always be followed by a vicious backlash, and why the Democratic Party always seems to compromise its way to hell, and why an obviously corrupt and dishonest would-be dictator is able to accumulate power with promises of Making American Great Again, just look at that flag on the wall, on the lapel pin, on the football field, at the parade, on the shirts, in the corner of your TV news screen, and you will be able to deduce the answer.
I guess that’s kind of what the communists were talking about the whole time.
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Related reading: Regarding January 6th, American Is Built to Feed Us Poison; Regarding elections, How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself; Regarding the Democrats, Why Would Dick Cheney Endorse Kamala Harris?; Regarding language, Retire the Word “Terrorism”; Regarding the USA, Nationalism Is Poison.
Bad shit is going down but it is not hopeless because the people ultimately have the power. There will be many actions on May Day: find one here. Protests are taking down Tesla: find one here. You can organize your workplace and join the labor movement: get help here. I wrote a book about how unions can get us out of the bad place we’re in: you can order it here.
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