Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan-Flint. I research and teach rhetoric and writing.
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The Patriotism Trap

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Nice country. (Photo: Getty)

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.


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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.

Edward R. Murrow, with the guy who kept trying to assassinate Castro.

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.”


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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.

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betajames
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Michigan
rocketo
5 days ago
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seattle, wa
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The Darkest Timeline

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Manage consent

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betajames
21 days ago
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Michigan
acdha
21 days ago
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Washington, DC
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two quotations from The Economist on AI

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Can people be persuaded not to believe disinformation?:

Dr [Thomas] Costello believes chatbots work where humans fail because they offer rational responses instead of letting emotions get the better of them. What’s more, they are able to comb through their extensive training data to offer precise counter-arguments, rather than the generalised ones humans often reach for in debates.

Researchers lift the lid on how reasoning models actually “think”:

When Claude itself is asked to reason, printing out the chain of thought that it takes to answer maths questions, the microscope suggests that the way the model says it reached a conclusion, and what it actually thought, might not always be the same thing. Ask the llm a complex maths question that it does not know how to solve and it will “bullshit” its way to an answer: rather than actually trying, it decides to spit out random numbers and move on.
Worse still, ask a leading question — suggesting, for instance, that the answer “might be 4” — and the model still secretly bullshits as part of its answer, but rather than randomly picking numbers, it will specifically insert numbers that ultimately lead it to agree with the question, even if the suggestion is wrong. 

These stories were posted just a few days apart. It’s comical to me how many AI researchers act as though the hallucinations and bullshitting simply don’t exist. Also: LLMs are not rational or irrational or emotional or anything else that human beings are. They are the conduits, thanks to their corpora, of human rationality or irrationality or emotionalism. 

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betajames
22 days ago
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Michigan rural libraries brace for hit from Trump order targeting spending

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The Republican administration is targeting a little-known agency that funds a loan system that brings books to far-fledged corners of Michigan. The agency is one of the smallest in the federal government.
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betajames
36 days ago
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It’s all hallucinations

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The discourse on “AI” systems, chat bots, “assistants” and “research helpers” is defined by a lot of future promises. Those systems are disfunctional or at least not working great right now but there’s the promise of things getting better in the future.

Which is how we often perceive tech to work: Early versions might be a bit wonky, but there’s constant iteration and work going on to improve systems to be more capable, more robust and maybe even cheaper at some point.

The most pressing problem for many modern “AI” systems, especially the generative systems that are all the rage these days are so-called “hallucinations” which is a term describing when an AI system generates incorrect information. Think a research agent inventing a paper to quote from that doesn’t exist for example (Google’s AI assistant telling you to put glue on pizza is not a hallucination in that regard because that is just regurgitating information from Reddit that every toddler would recognize as a joke). Hallucinations are the big issue that many researchers are trying to address – which mixed results. Methods like RAG are shifting the probabilities a bit but are still not solving the problem: Hallucinations keep happening.

But I think that this discourse misses an important thing: Anything an LLM generates is a hallucination.

That doesn’t mean that everything LLMs generate is incorrect, far from it. What I am referencing is what hallucinations are actually defined as: A hallucination is a perception you have that is not connected to any actual stimulus. You hallucinate when you perceive something in the world that you have no sensor data for.

The term hallucination itself is an anthropomorphization of those statistical systems. They don’t “know”, or “think” or “lie” or do any such things. They iteratively calculate the most probable set of words and characters based on the original data. But if we look at how it is applied to “AI”s I think there is a big misunderstanding because it creates a difference between true and false statements that just isn’t there.

For humans we separate “real perceptions” from hallucinations by the link to sensor data/stimulants: If there is an actual stimulant of you feeling a touch it’s real, if you just think you are being touched, it’s a hallucination. But for LLMs that distinction is meaningless.

A line of text that is true has – for the LLM – absolutely no different quality than one that is false. There is no link to reality, no sensor data or anchoring, there’s just the data one was trained on (that also doesn’t necessarily have any connection to reality). If using the term hallucination is useful to describe LLM output it is to illustrate the quality of all output. Everything an LLM generates is a hallucination, some just might accidentally be true.

And in that understanding the terminology might actually be enlightening, might actually help people understand what those systems are doing and where it might be appropriate to use and – more importantly – where not.

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tante
39 days ago
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"If using the term hallucination is useful to describe LLM output it is to illustrate the quality of all output. Everything an LLM generates is a hallucination, some just might accidentally be true."
Berlin/Germany
betajames
38 days ago
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Michigan
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CJR: LLMs are still really bad search engines

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Who wouldn’t like a computer you can just talk to? LLMs are good enough at this to be impressive! You can ask it stuff naturally and get back a reasonable-looking response! This is genuinely interesting and it’s a genuine advance!

But “impressive” doesn’t mean “good enough for production use.” When you try to use an LLM as a search engine, they’re famous for getting things stupidly wrong and making stuff up. You don’t really want wood glue on your pizza and you shouldn’t eat a small rock every day. [BBC, 2024]

Columbia Journalism Review ran some chatbots through their paces. CJR picked random news articles from various publishers, gave the bots a text excerpt, and asked for the article’s headline, publisher, publication date, and web address. [CJR]

Across all bots, over 60% of answers were wrong. Perplexity was least-worst at 37% wrong, and Grok was 94% wrong.

All the bots were very confident in their wrong answers. Paid bots were more confidently incorrect than the free ones.

Licensing deals don’t seem to have made OpenAI any better at finding the content they’ve done a deal to use.

The search bots also ignored the robots.txt file – which tells search engines “please don’t scan here.” Perplexity Pro was the worst for this.

CJR did a similar test in November last year. The bots haven’t improved. [CJR, 2024]

But AI’s been full of impressive demos that didn’t work as products for the past 70 years. Stop shoving chatbots into places they just can’t do the job.

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betajames
38 days ago
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