John Dickerson

John Dickerson is co-anchor of "CBS Evening News" and anchor of "CBS Evening News Plus." He is also a Contributing Writer to The Atlantic and is co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest.

  • 04/08/2023: Chat GPT and checking yourself

    When your words don’t land as you intend it can be because a) you were unclear b) the people listening misunderstood your point or c) some members of the audience are willfully misunderstanding what you say.

    I was recently asked about the Tennessee lawmakers kicked out of the body.

    So I asked Chat GPT to interpret my response:

    QUESTION:

    What conclusions should one draw from this: “JOHN DICKERSON: Well, politics needs some cartilage. It needs some give. It can’t be totally brittle. So when you have a situation in here where, okay, Republican lawmakers thought these Democrats broke decorum, stepped out of line, there are a series of steps to punish. But when you go to the maximalist, when you kick them out, that’s brittle. There’s no give. When there’s no give, the only way the other side gets to respond is by punching back. And so when you lose those interim steps, all you get is response and response and response. And that is not only — you know where that leads. Right? That leads to violence. And it takes us back to this previous conversation which is the reason this question of democracy is so important. And the reason faith in the judicial system is so important is we’re at a moment where – more on the conservative side (*)– but on both sides you have people who think the system isn’t working, we’ve got to effect change outside of the system through violence. And when you have a system like that, you have no system at all. If people take things into their own hands. So, if it’s always brittle, people think: “Well, I can’t get a result from inside the system, so I must go around it.” And that’s what essentially January 6th is.”
    ANSWER:

    The conclusion that one can draw from this statement is that in politics, there needs to be flexibility, or “cartilage,” in order for the system to function effectively. When political processes become overly rigid or “brittle,” where there is no room for compromise or intermediate steps, it can lead to escalation and a breakdown of the system. This can result in a cycle of retaliation and response, which may ultimately lead to violence or other extreme measures.

    Furthermore, the statement suggests that when people lose faith in the political system and believe that it is not working, they may resort to seeking change outside of the established system, including through violent means. This is dangerous for democracy and the functioning of a society, as it undermines the rule of law and can lead to chaos and instability.

    The statement highlights the importance of maintaining faith in the judicial system and the need for a functional and flexible political process that allows for differences to be addressed and resolved through peaceful and lawful means. It underscores the significance of upholding democratic principles and finding ways to address grievances and effect change within the established system to prevent resorting to violence or circumventing the democratic process.

    QUESTION:
    Would it be fair to say that the person who said this is calling for violence?
    ANSWER:

    No, based on the provided statement, it would not be fair to say that the person who said this is calling for violence. The statement is describing how a brittle political system, where there is no flexibility and a breakdown of established processes, can lead to a cycle of retaliation and response that may ultimately result in violence. The speaker is highlighting the risks and negative consequences of such a breakdown in the political system, and emphasizing the importance of maintaining faith in the judicial system and finding ways to address grievances through peaceful and lawful means.

    The statement is not advocating for or endorsing violence as a solution to political problems, but rather warning against the dangers of a system that lacks flexibility and leads to people seeking change outside of established democratic processes. The speaker is emphasizing the importance of upholding democratic principles and finding ways to address grievances and effect change within the established system to prevent resorting to violence or circumventing the democratic process.

    *This was sloppy. I didn’t mean “conservative,” I meant far-right. Per this CSIS study: https://www.csis.org/analysis/pushed-extremes-domestic-terrorism-amid-polarization-and-protest. Conservatism, too often is associated with the right and the ideology of parts of the right is not conservative in any particular way. I try awfully hard not to conflate the two, but I did it in this case.

     

    • More Notions

  • 04/15/2023: Campaign History: Reagan and Bush in Nashua

  • 04/14/2023: Summer's End

    It’s hot today for the first time of the season, which makes it feel like the start of summer. Time to start stacking the sandbags against the end of summer blues. The sun is going down. This song came on shuffle. It’s from John Prine’s Tree of Forgiveness. Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of the […]

  • 04/10/2023: New Feature: CBS political archive tastes

  • 04/02/2023: CBS This Morning on Trump Indictment

  • 04/01/2023: What's in the Indictment? A debate with Chat GPT

    Here is an argument about the recent indictment of former President Trump: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted. The people who know what is in the indictment aren’t talking. The people who are talking don’t know what’s in the indictment. None of them do. It’s sealed. Nevertheless, a lot of time will be spent […]

  • 04/01/2023: Chat GPT is terrible at poltiics

    Question: The Manhattan district attorney has issued an indictment of Donald Trump but the facts are not known and will not be known for several days, how should that encourage or discourage a person from forming opinions about the indictment itself? As an AI language model, I cannot provide personal opinions, but I can offer […]

  • 03/28/2023: See the gift, ease the burden.

    Everyone has at least one gift and one burden. It is hard to find the gift in some people. See the gift, ease the burden.

  • 03/26/2023: Old note found: moving up the time of grace

    Dr. Nadia Chaudhri died on October 5, 2021. She narrated her death from cancer on her Twitter feed. Every time I read her writing I thought about the grace on display. The lessons she was able to give us. I just found a note I wrote to myself after reading one of her entries: “move […]

  • 03/25/2023: A satisfying GPT exchange

    A lot of the coverage of change GPT has been about the learning and development of artificial intelligence. What I wonder is how we, as humans, are going to slowly learn and acculturate to the kinds of exchanges with ChatGPT and its cousins. What I’m thinking about is the psychological closeness that will accrue in […]

  • 03/25/2023: In the days of easy poison

    When people dropped dead for any variety of reasons, it was much easier to poison your enemies,and have your murder written off as just another one of those episodes where a person was dropping dead because people dropped dead all the time. This seems to have been what happened. In the case of. William Longespee […]