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In June, Dilbert creator and insufferable human being Scott Adams pretended to endorse Hillary Clinton — because, he facetiously claimed, he was deathly afraid that Hillary’s fans would murder him in his sleep if he came out for Trump.
Now, having apparently concluded that he’d exhausted the humor potential of this belabored joke, Adams has traded in his fake endorsement of Hillary for a real endorsement of Donald Trump. (archived here). His stated reasons range from the stupid to the selfish, but the issue closest to his heart, and the one that seems to have inspired him to come out un-ironically for Trump, is … the estate tax.
Clinton, you see, has set forth a proposal to increase the estate tax to 65% for those with more than $500 million in net worth. As Adams figures it, everyone who’s accumulated at least $5 million or so will end up paying more as well. And that’s just plain “robbery by government.”
So Adams is plugging Trump because he believes The Donald will fight harder for the rights of dead millionaires.
Adams’ other reasons for supporting Trump make even less sense.
First off, he claims that nobody really knows whether Trump or Clinton will be better at dealing with terrorists or trade, or any of the other big complicated issues that tend to bedevil presidents.
“There are many things I don’t know,” Adams writes.
For example, I don’t know the best way to defeat ISIS. Neither do you. I don’t know the best way to negotiate trade policies. Neither do you. I don’t know the best tax policy to lift all boats. Neither do you. … So on most political topics, I don’t know enough to make a decision. Neither do you, but you probably think you do.
Ok, sure, I don’t have a plan to defeat ISIS. But Hillary does, while I’d be shocked if Trump could find Syria on a map, even if it were circled in red with a giant arrow pointing towards it. Hillary is a far from perfect candidate, but no one can doubt that she takes policy seriously and knows her shit. Trump, by contrast, is a giant screaming baby who knows less about government than a regular-sized screaming baby.
Let me put it this way. Would you prefer your Uber driver to be a) someone with a decent if not perfect driving record who knows every street in your city like the back of her hand, or b)
That said, I would definitely go for a ride with these gals.
Adams has other highly evolved reasons for preferring the last person who should ever be president of anything:
Trump and his fans are party animals:
It seems to me that Trump supporters are planning for the world’s biggest party on election night whereas Clinton supporters seem to be preparing for a funeral. I want to be invited to the event that doesn’t involve crying and moving to Canada.
Trouble is, I suspect that, regardless of who wins, a lot of Trump fans will be partying like this on election night:
While Adams claims to be too ignorant to make sense of any political issue besides the estate tax, he is somehow able to diagnose Hillary and her husband’s respective health by watching them on TV.
To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn’t look sufficiently healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. … Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too, and Hillary wouldn’t be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side.
Trump apparently thinks like a pickup artist circa 2005:
Self-proclaimed pickup artists used to talk constantly about using the neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques of “pacing and leading” to manipulate women into having the sex. Adams thinks Trump is the “pacing and leading” master:
Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something that the military would refuse to do. … Trained persuaders like me see this as something called pacing and leading. Trump “paces” the public – meaning he matches them in their emotional state, and then some. … Once Trump has established himself as the biggest bad-ass on the topic, he is free to “lead,” which we see him do by softening his deportation stand, limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion, and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary. If you understand pacing and leading, you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency.
Adams loves being “persuaded” by Trump and thinks ISIS will too:
The battle with ISIS is … a persuasion problem. The entire purpose of military action against ISIS is to persuade them to stop, not to kill every single one of them. We need military-grade persuasion to get at the root of the problem. Trump understands persuasion … .
In short, Scott Adams continues to be a massive disappointment to any decent people who might have once thought his comics and books were sort of funny.
And he really doesn’t understand persuasion at all.
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I cannot distinguish between this Dilbert creator’s rationale (ha, ha!) and the rationale (snort) of all other Trump supporters.
This is the perfect Trump endorsement. It so perfectly describes the mindset of his supporters. Happily ignorant authoritarians who are easily suckered into a cult of personality.
I will admit to being a stereotypical humorless feminist w/r/t Adams: I can’t tell where his true persona and his joke persona begin and end. I think this is supposed to be hilarious, but it just doesn’t get to me. Then again, when I used to date, I was a conventionally-pretty woman who preferred men to be my height or slightly shorter (everything lines up so nicely), so in Adams’ world, I don’t exist and am not a viable audience for comprehensible jokes.
Hate to be the asshole in the room, but if they were into Dilbert, they only have themselves to blame.
Now when Frank Miller throws out his Trump endorsement (as he inevitably will at some point), I’ll be here hoping you guys can cheer me up with cat-vines…
Trained persuader, huh? For being such a trained persuader, why don’t so many people find your ideas at all appealing, Mr Dilbert?
I just love it when they do this and write their biases into the damn argument they’re making.
Adams, dude, if he looks scary to someone who doesn’t have specialized training, they aren’t gonna be persuaded. No better evidence that your ideas are bullshit than that!
Keep it up, though, you’re a font of hilarity! Way better than that boring-ass comic strip.
Hey, sounds like a plan! Let’s just punt everything we as a nation have CLAIMED to stand for and go with our basest self-serving wants. We’ve got someone here who can “pace and lead” us in that very direction!! Thanx, Scot, I’m all in (/s)… far as I’m concerned, Dumpster and fanboy Scott Adams can both “park and walk”….
Echoing Scildfreja, WTever-lovingF.
Pacing and leading, my ass. Same old, same old fascist BS — this time with a pretty frosting.
David Futrelle tweeted (see the right column) that he’ll be live-screaming the debate tonight. Ha, ha — you and me both, David. Mind the kitties’ sensitive ears!
For those not within 10 blocks of David’s home, Democracy Now! will be live-streaming the debate from 8:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Eastern time. That includes discussions before and after the debate.
http://www.democracynow.org/
I’m a trained persuader; it is my job after all. I even know what BATNA means. Now I’m not saying I’m necessarily any good at it, but the people who taught me were and they tended not to endorse the ‘lie through your teeth, yell and be completely incomprehensible’ approach.
Of course that might just be a British thing.
Where did he receive this persuasion training? I looked on Wikipedia and found that his education is in economics. I’m not sure what that has to do with persuasion, but it does lead me to wonder about why he’s so ignorant. Doesn’t his economics background at least give him some of the tools to educate himself about fiscal policy. At least more tools than the average person.
Hmmm.
HMMMMM.
Self awareness, what is it.
Fixed that for ya, Scott.
I absolutely guarantee that I’m orders of magnitude more informed on literally any political or economic topic whatsoever than either Scott Adams or Donald Trump. Although I may be giving them too much credit.
Okay, but… the picture of those pugs made my day. I can’t stop smiling.
See, he’s a very smart man, so he naturally accrues training by just existing! He gets it all through osmosis by existing in environments. Formal education and practice are wasted on him, when he can just soak up the skill-juices of others!
That’s what bein a very smart man is all about, and he knows he’s a very smart man. It all started when his mother told him he was a very smart boy, and so he learned that he didn’t have to do anything to be a smartie-smart. He just gets to poop out his golden opinions all over, and gets head-pats for bein so smart!
(er… that may have been waaaay more snark than I’m used to posting, mea culpa)
@WWTH
No, his education is in finance, which is totally different.
I don’t know. They look to me like pampered entitled females who probably sit around and eat bonbons while some poor beta male pugs slave away to provide them with all those fancy cars and lavish fashions. They’re probably the harem to that alpha thug dog pictured above. The one in the dangerous bad boy red car.
I support the MPGTOW (male pugs going their own way) movement.
I should have expected nothing less.
I have no earthly idea how to defeat ISIS
…
Lemme explain how Trump can beat ISIS
De. Plor. A. Ble
I won’t be watching the debates either. Made that mistake 4 years ago. I’ll get the high (or more likely low) lights later
Dear Dilbert man, please install wall-to-wall LEGO carpet in your house at your earliest convenience.
I don’t know how to best defeat ISIS either. But i can think of a way to help prevent new terrorists being created. Education, infrastructure, humanitarian aid. Military operations are important, but you need something to help them after the troops ”ride in to save the day”, as it were. Without it, the cycle just starts all over again.
Because of course the President of the United States has absolutely no resources available to help in caring for a seriously ill spouse (even if Bill Clinton were to become seriously ill, for which prediction there seems to be zero evidence other than Scott Adams’s unsupported say-so).
Mind you, President Bill Clinton was raising a teenage daughter for the eight years of his administration, while President Barack Obama has been raising two daughters from ages seven and ten to fifteen and eighteen respectively during his time in office. But of course, a President’s family responsibilities aren’t a cause for concern unless the President happens to have a vagina.
The Dilbert guy looks like the dad from Calvin & Hobbes but without the charm and charisma.
Were Abraham Lincoln and Gerald Ford unfit to be president because of their spouse’s respective mental illness and substance abuse issues? By Adams’ logic, yes!
Well, if certain sources are to be believed, Edith Wilson did alright Presiding while her husband Woodrow was very unwell indeed. However, I understand that there is a great deal of debate as to the degree to which she exercised her authority. Perhaps she should have done more of it; I heard somewhere that she was uncomfortable with Mr. Wilson’s bald and egregious racism.