What the hell is going on in Scott Adams’ busy little brain? The Dilbert cartoonist and master persuader is now trying to persuade his readers that Hillary Clinton, not the volatile, easily angered Donald Trump, is the truly dangerous choice for president.
Because she’s been known to drink sometimes. And Trump supposedly doesn’t drink. At least not liquor. Maybe blood. People are saying he drinks blood.
But that’s a whole other basket of deplorables. Let’s get back to that alcohol thing.
Scott, you master persuader, persuade us:
Imagine you lived in a world in which no one except one senior citizen ever drank alcoholic beverages. Would you think it is a good idea to choose this one person – the only drinker in the world – to be in charge of the nuclear arsenal?
No, that would be crazy. We know alcohol impairs judgment. And a president is on-call for emergencies 24-hours a day. Alcohol plus life-and-death decisions is a dangerous combination.
Er, doesn’t that kind of depend on how much alcohol we’re talking about? A president who’s completely blotto all of the time would probably be a bad choice. But Hillary isn’t exactly a falling-down, fight-starting, vomiting-on-the-cat kind of drinker. She’s been in the political spotlight for decades. And she hasn’t been caught drunkenly singing old Saul Alinksky songs even once. (I guess Saul Alinsky probaby doesn’t have any songs but never mind.)
But Scott wants us to think that we’ve tricked ourselves into believing that drinking is even remotely ok for a president because most of us also drink. WOAH.
The only reason social drinking (or worse) is not automatically disqualifying for the Commander-in-Chief job is because … wait for it … many of us also drink alcohol.
And because many of us drink – as do most of our role models – we figure it must be okay for a President to drink.
It isn’t.
Because of nuclear codes and terror attacks and whatnot.
Weird, because pretty much every president we’ve ever had has been known to drink, and we haven’t had a nuclear war yet. True, George W. Bush famously gave up alcohol many years before becoming president. But he got us into two wars we’re still trying to extract ourselves from.
I would argue that alcohol consumption is the biggest risk differential in this election. We’re just blind to that risk because alcohol is socially acceptable. But even in your own life, you see alcohol being the force behind unwanted pregnancies, drunk driving, bar fights, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and just about every bad decision you’ve ever made. If we humans were even a little bit objective we would never select a leader who is likely to be impaired by alcohol several hours per week, including the workday. (Allegedly.)
“Allegedly” in this instance means “some alt-right nincompoops have decided based on nothing that Hillary regularly gets drunk.”
Even if that were true, I would still vote for her. Hell, I’d vote for a fight-starting, karaoke-singing, constantly drunk Hillary over Trump. Actually, I’d vote for an actual literal bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 for president before I’d vote for Trump.
Trump may not drink, but he thinks like he’s drunk, as his free-associational speeches make abundantly clear. Especially if you slow them down a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMMcb1iyYl0
Hell, even at regular speed he sounds a bit inebriated.
I’m going to go pour myself a nice drink. Of water.
In a follow-up to this post, Scott makes the brilliant observation “we don’t trust social drinkers to drive a motor vehicle, so why would we trust one with the nuclear arsenal?” Of course, we do trust social drinkers to drive; no DMV asks “do you ever drink?” as a precursor to granting a license. We generally trust people to make their own decisions about when they’ve drunk too much to be safe, and we can take privileges such as driving away if the person shows they’re unable to control their drinking. So if you can give me a reason to believe Hillary Clinton can’t moderate her drinking, then I’d be concerned. I’m waiting.