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.
I don’t know if it’s due to changing tastes, or my HRT but I’ve only started liking fish since I started HRT.
I drink only occasionally, maybe once or twice a year usually. I discovered (in my early 20s) that I could easily end up with a drinking problem, plus I don’t really have the money to drink.
I know an awful lot of drunk people who are better at reasoning than Scott Adams. Clearly, this means motivated reasoning is a more powerful intoxicant than alcohol, and Mr Adams is a flaming hypocrite.
I can’t legally drink. My election night will be drowned in diet lemon-lime store brand soda and grape-flavored Faygo.
Well this dildo is obviously getting desperate. There’s a big difference between moderate and heavy drinking/being drunk while on call. Nixon was drunk on a few occasions while in the office. Dubya’s history with alcohol might have permanently impaired his reasoning skills. Hillary’s probably an occasional, social drinker. Irrelevant.
I think I’ve heard the vegetarian +fish diet called pescatarian.
Yeesh. Even by Scott Adams’ low standards, this is a breathtaking, towering cumulonimbus of stupid.
The only drinker in the entire world? WTF does this pointless little thought exercise have to do with anything?
Hillary could be the only drinker in the world and STILL be the most qualified to command the nuclear arsenal because – hey, it’s a thought exercise and we can make up any crap we want! – maybe every single other person on earth has road rage, measles, and is a foreign policy idiot. OR…maybe every single person on earth except Hillary is wearing mittens and can’t press the button. The possibilities are endless!
Yeah, okay, I’ll grant alcohol is a major contributor to drunk driving, but the rest of it, NO. Abuse and bar fights are largely related to being a toxic, violent asshole. Unintended pregnancy is much more likely to be the result of factors like bad luck, poverty, lack of access to family planning resources, or poor sex education than a booze-fueled “oopsie”.
In my experience, alcohol just amplifies what you already are. It doesn’t cause someone to become a mean, belligerent nuke-launcher unless those tendencies are already there. Hillary, being a policy wonk, would probably go on a budgeting bender and drunk-dial the Cato Institute after one too many glasses of wine.
As for bad decisions, we’re all perfectly capable of making them without the help of alcohol. See, for example, just about everything Trump has done in his entire life.
Good grief. I last drank booze on december 6th 1992, a month after I turned 18. I had been self medicating the depression I wouldn’t be diagnosed with until I was 24, but a horrendous stomach infection hospitalised me after an epic bout of boozing at my sixth form Xmas party and booze forever became linked with puking non-stop until bile and stomach lining starts coming out.
Hrrrm, anyway I am a strict teetotaller and I wouldn’t trust me with anything. I don’t even understand really what point this fellow is trying to make either.
Complete tangent – I wonder if Putin drinks. In fact, if he doesn’t, I wonder what people think of him? I visited Russia a while back in my odd youth, and men that didn’t drink were often hassled.
@ John Howard
…well, you gotta admit, the alt-right’s favored side did lose.
This made my morning. Thanks for that.
Hey, Bryce, that’s mean! Dildos are way more pleasant and satisfying than Trump. They also understand the meaning of consent, and I’m pretty sure they’re not interested in global thermonuclear war.
Frickin’ lasers on the frickin’ moon? Sign me up!
I too would vote for a bottle of MD 20/20 over Trump. Even if it was that extra-yucky neon blue kind.
I hate drunk people, but the worst ones are the ones drunk on their own ego rather than on alcohol. Like Adams!
So Adams is a bit weird. It takes a weird brain to turn out something like Dilbert.
When your command and chief decides to grab your pussy just because he can, you want him to be sober.
Supposedly, Trump’s brother was an alcoholic and died at 43, and that’s why he never drank. I’ll call it the Trump paradox, since he lacks restraint and discipline in every other area of life!
Someone already thought of what might happen if someone gets drunk and launches a nuclear missile. More than one person needs to give confirmation for a launch.
I have the occasional, celebratory glass of wine or champagne with my family, but I’ve already discovered that alcohol and I do not mix well. For one, I hate the taste of most of it (beer reminds me of someone unpleasant in my life, I gag when I smell it). I’m very much a lightweight. One glass of wine without accompanying food or water will only get me lightheaded, who knows what a second glass may lead to (I think I explored that route once during an extremely boring game of Monopoly, needless to say it gave me an excuse to quit playing). I also believe it would be fairly easy for me to become dependent on alcohol, so yeah. I’m pretty fine without it.
This a good thing, of course, because you know how us females get when we start drinking the occasional glass… One moment you’re fine and the next you’re completely unsuitable as President of the United States.
I think Scott Adams blog looks like what happens when someone has a Charlie Sheen meltdown while stone cold sober.
Re: Grant,
this quote has a pretty good pedigree for such a great story.
And rapes 12-year-old girls, then uses their disappearance to threaten others into not reporting him and his rapey conduct to the cops?
I mean, that’s a shitload more serious than an occasional drinky-poo, wouldn’t you say?
I think I can safely say that no bad decision I have ever made was driven by alcohol. I am perfectly capable of making bad decisions in perfect sobriety, without having had a single drink. And I am perfectly capable of making good decisions after having a glass of wine for dinner, though I will admit that none of my decisions, good or bad, had anything to do with nuclear codes. Fortunately. Because if I had the nuclear trigger in my house, the cats almost certainly would have found a way to start World War Cat.
But what ever happened to the candidate you want to have a beer with? I’m sure most of the folks who think that way do not want to go out for a Brat and a Brew and have the candidate be a spoil sport killjoy who says, none for me, I’m the designated commander-in-chief. They want a hard drinking good old boy who will get totally snockered and talk dirty with them.
Oooooo…
And you would be wrong, Mr. Adams.
Nixon used to get loaded on pills and tell the military to bomb cities in the middle east. Fortunately they just ignored him.
Alcohol is behind drink-driving?????
Adams really is a genius :O
All these years, and no-one ever picked up the real cause of drink-driving.