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.
@nparker
That’s gonna happen sometime after we abolish gender.
Well y’all may prefer an actual literal bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 to Trump but I think that’s a bit irresponsible. For myself, I’d prefer a vote for Brass Monkey. It’s got a better campaign jingle (that funky monkey), plus, y’know, primates gotta stick together!
However, I’ve already voted for Hillary Clinton and her several glasses of wine a week or whatever it may be, so it’s all a bit academical.
sounds less academical and more alchemical
The only time I ever heard Who Let the Dogs Out and thought it was at least somewhat appropriate was once when it was played at a funeral (the deceased had been a trainer, and pretty much lived-ate-slept-breathed-everything for his family first and dogs a very close second).
My parents had a drinking problem during my childhood. Weirdly, they acted more like calm, decent people while drunk, rather than the self-centered balls of rage they tended to become while sober. I think it’s because they were under tremendous amounts of stress and neither of them handle stress well (or at all, really). My mother admitted as much, at least. I don’t think they were actually addicted, though, as they gave it up easily enough under better times, and never went back. Though when things got bad again my father took up smoking and was never able to give it up, while my mother simply became too dysfunctional to, well, function very much at all.
I buy a bottle of Rosé wine or Nigori Saké 2-3 times a year and have small glasses of it at dinnertime. Some years I have a bit of champagne during new year’s eve if I’m at a party where it’s being served. That’s it. My mother says “I’m not worried about you” because I drink so little and fairly rarely. But mainly my drug of choice is ghost peppers. Because high doses of capsaicin cause the body to release endorphin and dopamine, triggering a natural high. I don’t do that too often either. She would actually rather that I drank more than did that.
Over-all, I’m against prohibition of any kind, as long as it doesn’t involve contaminating the environment around non-consenting people, exposing them to substances against their will (such as via smoking). I am, however, big on safety and responsibility, and will call out people for being obviously stupid about such things.
This from the guy who claimed to be voting for Hillary because he was afraid of the “consequences” if he didn’t?
Hey, Scott? I think the brewers, vintners, and distillers might like a quiet word with you down by the docks…
@Hambeast
Is it just me or does that remind others of ‘SpongeBob, the aliens would like a word with you!’
@Snowberry:
That sounds hard. All my hugs* and I’m really glad you survived.
*Or best wishes if you dislike hugs.
On a different topic, I saw this and thought of this thread:
The Fall of Dilbert
@EJ (The Orphic Lizard): I should probably have added that the point of that bit of personal history was that despite having drinking problems at one point, I don’t have negative associations with alcohol due to it. It may not have been the best way to deal with things, but my experience was that “alcohol makes things better”. Intellectually I know that doesn’t even make sense, but very little about my childhood did.
While things were certainly bad at times, it wasn’t quite as horrible as it sounds. I never really feared them, no matter how much they would blow up at the slightest thing. They never laid a hand on me or any of the others. They were terrible at enforcing any sort of punishment, reasonable or not. They were quick to forget they were ever angry, especially my father, who would sometimes forget within minutes. It was a real pain to deal with sometimes, but not a horrifying nightmare or anything.
Wait, he’s saying that Hillary drinks alcohol, like a common president?
OMFG! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!11!!
I’m voting for her FOR SURE!
@nparker… You know the majority of adults drink without harming themselves or others, right? Commonly referred to as “moderation” ie. 1-4 drinks.
One of the benefits of living in NZ is the plethora of decent craft brews. It’s like a Sunday Bible study circle round here sometimes…
@ Bryce
I know (apart from the fact that alcohol in general is not healthly) that in moderation many people drink alcohol and live perfectly happily. That doesn’t mean it is a good thing, and also doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause problems for the community.
Your second part reminds me of The Simpsons Movie, where after the dome lands the Alcoholics Anonymous group runs into the bar and the churchgoers run into the Church!
You could say the same thing about television, soft drinks, pizza, donuts and many other things. What is your point in going on about this?
I understand from films and the like that you have to be 21 to buy alcohol in the U.S.; but what’s the legal drinking age?
(i.e. How old do you have to be to drink alcohol someone else has purchased?)
It’s 21 to drink alcohol too although it’s not always enforced that much.
In fact, there’s signs outside of liquor stores reminding patrons that it’s illegal to buy for minors.
Each state sets its own drinking age, this is the minimum required to possess any form of drinking alcohol except for a religious exemption for communion wine. So technically there is no national age but all of the states except Nevada went along with the Federal mandate of 21 because Congress threatened to cut off highway funding to any state that refused. Nevada decided they got more from casino tax revenues and remained at the previous age of 18.
@ WWTH & Pitshade
Ah thanks for that. I did sort of wonder why it was such a trope in U.S. media for kids to get into trouble just for drinking the stuff as opposed to buying it.
It’s pretty silly and as far as I can tell, binge drinking in young people actually increased. I think we’d be much better off teaching moderation instead of making it forbidden fruit. Alas, the American attitude seems to be if something feels good, it’s evil and should be banned. If something feels bad, you probably deserve it and nothing should be done to ban or regulate the thing that’s harming you.
America’s puritan roots certainly shows through in all sorts of weird places. I’m lookin at you, television.
@ WWTH
There’s probably an essay to be written (assuming it hasn’t) about the
legacy of Puritanism in US laws and culture.
Over here it used to be a sort of right of passage the first time you bought alcohol underage in a pub. But I think it was actually helpful. The landlord/lady and the police would turn a blind eye so long as you behaved yourself; so you learned responsible drinking from an early age. Now they’ve tightened up a bit on that so kids just sneak off to the park to get hammered on cheap supermarket cider. And because the legal drinking age here is ridiculously young (it’s five!) parents can introduce their kids to drinking at home in moderation. And that also, as you say, removes the forbidden fruit element (“You want some wine?”; “Ukk, do we have any pop?”)
ETA: Ninja’d by Scildreja
So true about so many things but our politics are driven by Outrage and the Need to do something Right Now and that attitude doesn’t lend itself to nuance or measured responses.
There’s been piles of work done on examining American culture from its roots. The puritans were one of a small number of immigrant groups that had a significant impact. Puritans were one of the big ones. Of course, since I’m a big dummy, I can’t recall any of the other categories, but the articles I’ve heard on it were interesting, honest!
Over here, drinking age is 18. Most parents buy alcohol for their kids early, and cops will generally only issue a warning to kids. Unless they were driving or anywhere near a vehicle – driving age is 16 for a learner’s permit here, and being caught with so much as the suggestion of alcohol will land you in all sorts of trouble. So, a mixture of the two approaches. It works okay.
@ scildfreja
Well there’s your Viking ancestors. 🙂
Not sure how much of a legacy they left though (definitely not that windmill, no matter what some people claim!)
There’s Vinland! Though, well, the Skraelings got’em. Womp womp. Something tells me they weren’t quite prepared for a winter in Labrador.
The Scandinavians sort of settled the northern midwest – it’s the right temperature for them to think of home I guess? They’re responsible for the slightly more progressive flavour of Wisconsin and surrounds (though they also have Michelle Bachmann to account for). It’s interesting to see how social values propagate!
http://static1.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/4786934+_e8a67e3969b4bea3612441b9946b1e6a.png
nparker – I’ve never seen SpongeBob; I just figured that the alcohol lobbies in the U.S. would be a more likely threat to Mr. Adams than Hillary would. In reality, though, I don’t think he’s in any actual danger either way.
Probably I’m necro’ing this thread at this point, but I try to check if anyone has responded to any of the comments I drop right before Husbeast comes home and I leave my computer for the day.
wwth – I agree that teaching moderation is a good idea. I also feel sympathy for nparker.
I have a very good friend who has suffered a great deal of harm because of alcohol and she feels much the same way about it as nparker does. We’ve agreed to disagree and don’t discuss it anymore. I also never drink around this friend.