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One of the many tragedies of Donald Trump’s electoral college victory is that it has given Dilbert creator and Dunning-Kruger poster boy Scott Adams an even more inflated belief in his own personal brilliance.
Adams, you see, was one of the first to predict Trump’s political success, and now he feels the need to share every dumb thought he has about the man with the world.
Adams’ latest Trump brainstorm: Maybe Russia did us all a yuuuge favor by subverting our democracy to boot Trump, did you ever think of that?
“One way to look at the recent election in the United States is that Russia (allegedly) subverted our democratic process to ensure that Trump would win,” Adams wrote on his blog yesterday.
Another way to look at the election is that Russia did a big favor for the American public by preventing Clinton from becoming president.
DID HE JUST BLOW YOUR MIND??!!1
So why would it be so great for Russia to have secretly conspired to knock Hillary out of the race? Because that silly woman actually thought of the country that secretly subverted our democracy to boost the chances of an easily manipulable geopolitical naif as some sort of enemy!
Clinton saw Russia as an adversary. I confess my ignorance on this topic – and maybe you can set me straight in the comments – because I can’t think of any reason Russia and the United States should be considered natural enemies. Both countries want to defeat ISIS. Both countries want peace and prosperity. Neither claims ownership of any of the other’s territory. I see the prospect of good relations with Russia as a way to make some money for both countries and defeat ISIS too. That doesn’t seem so bad.
I mean, sure, I guess I can see that. I mean, Russia is an autocratic kleptocracy run by a guy whose enemies have a strange way of finding themselves dead, and Putin kind of wants to take over neighboring countries and undermine NATO and subvert democracy all over Europe by supporting far-right parties, but, hey, maybe we’ve been too quick to see these things as bad things!
Oh, sure, Adams acknowledges,
If Russia did interfere with our elections in a meaningful way, obviously that is a hole we need to plug. But this is an unusual situation because their alleged actions look more like the work of a sneaky ally than an enemy. The likely outcome of their alleged hacking is that we’ll have better relations with a major superpower and a better chance of defeating ISIS.
THANKS, SNEAKY ALLY!
“One trick of persuasion that I have sometimes used involves treating an adversary like a friend until they turn into a friend,” Adams goes on to note.
I’ve never seen it done on a country-to-country basis, but it works great in person. If you tell someone you are on their side, and you act that way, it is hard for them to keep you on the enemy list. I don’t know if this method of persuasion works for countries, but this is the perfect place to test it.
Huh. I seem to remember a country called Russia doing that with a country called Germany. How did that work out for them?
Oh, right. But hey, when has history ever repeated itself? Never, probably!
Russia and the United States have more interests in common than in conflict. In this particular case, Trump can change the frame from adversary to ally if he chooses to do so. And that would probably have the effect of making all parties act that way.
So, hey, Putin, keep messing with our democracy! Obviously you’ve got our best interests at heart! Some dude who does a comic says so!
Creepy.
Marginally aside;
The word “mulatto” isn’t used at all around here, I was only really familiar with it in its historical context. Shoulda known better than to trust its use. Ugh. Sorry.
@PoM
Admittedly that could be attributed to ESL. He probably meant “seeing”. Easy mistake to make for someone who’s more used to speaking Spanish or French, and I’m speaking from experience :s
Of course that’s assuming, charitably, that he’s actually Spanish. And as Scildfreja pointed out, it still says a lot about his own implicit bias. And as WWTH pointed out, it’s nothing new anyway.
Now I could be wrong, but I have my doubts about some of his other language mistakes, by the way. Sometimes they really just read like someone trying to make it look like they’re struggling with English. He’s also taken great pains to name some concepts/places/events in Spanish when there wasn’t really any reason to, other than asserting spanishness. Granted, that’s not exactly unexpected from a fascist, but still. I’m also not sure someone who speaks a european language would go straight to a word like “mulatto”, which in my understanding is much more common in America. I’d expect a Spanish person to go with “mestizo”, which I believe is also used in the US, albeit in a specific context – but a Spanish person struggling with English wouldn’t necessarily know about said context, and thus have no reason to resort to another, more unfamiliar word.
Dunno, I might be reading way too much from this, but as an ESL speaker with some grasp of Spanish the whole thing just seems off to me.
@Scildfreja
Oh god I get where you’re coming from. Made that very same mistake before, because the french word is not considered offensive at all, so no reason why the english equivalent would be, right ?
And then an entire room full of merry drunk Brits suddenly goes silent and stares at you. It’s 4am on New Year’s Eve, and you thought the temperature couldn’t drop any lower.
I was thinking Mulatto was more of a US term too although I wasn’t sure. It’s a term that’s very outdated though. I’m over the wall by manosphere standards and it was outdated when I was kid. In the 80s and 90s everyone said “mixed” and then that became “biracial” after the turn of the century. At least in my area. Mulatto seems to be more of a 60s and 70s term.
@weirwoodtreehugger
No, that term wasn’t used then.
In my experience, people would say, “She has a black mother and a white dad.”
I never heard mulatto. That was for the history books.
It has a direct equivalent in French, “mulâtre”. It’s so outdated that you might just say archaic. To the point that I didn’t even know about it until I looked up “mulatto” the first time I came across it in the fever swamps, and even there it’s extremely rare. And those idiots are usually proud to show off that they have lots of words, they have the best words.
ETA : To expand on that, I guess that’s why I didn’t gather at first how offensive it is. If it’s not something the nazis often say… Dumb logic, I know. And when it’s the only single word you know that conveys “métis” (the non-offensive term in French), well, a mistake is quickly made. Goes to show how you should always document yourself extensively whenever you learn a new word, especially in a foreign language.
Unrelated, but I just heard gunfire. Two shots. My heart dropped and I rushed outside and thank god, cat was just sitting there looking puzzled. Grabbed him and got him inside, he’s safe now.
Fucking hunters at it again. When they’re frustrated because they didn’t bag anything, they just shoot people’s cats or dogs in their gardens. It’s happened to pretty much all of my neighbors. Wish those fuckers would just stick to shooting each other like they do when they’re too drunk to tell another drunk dude in a high-viz jacket from a deer. That too has happened a lot of times around here, and I don’t mourn them. I dunno that I wouldn’t just sit on the roof and wait for them, if I owned a gun. Got a perfect line of sight from here to the woods, and if they can get away with it, why can’t I ?
Makes me sick to have these thoughts though. These days it’s getting pretty difficult to keep some semblance of decency.
Even if it’s an ESL error (something you talk yourself out of in the next couple of paragraphs, so I’m not sure why you brought it up), it’s not any less creepy to sub in “seeing” rather than “watching.” Why is Euroguy noticing all of these women with mixed-race children? Why is that the filter he’s using?
This was just another boner update from him, and it’s creepy as hell even with the benefit of the doubt, something I’m not actually inclined to give him.
@Kat
I’ve encountered the term in books written ca. the 1930s and earlier (and sometimes books written later but set earlier), but pretty much the only modern context I’ve seen it in before is when blogger Ian Cromwell said he would prefer not to be referred to by the term, as it’s offensive. So I guess it’s still in use among at least some subset of the Anglophone population, probably the unabashedly racist portion.
@Policy of Madness
You’re right. It’s just a mistake I made before, so I kinda felt the need to point out that it’s an easy mistake to make.
Regarding what I’m seeing (or thinking I’m seeing) about his language, I didn’t wanna try and be definitive, ’cause it feels like pretty thin ice. But then I also already doubted his claim on the basis that he has a pretty fucking weak grasp of the history of his alleged country and continent, and the fact that he sounds a whole lot like Mick Dash, as has been pointed out by Scildfreja and possibly others. So yeah, dunno why I didn’t just say what I thought outright instead of tip-toeing around it.
My bad.
Regardless of all that though, he IS fucking creepy no matter what, I’m definitely not gonna argue with that. Sorry if that’s how it came across.
I haven’t seen a post from David saying he banned him, but I also haven’t seen the creep himself in a long while now. Is he banned or just staying away ? Or is he just stuck in moderation again with David ignoring him ? Any of those is fine, but it’s even better if he’s not just staying away with the possibility of coming back.
@Dali
And grunge musicians who apparently didn’t get the memo that although “offensive” rhymes with “provocative”, it doesn’t mean the same thing.
… though I don’t know that he wasn’t unabashedly racist.
The first time I heard the term outloud was in Archer. Archer called Lana that. (She took offense to it.) Otherwise I think I may have read it in an Anne Rice book (Mayfair Witches?), which I think says it all.
The first time I heard it was on 4Chan.
I’ll give you a moment to finish reeling from the utter shock.
Lol all leftists have left is insults, censoring the media, and censoring comment sections like this. lol
Censorship? Yawn. If you’re gonna troll, try to be more creative about it.
Well that’s gotta be the worst false flag I’ve ever seen.
@ LeftistMan
Has there ever been
a more bare bones false construct
Than you LeftistMan?
Because 320m people are a texting ground. Fuck off…