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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!
I imagine that Adams would find a lot of kinship with people who think that small talk is illogical and time-wasting, and then wonder why they’re struggling to form social connections. Wouldn’t be surprised if he actually was that kind of person himself until fairly recently, only now he’s trying to find “logic” in ordinary social interactions in his own Adams-esque way.
Now that my account seems to be working, I just wanted to ask what the fuck being “natural enemies” has to do with anything. If there were evidence that anybody, internal or external, whether a country, a group, or a person, hacked both parties but released only information from one party, I’m really hoping I wouldn’t dismiss it as, oh well, maybe they did us a fucking favor.
@Belladonna
It was probably the quotation marks in our names. Not sure how the filter works for this comment system, but if it uses quotations to separate filtered words, there may be an extra quote in there accidentally. IDK. If it doesn’t get fixed, we can always re-add them sans quotes.
@Troubelle
I’m assuming you mean the OVER ACTING VARIETY, which makes me happy. (The pork variety alright, too.) I’ve been doodling Jimmy Snakes myself for a comic I’ve been working on (I’ll never finish) since October inspired by the never even scripted or thought of beyond a doodle episode involving Stan’s biker buddy because we were robbed, I say, ROBBED of seeing Stan in a leather jacket.
ROBBED.
@Jack
This will go into moderation, but I figured I’d try the sans quotes version and see if it stays good. 🙂
@Handsome Jack
The pork variety, actually. Mom got half an entire ham for half price, I cooked it, we have SO MUCH LEFT.
Also I didn’t know that could have been but never became a thing. I concur that we were grievously deprived.
@Troubelle
Example #40,134 why I shouldn’t assume things.
Anyway, here’s Jimmy Snakes.
Snowberry skrev:
I was one of those people myself for a couple of years in my mid-teens, when I was young, dumb and full of Atlas Shrugged. Believe it or not, it was something written by Robert Heinlein that propelled my head out of my ass. Specifically, this passage in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long:
If it were explained to Scottbert in those terms, as an engineering problem, maybe he’d internalize it.
@Viscaria
Aw, thanks!
Slimy trolls who fancy themselves charming and worldly wise bring out my snarkiest of snark.
Jack and Belladonna, glad you’re not stuck in moderation any more! I have no idea why quotes would trigger it.
Though it does occur to me that wordpress did a software update recently, maybe that led to the glitch somehow?
@Handsome Jack
Stan just looks like he’s offering this bread to him as some kind of feeble sacrifice.
Then again, it can be hard to get homemade goods on the road after God-knows-how-many years, so maybe it’s more touching than we’d assume?
@David @Belladonna
Software update? Maybe double quotations are being used for something now involving names? Single quotes should work, though, so we can use Belladonna ‘Toxic Hag’ and Handsome ‘Punkle Stan’ Jack and it shouldn’t be a bother.
@Troubelle
Yeah, it looks like what Stan is doing is offering Jimmy some baked goods which Jimmy isn’t going for and instead spitting on Stan. It was probably an episode which explored Stan’s past trying to fit into a motorcycle gang as a substitute family but they either didn’t want him (which is sad) or Stan happened to somehow screwed over Jimmy or it appeared that Stan screwed over Jimmy (which is the angle I’m going for).
(I have no clue what the text in between them says, which probably would help.)
@Handsome Jack
“why are you refusing my bread”
“why”
Looks like “used to be (something)bread”, but I can’t read the word that ends in “bread”.
@Troubelle
Probably it involves whatever used to be “lavbread”, “laubread”, “caubread” or “cavbread” from what I discern. “Lanbread”? Maybe Stan is equally bad at baking as he is with apologizes?
@Ledasmom
Yeah, like, when I first saw that, I made a list of everything I thought it could be.
Laubaem, Lavbaem, Laubream, Lavbrem. Laubread, Caubread, Cavbread, Lanbread–but none of those are words or things that I figure.
Someone needs to break it to them that the universe existed before they were born. And important stuff happened.
The ‘maybe it’s for the best’ condones sacrifice of innocents as an excuse for redemptive violence.
Maybe it’s CORNbread??
???
(Still more legible than anything I’ve hand written but still.)
@David
Thank you. I am glad, too. 🙂
@Jack
Single quotes? I may be studying computer science, now, but I got a degree in English first. I just can’t do the single quotes version. 🙂
@Handsome Jack
Cornbread isn’t usually baked in a full-on loaf, though, is it? I’m more used to having it baked in a pan or a cast-iron skillet.
@Belladonna
I’ve found all the English books–that is, books from England–I’ve read they switch single and double quotes around, like:
So, I mean, it’s right either way somewhere?
@Troubelle
That’s what confused me but, like, what else is [blank] bread? Is it even bread? Laub Read? Cavb Rem? It’s a puzzle and no one in that Twitter thread has the answer.
@Jack
lol. Yes, that’s true. And punctuation rules probably differ a bit between UK and USA. But the Chicago Manual of Style has been my bible for way too many years. I can accept that doing it differently isn’t completely, objectively wrong, but I just can’t bring myself to do. 🙂
@Handsome Jack
Regardless, I plan to make cornbread tomorrow to accompany my mother’s soup.
Also, @dlouwe? Um, if you’ve posted any updates, I haven’t seen ’em…
@ Troubelle, in case dlouwe isn’t on at the moment,
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/12/11/secret-russian-agent-trump-new-memes-for-new-revelations/#comment-1105074
Well done both of you!
@Croquenbouche of patriarchy
(x@dlouwe)
-ENTHUSED SQUEALING INTENSIFIES-
This is
ah
very very very good.
I am also a sleepy mime, so more detailed criticism is not producable at the moment, but dlouwe….you did a good. You did a very good.
I think perhaps for Russia to be our “friends” they’d have to share common values such as liberty, democracy, self-determination. And in case Mr DilbertWriter didn’t notice, Russia is actually fighting on the opposite “side” of the war in Syria (triangles have sides, right?) and has been waging much more of an anti-Syrian rebels war than one against ISIS. Because Putin is a great fan of autocrats like Asad as well as fucking over the West while sighing about how great the Soviet Union was and how much fun he had during the cold war so much so that he’s already started his own.
I know the anti-small-talk thing often appears with Aspergers Syndrome – my Aspie niece once declared “I am not interested in small talk. I am only interested in big talk.”
It’s been a decade since that declaration, but she has actually become entirely proficient in doing small talk at the appropriate time, which impresses the hell out of me.