Hold onto your hats, everyone, because Scott Adams has discovered something about politics that could be HUGE — if it weren’t something that literally every single person already knows.
He’s discovered that smearing your political opponents with lies can be a more effective strategy than telling the truth. Only he doesn’t call this brilliant new strategy “smearing your political opponent with lies.” He calls it “good persuasion.”
In a recent post on his blog (archived here), the Dilbert cartoonist and Dunning-Kruger poster boy lets us in on the “Wikileaks persuasion” we all supposedly missed.
Do you remember when Wikileaks first started releasing the hacked emails from the DNC? Julian Assange told us the good stuff was coming later. Then some more emails were released, but still no good stuff. Just stuff.
But the really, really good stuff was coming, Assange assured us. Not this next release perhaps, but soon. Just wait.
And then it never came. There was no good stuff in those emails. There was plenty of little stuff. But nothing that moves elections.
But by repeating this false promise, Adams notes, Assange convinced a good portion of the electorate that Wikileaks had indeed offered proof of dastardly crimes committed by the woman Trump called “crooked Hillary.”
Imagine my shock to discover that baseless smears of political opponents, repeated regularly and with apparent sincerity, can actually affect how people see that person. Even though Assange never came out with his promised proofs of Hillary’s alleged perfidy, his baseless insinuations did indeed contribute to the cloud of suspicion that hung over Hillary’s head.
You have to give Assange credit for this persuasion. He made the public remember something that didn’t happen. …
Assange turned … nothing into a something in our memories by making us remember that something big was coming. Even though it didn’t. That’s good persuasion.
Yes, it’s true. In politics, shameless bullshittery can get you a lot further than truthtelling.
Adams seems to believe that Assange was the first person to come up with this brilliant strategy, and that he is the first person to point this out.
Sorry to break it to you, Scott, but one famous “persuader” figured this out long before you were even born.
“[T]he great masses of the people … more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big,” this fellow wrote in his most famous book.
[E]ven when enlightened on the subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick-a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this world know only too well and also make the most treacherous use of.
I’m surprised Adams didn’t realize he was reinventing the wheel here, because the quote in question comes from a “persuader” who is much revered in the Trump-loving corner of the internet that Adams has made his home.
The “persuader” in question is of course Adolf Hitler, though he liked to pretend that the “big lie” was a technique practiced by the Jews, not one that he regularly employed to great effect.
Scott Adams would no doubt know all this, if he spent more time reading and less time EATING PUPPIES.
NOTE TO EXCESSIVELY LITERAL-MINDED READERS: That thing about the puppies is a joke. It is not true. Scott Adams does not in fact murder puppies with his bare hands and eat their still-warm flesh raw.
More importantly, the fact that Adams indicates his approval of baseless smear campaigns of political opponents says something about his moral character, doesn’t it?
@Conan the Librarian
“No you see it’s fight fire with fire-” “They do it too” and other bullshit addages to make people feel better about committing the worst mankind can ever offer. It’s literal fascist propaganda.
Well I guess that’s how Hitler justified his own use of “the big liw” Some role model, eh Scott A.?
is my new favourite feature of this blog. Please keep it up!
@David
This note! It’s as though you didn’t comprehend Scott Adams’s wisdom. He has instructed us in the art of persuasion. You obviously read his instructions . . . and then you tossed them away.
Don’t you see? Telling the truth undermines the lie that came before. And that lie had the potential to be a Big Lie. What a shame.
Scott Adams — he tries and tries to enlighten us. But some of us resist him.
Of course not, sillybilly! Everybody knows he bites the heads off live kittens and gargles with their blood!
Sorry. I’m only persuaded by kitties.
@WWTH Yeeees…..maaaaasteeeeeerrrr…..
You all do realize there’s a difference between saying something is effective and praising it, right? Chesterton once said, if a man could pick off his grandmother at 300 yards with a rifle, we’d say he was a good shot, but not a good man. “Good persuasion” is in the same category.
Do you believe that Adams disapproves in any way of the behavior he is describing?
I have to say, I find his painstaking explanations of How To Be A Demagogue both funny and cringy. He genuinely seems to think that these techniques are quite esoteric, and that few will have heard of such stuff. I think most grade-school bullies get this one down pretty quickly.
Steven,
I can read just fine. That is praise.
I feel like Steven Dutch used to post here non-trollishly and then all of a sudden changed to troll. What’s with that?
http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1345617609650_2229221.png
I bet anything that Scott Adams would be salty if you told him that Donald Trump sold us out to the Russkies.
Oh, wait! That’s not baseless!
That smug asshole.
Fuck Adams, Assange, Putin, Comey, Trump, & all of the deplorables– malevolent trash.
I’ve pioneered a new technique where you can get someone to do what you want if you convince them that you have their best interests at heart. You just have to earn their trust. Their confidence, I guess you might say. Anyway, you’re welcome to use my amazing new “confidence man” technique, I just ask that you give credit to me, a 100% certified genius, for its invention.
Yes, Adams, that would be a good strategy if you were unethical as hell and the world wasn’t made of lies. Which it will be, if people keep using it.
“NOTE TO EXCESSIVELY LITERAL-MINDED READERS: That thing about the puppies is a joke. It is not true. Scott Adams does not in fact murder puppies with his bare hands and eat their still-warm flesh raw.”
Can you prove that he doesn’t? Do we actually have documentation for that? Has anybody here ever personally witnessed Scott Adams not eating a puppy?
@Viscaria
Where can I learn more about this “confidence man” technique? Do I have to enrol at the Viscaria University or do some correspondence course for 8 easy payments of $99.99?
Steven Dutch says:
If the fellow exclaiming over the shot is a lifetime subscriber to Splattered Grannies Monthly, are we still supposed to assume he’s only making note of accuracy, not expressing admiration for the shooter or approval of the deed?
@reimalebario:
Yesterday, while I was walking home, I saw someone eating something. I can’t be absolutely sure that it wasn’t Scott Adams and wasn’t a puppy. Therefore, I feel confident saying that I may have witnessed Scott Adams eating a puppy.
EJ (The Orphic Lizard):
I have undeniable proof that he has in fact eaten many puppies. I will release that evidence at a later date. Stay tuned. Until then, rest assured that Scott Adams definitely eats puppies.
David had to make that disclaimer, because he hasn’t published proof yet that Scott Adams eats puppies, but it’s quite possibly coming…and soon. Very soon.
@eientei95 you could have learned about all these tips and tricks of the con at a very famous, very prestigious university which used the very best teaching techniques – immersive experience. Unfortunately, said uni was shut down when liars and enemies made Mr Trump unjustly pay out $25 million to settle a yuuuugely unfair lawsuit.
Chesterton was wrong.
Because if someone could pick off their grandmother at 300 yards with a rifle, they would indeed be a good shot.
It’s only if they were willing to do it that we’d question their morality.
I call bullshit. I don’t like to speculate about the insides of other people’s heads, but I’m not buying that Scott Adams appreciates people deliberately deceiving him.
Then again he’s a Trump supporter, and here I’ve already assumed that facts are real, and words mean things, and any number of other Trumpy fallacies of reasoning.
@eientei95
I’m actually going to need full payment upfront, but don’t worry; your life changing information packet will follow shortly after your payment is received. Unless it is tragically lost in the mail.
>Dunning-Kruger poster boy
I’d like to know who did Scott Adams the disservice of convincing him he was a clever man.