By virtually all measures, Donald Trump’s presidency is a disaster, lurching from self-inflicted crisis to self-inflicted disaster.
His inauguration day crowds were dwarfed by massive protests the next day. He’s delivered on none of his signature promises. Investigators are snooping around his administration and his businesses, and talk of impeachment is in the air. The White House is in perpetual chaos, with demoralized staffers leaking embarrassing details to the press almost hourly — when they’re not literally hiding in the bushes to escape questions from the press. Every day brings new evidence that Trump has no idea what he’s doing.
Today, after more than a week of relentless bad news, his historically terrible popularity rating has fallen close to its all time low. Even his wife refuses to hold hands with him.
But to Dilbert-cartoonist-turned-dillweed-pundit Scott Adams, everything bad is good for Trump, whom he sees as playing a masterful game of 4th-dimensional chess that most of us are too dumb to understand. Whenever Trump pulls some new boner, Adams is there to tell us, like Pee Wee Herman after his famous bike fail, that Trump “meant to do that.”
It’s been a while since we last checked in on Spinnin’ Scott, so I thought I’d grace you all with some of the highlights of his Trump-related Twittering over the last month or so.
In late April, Adams suggested that Trump’s opponents were running out of steam, or at least air:
I tell you how the air is coming out of the anti-Trump balloon: https://t.co/8L4Y4Vg8Jl #POTUS #Trump pic.twitter.com/vL0IwrBtTT
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 18, 2017
He informed us that the world was coming to see all of politics through a Trumpian lens:
Watch in awe as the entire world starts to see things through a "deal-making" frame. We're already seeing it. https://t.co/yUyORCfTMF
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 29, 2017
He groused a little about the French election with a Tweet one can only assume was deliberately designed to break irony meters around the globe:
France had a chance to elect a Trump-like candidate, but instead chose a rich, white businessman with no government experience. #Macron
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 8, 2017
He declared that the widespread belief that Trump has no fucking idea what he’s doing is actually … good for Trump, a step in the right direction, perception-wise.
Trump's brand migration from Hitler to incompetent is complete. After a few more wins, look for, "Effective, but I don't like it." https://t.co/kqhJxqjcBG
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 10, 2017
Clearly Adams doesn’t realize that Trump’s “brand migration” hasn’t actually gone “from Hitler to incompetent” but from “Hitler to incompetent Hitler.”
He’s also apparently unaware that in a democracy, a politician’s popularity actually counts for quite a lot, given that our leaders are chosen through literal popularity contests known as “elections.”
Anti-Trumpers are clinging to the "low approval" criticism of Trump, unaware that it measures their cognition, not his performance. #POTUS
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 12, 2017
He repeatedly tried to hypnotize Americans into forgetting the name “Comey” entirely.
Comey who? I already forgot that ancient controversy. https://t.co/nAfHSEwpom
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 16, 2017
Comey got his forever-name today. In a month, all you will remember of this leak is #NutJob.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 19, 2017
Then he tried to convince us that Trump’s short attention span is a good thing because his advisors are so terrible:
How can we voters tell the difference between a POTUS with a "short attention span" and advisors who aren't worth a long listen?
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 20, 2017
I can’t say I dispute Adams’ contention that Trump’s advisors suck, but, dude, WHO PICKED THESE ADVISORS? (Hint: His name rhymes with Bonald Glump.)
Currently, Adams is trying to push his rather unique take on Trump’s cringeworthy world tour:
I'd hate to be a White House leaker watching President Trump power-up overseas. He's coming back stronger. Your shit is done. #POTUS
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 22, 2017
Apparently one ‘”powers up” abroad as a president by:
- Curtsying to Saudi royalty
- Forgetting that Israel is in the Middle East
- Grasping a giant glowing orb from the Home Shopping Network’s Illuminati Collection
But, hey, maybe the real story of the world tour is how much everyone LOVES Ivanka!
While you were distracted by President Trump, this might be the start of the most important story in the world: @IvankaTrump https://t.co/chUkTJjgEV
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 22, 2017
Keep spinning, Scott! Just keep spinning.
Okay, it’s well past the point that I can’t just roll my eyes and say “Haha, Scott Adams said something stupid again.” I’m at the point of asking “What the hell happened to you, man???”
I’ve read somewhere that this all started after a messy divorce, although I doubt that was anything more than a catalyst for personal politics puffed up by years of success and yes-men telling him how great he is (ironically something that his early strips satirized very well).
I mean… simply from a core brand proposition standpoint, does he not understand how radioactive Trump support is for large swath of Dilbert’s readership? Granted, the Silicon Valley technocrati make Narcissus himself look humble by comparison, but there have got to be a few cubicle-dwellers for whom a puffed-up reality show star turns the stomach. Dilbert’s cultural cache has long since passed and tying its threadbare legacy to a grotesque individual like Trump will only serve to make it even more of punchline than it already is.
It just disappoints me to no end that a childhood icon of me is crashing and burning in slow motion like this.
@Gussie Jives
I had a similar reaction a few years back when he got into a bit of an argument with PZ Myers. My main memory of the event was the fact that he came on to Myers’ blog, and the wittiest thing he could manage was to call PZ a “bearded taint”. I had thought that scott was a relatively clever and witty person up to that point, but suddenly he became indistinguishable from a generic ignorant and boorish internet troll. Seriously, whatever happened to “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel”?
Looking back, you can see that his ideas weren’t great, his material was packed with filler, many of the better ideas and jokes in dilbert came from readers and his tendency towards sexism and misogyny was well under way twenty years ago.
Who knows why he’s glommed onto trump so enthusiastically, though.
@DMW
I only really know of Black from his VA role in Inside Out as Anger…a quite appropriate role for him, from what I’ve heard.
Anger is something we have a lot of these days.
@Gussie Jives
Nah, you’re probably thinking of Dave Sim, cartoonist who did Cerebus. It started out as a normalish (aside from the protagonist being an anthropomorphic aardvark for no apparent reason; everyone else was human) sword and sorcery comic, but after he got divorced it turned into page after page of misogynistic ranting. Adams does appear to be divorced at this time, but his being a total douchebag predates that considerably.
I am wondering if Adams is screwing with us as part of some elaborate troll. Only someone who is delibrately ignoring reality would argue Trump is winning. Its sad to me to watch Adams whos cartoons I enjoyed as a child has become this deloprable human being whos now a MRA to boot.
Scott Adams is still an idiot.
In other news, the sky on Earth is blue, and Jupiter has a big red spot.
@ Troubelle
That’s a pretty fair characterization, truthfully. Black is a pretty angry guy, or at the very least his public persona certainly is. As far as I can tell, “angry” never really turns into “hateful” in his case… I hope not, at any rate. Easy line to cross.
Hi people. And let’s also mention how Trump made a deal of selling multibillions worth of arms to Emirates. Didn’t he say it was Clinton who created the Isis? Not that she acted very wise back then, with the Syria crisis.
Hi people. And let’s also mention how Trump made a deal of selling multibillions worth of arms to Emirates. Didn’t he say it was Clinton who created the Isis? Not that she acted very wise back then, with the Syria crisis.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if Adams is getting paid by RT.
Russia tends to support either the far right or the far left depending on who is more likely to weaken the country. They would’ve supported Stein if she was more electable (Bernie was too close to being a moderate social democrat and he would’ve appointed good foreign advisers).
Welp, that’s one way to spin it.
Seriously, we had standards once. I should like to live to see us have standards again.
Re: Lewis Black
In his comedy you can see how the purpose of humor is to feel better about terrible things. He uses anger a lot and well in my opinion (like just about every comedian he had some material that is problematic in one way or another). He is one of my favorite political comedians. The material still hurts him though, you can sense it during his routines. He also rips on more absurd parts of US culture.
Youtube has a lot of good stuff.
@Pie
Oh yeah, a lot of those older strips are burned into my memory and his depiction of “Tina The Brittle Tech Writer” was incredibly cringe-inducing (which bothers me doubly as both a trained engineer and technical writer), to say nothing of how Alice gets treated. A very “techbro” attitude to be sure.
As for the filler, I really noticed that creeping in as the 90s drew to a close. Those first few years, he was doing all kinds of week-long storylines involving the Garbageman and Dogbert’s world-domination bent, along with some fun one-off characters like Techno Bill and Loud Howard. Then it just kinda developed into “clueless boss is clueless” day-in day-out. I think the last Dilbert collection I bought was Don’t Step In The Leadership from 1998.
Times like this, I miss Calvin and Hobbes. Hope Bill Watterson’s enjoying his retirement.
@Gussie
He is, apparently. There was a (very) short interview published a few years ago when he did a collaboration with Pastis of Pearls Before Swine.
I really like Lewis Black. His comedy is angry but not assholish. Angry and asshole often go together but they aren’t the same things.
@Dalillama
You know, someone somewhere had recommended “Jaka’s Story” as a great way to get into Cerebus, during a comment thread where Sim’s misogyny had been brought up. So one day when a local comic shop was having a sale I picked it up and I was BLOWN AWAY. The book takes such great care of its’ female protagonist, setting her up as human, humane, interesting, many-layered. I mean, having read it I had real trouble crediting Dave Sim’s reputation as a woman-hater.
Then I did some googling, because I was curious about one particular plot point and I wanted to see if I had interpreted it correctly, and found an interview where Dave Sim talks about writing “Jaka’s Story”…
Turns out I had misunderstood everything about Jaka. Like, everything. His misogyny is in fact so bad, so gross, that I had no frame of reference to correctly interpret most of the book in the manner intended. I have to mentally divorce everything in the book from everything I read from Sim afterwards.
re: Bill Watterson
As Dali said, he did collab briefly with Stefan (?…it’s been a while) Pastis of Pearls Before Swine.
I remember that Pastis got to his position thanks to Adams…and soon after ran strips taking the piss about Adams. So I don’t know what’s going on now.
And now I know that Anger’s VA is worth listening to. Yay.
I do, too. He makes me laugh, so, so hard. I like him enormously.
He went to Saudi Arabia, not fuckin Namek…
@Troubelle
It’s Pixar, so I was gonna see it anyway, but Lewis Black made Inside Out a theater watch for me 🙂
@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
If he did go to Namek it would be a relief, that would mean he’d be gone for a LONG time.
@Oogly
I imagine Pence, Ryan, McConnell, Priebus, and Bannon standing around the Dragon Balls. They know they should wish him back… But should they? And they’re all making sure Pence doesn’t take advantage of the silence to wish himself President. Meanwhile, Shenlong’s about 2 seconds away from just eating em all…
I don’t understand you Dragonball fans….
@Fran
I’m with you, although I’ve only read the Patlabour manga.
@Francesca Torpedo, Femoid Special Forces Major
It’s the second arc of DragonBall Z. After nearly all the cast is dead everyone flies off to planet Namek to find more Dragonballs to bring their friends back. Alot of other stuff happens like the introduction of transformations, Super Saiyans, multiple temporary alliances, Ginyu Force, etc… and it took a really, really, long while before the arc was done. Even longer if you watched the anime adaptation, that show had the pacing of a glacier covered in Osmium and superglued to a tectonic plate.
@Dali
Watch Patlabour: The Movie 2 when you get a chance.
I love Mamoru Oshii and would like to have his children. That is how much I adore his filmmaking.
It has all the things we Oshii fans like: glassy eyed characters staring into the distance in shock, muted palettes with varying shades of grey, people staring into camera lenses with their faces all deformed…Just, oh my Goddess.
I just finished watching it while lifting weights in my home gym(read: the living room, where a weight set is strewn across the floor, along with a stationary bike).
It’s also about a terrorist attack on a major city.
I did not queue this up on purpose; it’s what The Anime Network is showing right now.