NOTE:Â This was written before Hillary Clinton essentially clinched the nomination.
With the critical California primary looming, Hillary Clinton has received a key endorsement that will likely help her clinch the “self-absorbed weirdo millionaire who did a comic strip you once kind of liked” vote.
That’s right, folks. Dilbert creator Scott Adams has thrown his support behind Hillary. Sort of.
In a post on his always strange blog yesterday (archived here), Adams offered a bizarre rationale for his choice: He’s endorsing Hillary because he’s afraid that if he doesn’t, her supporters might literally murder him.
No, really. In his post, Adams explains that
Clinton supporters have convinced me – and here I am being 100% serious – that my safety is at risk if I am seen as supportive of Trump. So I’m taking the safe way out and endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.
Let’s unpack the, er, logic that led to this phony backwards “endorsement.”
Adams has been gushing for months about what he sees as Donald Trump’s “extraordinary persuasion skills,” by which he evidently means Trump’s bellicose, bullying rhetoric designed to appeal to Americans’ worst instincts. But now, in the wake of Clinton’s masterful takedown of Trump in a withering speech last week, Adams sees that she’s got some “solid-gold persuasion” skills of her own.
So naturally Adams has concluded that his life is in danger.
I’ll let him explain it because I certainly can’t:
This past week we saw Clinton pair the idea of President Trump with nuclear disaster, racism, Hitler, the Holocaust, and whatever else makes you tremble in fear.Â
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s Trump’s most fervent fans who are pairing Trump with Hitler — though they tend to see Trump’s similarities with their Nazi idol as a good thing.
And I’m also pretty sure that Clinton didn’t force The Donald to retweet such lovely individuals as @WhiteGenocideTM, a resident of “Jewmerica” whose Twitter bio links to a pro-Hitler “documentary,” and who once Tweeted an image of a gleeful Trump getting ready to gas Bernie Sanders in a Nazi death camp. Or self-described “fashy goy” @EustaceFash, who likes to post things like this:
Ein Reich Ein Volk Ein Wall pic.twitter.com/bucwnHRWu0
— Eustace Bagge (@EustaceFash) April 23, 2016
But let’s set that aside for now, because in Adams’ world it is The Hillary who’s responsible when people look at The Donald and notice a bit of a resemblance to The Adolf. Clinton’s “new scare tactics are solid-gold persuasion,” Adams declares.
The only downside I can see to the new approach is that it is likely to trigger a race war in the United States.
Yeah, that’s right. It isn’t Trump’s racism and xenophobia, or his repeated incitements of violence against protesters, or his winking cultivation of literal Nazi fans, that might stir up a race war. It’s Clinton mentioning those things in public.
But Adams’ “logic” gets weirder:
And I would be a top-ten assassination target in that scenario because once you define Trump as Hitler, you also give citizens moral permission to kill him. And obviously it would be okay to kill anyone who actively supports a genocidal dictator, including anyone who wrote about his persuasion skills in positive terms.Â
Dude, dude. Really?
So I’ve decided to endorse Hillary Clinton for President, for my personal safety. Trump supporters don’t have any bad feelings about patriotic Americans such as myself, so I’ll be safe from that crowd.
He may actually have a point here. Trump’s most violent fans would much rather be beating up people whose skin is a bit darker than that of a pasty-faced white cartoonist.
And so Adams has thrown his support — if you want to call it that — behind Clinton, in order to protect himself from violent monsters like these in the event that she loses, which he thinks she will.
As of press time, this writer could not confirm the color of the sky on Adams’ planet.
Bzuh? Seriously? Yikes. Dovetails nicely with comments I saw today about the evil, violent ‘left’.
Yeah, Adams has completed his transformation and is now the pointy-haired boss. I’m surprised it’s taken him this long.
It’s projection all the way down.
Drumpfeteers know that one (or more) of their ilk will go on a murder spree the moment The Cheeto loses this election, so obviously the same must be true of the other side.
Because if it wasn’t, well…they might have to ask if they’re the baddies.
You know, I’ve read and re-read this and still cannot make heads or tails of it. A very, very weird way of admitting he might, gasp, vote for a woman?
Welcome back by the way 🙂 I hope you enjoyed a good break.
He’s probably just using his own “extraordinary persuasion skills” to endorse Trump via reverse psychology.
This can’t be serious. He is just trying to rile people up, right?
Otherwise, he must assume several things. That he is important to her. That either Hillary has suddenly lost the ability to read by herself or understand the words a staffer may say to her about him. And that if he is so important to her, his half-assed endorsement is sufficient to keep her from killing (??) him.
…Also that photoshop is disturbing. “OMG HELP ME! I’m turning into a gorilla!”
Does it take great rhetorical skill to associate the idea of a Trump Presidency with nuclear disaster? I’m thinking it’s the same logical leap as associating rain clouds with things getting wet.
Scott is projecting so hard I could use him as an external display.
Scott Adams is claiming that the candidate who is endorsed by the KKK and White Nationalists is the *real* victim of racism. The candidate who regularly incites violence is less likely to cause violence. It boggles that this self-proclaimed genius thinks that stating that he’s endorsing Cinton, as a way to endorse Trump, is evidence of his master persuasion abilities.
He also asserts that “Trump supporters don’t have any bad feelings about patriotic Americans such as myself, so I’ll be safe from that crowd.” Because Scott Adams isn’t Mexican, Muslim, black, Jewish, or a woman, he has nothing to fear from Trump supporters! Ok yeah, he has a point there.
I’ve come to realize that Scott Adams and Donald Trump share the same contempt for minorities and women, as well as the same distorted sense of their own intelligence.
Part of me wonders if he really wants to vote for Clinton and believes she’d be the better choice, but he can’t admit it to himself or his fanbase so he made up some ridiculous excuse.
He’s probably just trolling though.
It felt like trolling to me, basically a hyperbolic whine about Clinton calling out Trump for the horrible things he’s said. But then by the way he finished it, it almost sounds sincere. Frankly, I don’t know what to think about the clown (Adams, that is. I know exactly what to think about Trump).
I don’t like Hillary for a great number of things on her voting record, but in an election between her and the ambulatory dumpster fire that is Trump? That’s not even a question.
Welcome back, David!
He’s trying to have it both ways. He’s claiming that he’s sure Trump will win by a massive landslide due to his “master manipulator skills”, but disavowing any negative actions Trump might take as a result of that win – it’s an endorsement of Trump, but a backhanded one that gives him a way out. The Hillary endorsement is the same way – he’s technically endorsing her, so he has his bases covered if she wins, but by claiming he feels forced to do so he has an “out” there too.
Of course it only makes sense in his head and to his deluded readers. To the general public, he looks like what he is – a wingnut.
Welcome back! I hope you had a nice break.
In the world according to Scott Adams, Clinton supporters are vicious, vengeful murderers of Trump supporters, but are willing to spare someone who publicly declares that they’re violent killers and that he would support Trump if he thought it was safe. Sure, makes sense.
That’s “Eine Mauer”, du verdammter saudummer Vollidiot.
And if you seriously think Der Drumpf is gonna build it, let alone get anyone other than gullible US taxpayers to pay for it, you’re delusional.
PS: Welcome back, David!
What good is it to turn quisling in order to save one’s own skin and then immediately blab it out online? When the Femighaziâ„¢ Revolution comes, he’ll be the one in the park with his emails deleted, if you catch my drift.
/twirl’s imaginary mustache while trying to come up with a way to work Whitewater into that.
So for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Clinton supporters WERE murderous hellbeasts who view tangentially relevant comic creators as major threats. Would saying “Okay, I really like Trump and have been stumping for him for ages and really wish I could endorse him but OKAY OKAY FINE I’LL ENDORSE CLINTON EVEN THOUGH I HATE HER GUTS” *really* be enough to deter them from the warpath?
Like, if he were even vaguely under any real threat, nobody who was out to get him would be satisfied with this “endorsement”. It’s as if he’s counting on Clinton supporters having about an 0.5-second memory.
[ED: Ninja’d by Viscaria!]
Why are racist white people so fearful of a race war? It’s almost like they acknowledge that some grievances need to be redressed. And they expect them to be redressed violently. Because they’re not going to relinquish their privileges willingly. Hence a race war makes sense to them.
Hmm.
He’ll support Clinton so she doesn’t kill him — even though Trump would be a better president.
A self-described smart guy and an actual cartoonist thinks that’s funny. So it must be funny.
But to this layperson — folks, I am not a professional cartoonist! — it’s just dull. And stupid.
But I’ve got to be wrong about that. What would I know?!
I think Scott Adams has been simultaneously taking a piss and thinking of himself as a genius problem-solver for so long he can no longer distinguish between one or another.
Like that time he proposed ending terrorism by getting all the terrorists laid: Obviously that’s the kind of goofy idea you suggest facetiously, and that’s what he’s doing, but he simultaneously thinks he’s so brilliant that he totally could solve terrorism if he wanted to, so he ends up defending his silly idea like it’s genius that would really work.
So what we have here is him joking about “I should endorse Clinton because if I don’t her followers will kill me, bitches be cray, amirite?”, but then getting it into his head that that’s what’s really going to happen in real life.
Anyway, that’s the best sense I can make of it.
@katz
Shows how little you know.
That thing about how he can’t distinguish one from the other? Part of his genius!
It is easy to justify violence and killing as self defense. Claiming that others are perpetrating violence (or plan to) gives permission for a first strike.
Hillary and her supporters are evil and violent. Thus, that justifies Trump supporters’ self-defense through use of all necessary violence.
It’s verbal Kristallnacht, setting the groundwork to excuse violent retribution for acts never committed or intended.
Edited to add: Trump supporters have a tell. They are telling us that they intend to be violent to get their way. We should listen.
Weird, it’s like white cis-het men – for all their complaining about “professional victims” and how trigger warnings are somehow the worst thing ever – come up with any reason to self-victimize in the most exaggerated way imaginable…
@gaebolga
http://i.imgur.com/vThAOSu.jpg
(Welcome back, David!)