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.
HAHAHAHAHAHA, sure, yes, you are just so politically relevant that you definitely are in the top ten targets.
Talk about delusions of grandeur.
Also, it’s completely logical to publically endorse Trump then publically say “I stopped endorsing him for fear of dying, but I still agree with everything he says!”. This certainly would protect you!
It’s like a child hiding behind the curtains and yelling “THERE’S NOBODY HIDING BEHIND THE CURTAINS!!!”. We can read your blog, genius.
I think that Scott Adams is trying to create a “non-rational association” between Clinton, her fans, and murderers. Like, Clinton supporters foolishly broadcast Adams’s post without realizing that deep down, what people REALLY absorb is the message that Clinton wants to kill them. I think. That’s what most of his “persuasion” stuff boils down to, associating words with other words.
I remember seeing his comics in my portuguese and geography books and tests when I was a child.
And now I feel a bit dirty when I remember the times I had to explain why the comic was not only right, but genius, in geography tests.
I wish I had written “Dear teacher, stop raising us to be extremely right wing and stop endorsing this douche and making him an example”
To be fair, it wouldnt be too out of character for 16 yo me, nor make her hate me much more than she already did. Aaaah, good ol days.
The earliest Dilbert stuff was basically throw random crap at the wall, and see what sticks. What stuck was mostly the business related-parts.
When the strip became devoted to business (and the boss became younger-looking and pointy-haired) it gained a lot of popularity due to being subversive at the time, but not so much that it would get pulled. Even among fans, it was rarely ha-ha funny but more of a dry sardonic humor.
However, it hasn’t aged well – society has changed a little, so it’s not as subversive as it once was. There’s only so much new that he can say, and it’s not nearly enough to sustain a daily comic. Nearly all of it is a rehash of earlier (and often better done) strips. The characters give up every possible opportunity to grow and change (well, except for Alice no longer engaging in attempted murder at the least provocation, but that’s it) even when it makes no sense – to the point where they look more like caricatures than actual people.
And there comes a point where you just have to end things, otherwise you’re going to be dragging it on and on and eventually all but the most diehard fans turn away or start begging for a mercy killing. I’m actually glad Bill Watterson ended Calvin and Hobbes when he did, for example. I really don’t think he could have sustained it much longer without sliding into mediocrity. Adams either isn’t wise enough to notice that he’s gone long past the point it should have ended, or else is more devoted to self-importance and money than art. I strongly suspect both.
Hey, Pascal’s wager! Haven’t seen any real-world examples for a couple of years. Kind of nice to know it’s still kicking around.
I respect Watterson so, so much for this decision. It could have become the next Peanuts, dragging on indefinitely as a boring, repetitive shell of its former self while people of a certain age insist “It was really good once!” Instead he went out on a glorious high and we can all remember it in its unadulterated genius.
I remember reading that last strip so clearly. I was 9 at the time.
@David
Okay, so I have to admit that Scott Adams is a genuine cartoonist. And a (self-described) genius. Also, he’s (allegedly) important enough that Hillary would kill him if he didn’t endorse her.
But here’s what he’s not:
an Alpha male
How do I know this?
He is a self-admitted coward. Who’s afraid of Hillary Clinton? No guy who’s the king of the jungle.
Important enough to be on Hillary’s kill list doesn’t mean you’re important enough to be an Alpha male.
Hypothetically speaking, if either political party had a list of assassination targets, I’d be willing to bet the top ten spots would be going to influential politicians, donors and pundits who supported the other side, not some guy who writes a comic strip for a living. Talk about an inflated sense of self-importance.
Yes. You know your democracy is working for the privileged class when members of said class can make lighthearted jokes about political violence.
Who will ever know if Mr. Important really votes for Clinton? Don’t you have secret elections? We have those specifically to prevent people from singling out their political opponents.
I’m pretty certain this is an attempt at reverse psychology.
Consider:
1) Scott Adams is moderately bright
2) but he thinks he’s a genius
3) and he thinks most of us are morons
4) and he admires the way Trump persuades the gullible
so I think he’s having a go himself. And he’s not nearly as good at is as he believes he is.
[Snigger]
Mob-rulers and their supporters sure love their projection.
Because someone needs to say it, and that someone may as well be me:
It is a matter of public record that Clinton, during her tenure as Secretary of State, had a large number of people killed. Some of these people were political enemies; most were just those who had the misfortune to be standing next to them when it happened, or to look like them through a grainy video feed. None of these people had any court pass sentence of death upon them, let alone any right of appeal or any chance of justice for their families.
Clinton does not bear sole responsibility for these killings. They were done at the behest of her boss, Obama, and were signed off by various generals and security tsars, and carried out by various military and security personnel. Every one of these people bears as much responsibility as if they had chosen to do it themselves without orders, because “I had orders” is not a defence.
However, these people were overseas, and usually poor and people of colour. Because of this the American domestic opinion was not only not outraged, but was often disappointed that not enough people were killed, and that too much care was paid to ensure that they were killing the right people.
That said, Adams is a fantasist if he thinks that Clinton will have him killed for opposing her. For one thing he isn’t opposing her, not really. Both of them agree on the vast majority of their policies, simply because the distance between the two extremes of electability in America isn’t that broad. For another thing, Clinton doesn’t have white Christian Americans killed – and if she gave the order to do such a thing, her killers might suddenly discover that they are capable of questioning orders.
This does not mean that Adams isn’t both a funny cartoonist and an asshole, or that I don’t support Clinton’s bid to become president. However, when he says “I should be careful about what I say and do because Clinton may have me killed”, then he is echoing the lived experience of a large number of people, even if only by default.
Kat:
Every time he comes up with some new piece of allegedly brilliant fuckwittery, I hear Vizzini’s voice when I read it.
“Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons!”
On the topic of Trump and violence, this is what was claimed today in one of Aust’s conservative news outlets:
“Over in the US, Donald Trump supporters are routinely egged, sprayed in the eyes with pepper spray and bashed until they bleed by protesters. Whatever you think of The Don’s crazier politics, such behaviour can never be condoned. And the paradox is these protesters will ultimately be the ones with egg on their face, their special brand of violence only bolstering support for the Republican candidate. Those whingers doth protest too much.”
I’m not linking to it, but here’s the link to the blog that I read it on instead:
http://loonpond.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/day-78-of-muc-and-day-31-of-moc-and_7.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+LoonPond+(loon+pond)#.V1auOpF97ic
There you have it: “bashed until they bleed”. It’s not Trump supporters who are violent; it’s their whinging opponents. We’re on the other side of the rabbit hole, people!
@ EJ
How do you reconcile that with your pacifist beliefs? I’m not having a dig, this is one of those fascinating ethical questions so I’d be interested in your views on this. What responsibility people in a democracy have for the actions of their governments is a topic that intrigues me as it ties in a lot with the military law stuff (e.g. Who’s a legitimate target? Etc).
In my opinion, a voter in a democracy is responsible for the actions of that democracy’s government and its agencies, regardless of who they voted for or whether they voted at all. If you have the franchise then you are responsible for what happens in your name.
We might not like what happens in our names – I know a lot of Israelis, for example, who are deeply uncomfortable with the actions of the governments that they are enfranchised to elect – but ultimately we are where the responsibility rests.
This does not mean that the government, and the agents of that government, do not also bear responsibility for choosing to carry out the orders they were given. Responsibility is not diminished by being shared.
@ EJ
That’s interesting. I’ll have to ponder. I can see the force in your argument for the perspective that you can’t just therefore abdicate responsibility by saying “don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for this” thus putting an emphasis on people to actively try to change things they don’t agree with.
But the flipside is you blame people for things that aren’t their fault. ‘Don’t like the patriarchy ladies? Well, you’re responsible for it”. That doesn’t sit well with me. And consider policing in the US. Under your approach black people are equally responsible as whites for racist policing.
It’s a fascinating point though. By extension, if you can’t achieve your aim democratically are you know justified/obligated to use undemocratic means to overturn things you don’t support, even if the majority do?
Lots to consider here. Cheers.
In my opinion, yes. It was the duty of every white person who lived in the southern United States prior to the 1860s to help slaves escape, even if doing so was against the law.
Just as “obeying orders” is not and cannot be an excuse, “obeying the law” cannot be either.
@ EJ
You might be interested in some of the post WW2 tribunals. Nurebemberg is the famous one of course, but there were a few others, including the “judges’ trial”. One of the issues that cropped up was whether you had a legal duty to disobey laws, even if they were passed lawfully at the time, if they were inherently unethical.
Personally I only obey the laws I agree with and find convenient. Luckily for the most part that coincides with what the rest of society goes along with. But you know my views on certain subjects. Ironically there often is an attempt to justify certain actions on a legal basis (preventing a breach of other laws usually) but the general consensus is that you can’t let the law get in the way of doing right. Unlike say the freemen on the land lot I do accept that if I get caught I can’t complain about the consequences (unlike some of my colleagues though I don’t go out of my way to be caught)
Can Scott Adams be the first up against Trump’s wall after the revolution? (OK, ok, maybe we’ll just paint it with flowers and break most of it down, but still..)
…Is this what I sound like, when I explain that I believe Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be president because she’s a family member of a living president?
@Banned
Yes.
I’m going to confess that I’m still upset over W being elected to the office. That might be at least partly the reason for my pessimism.
The difference between the two candidates is that Hillary Clinton has gone on record saying she condemns violence among her supporters and it needs to stop. Donald Trump not only urges his supporters to violence, he also talks about joining in and beating up protesters himself. While he’s at the podium.
I know Adams is crudely trying to throw a cloud of fear and irrationality over the Clinton campaign by pretending to be oh-so-scared of her, but without facts to support it (and as EJ said, there actually is a case to be made that Hillary is no saint, but Adams isn’t making it), it just comes across as cringey and paranoid. It’s like he’s yelling at a stick of butter and then slapping himself across the face to demonstrate how dangerous the butter is.
Hey Scott: Boo!
