# What's with these oddball political comments by Dilbert artist Scott Adams? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 16, 2016, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104 "2016-09-16T18:39:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/41 "2016-10-19T17:55:46Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Well, I don’t think Adams is a particularly competent writer but putting that aside then he is misrepresenting what pundits were talking about or nutpicking the pundits at alternanet. Mainstream pundits were talking about his lack of support in the black community. > > At the end of the day, Adams seems to attribute almost every Trump move, even obvious missteps, to over our heads brilliant strategy/persuasion tactics. I really can’t take any of it seriously. So, no mainstream pundits have repeated the narrative that Trump is racist, or, at the very least uncaring about the African-American community? Or, that _that_ particular racial narrative has not been pushed at times by his political opponents? And that narrative push by his opponents has in no freakin way entered the mainstream consciousness or mainstream debate? No, im imagining it all. Just go to almost any political thread on SD. One thing the political threads on SD certainly do _not_ lack are comments suggesting Trump is racist. Posters on SD may be pulling the Trump is racist narrative randomly out of their individual asses, or, more likely, Trump is successfully being branded as racist by someone. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/42 "2016-10-19T18:26:06Z")
I remember reading in one of Scott Adams’ books that he believes affirmations can change reality. Not that they can act as motivation for you to make a change or psyche yourself into having more confidence, but that they will alter physical facts. That is, if you apply for college and get back a letter, but spend a week writing “I will be accepted to College” ten times a day before opening it, the affirmations can make the letter turn from a rejection into an acceptance letter. I enjoyed Dilbert back in the day, but I really don’t think that he’s a good source for serious analysis. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/43 "2016-10-19T18:36:39Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](#): > > So, no mainstream pundits have repeated the narrative that Trump is racist, or, at the very least uncaring about the African-American community? Or, that _that_ particular racial narrative has not been pushed at times by his political opponents? And that narrative push by his opponents has in no freakin way entered the mainstream consciousness or mainstream debate? No, im imagining it all. > > Just go to almost any political thread on SD. One thing the political threads on SD certainly do _not_ lack are comments suggesting Trump is racist. Posters on SD may be pulling the Trump is racist narrative randomly out of their individual asses, or, more likely, Trump is successfully being branded as racist by someone. Oh there’s no doubt the idea that he’s racist is out there being discussed; he got that ball rolling with his campaign announcement. But you are choosing to ignore that we are talking specifically about Trump’s “outreach” to the African-American community. And we’re not talking about SDMB Elections participants. The very first line in the blog entry:“Heads are exploding at CNN as pundits try to define Trump’s repeated offers to help African-Americans as typical Hitler behavior.” ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/44 "2016-10-19T18:53:50Z")
He’s a seventy year-old white American. Of _course_ he’s racist. That said, I’ve gathered that the mainstream media view is that his campaign style is largely driven by pandering to people far more racist than himself. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/45 "2016-10-19T19:58:50Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > … nutpicking … added to my lexicon ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/46 "2016-10-19T20:37:43Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I remember reading in one of Scott Adams’ books that he believes affirmations can change reality. Not that they can act as motivation for you to make a change or psyche yourself into having more confidence, but that they will alter physical facts. That is, if you apply for college and get back a letter, but spend a week writing “I will be accepted to College” ten times a day before opening it, the affirmations can make the letter turn from a rejection into an acceptance letter. I enjoyed Dilbert back in the day, but I really don’t think that he’s a good source for serious analysis. His “affirmations” phase was also, IIRC, the point at which Dilbert had a short-lived TV spinoff. He asked his blog readers to ensure its success by all doing an affirmation with him every day “The Dilbert TV show will get a 7 share” (I have no idea exactly what this means. Apparently it is equivalent to ‘a lot of viewers’) The show was cancelled within 2 years. Apparently affirmations’ effects are not multiplicative. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/47 "2016-10-19T21:21:02Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I remember reading in one of Scott Adams’ books that he believes affirmations can change reality. Not that they can act as motivation for you to make a change or psyche yourself into having more confidence, but that they will alter physical facts. That is, if you apply for college and get back a letter, but spend a week writing “I will be accepted to College” ten times a day before opening it, the affirmations can make the letter turn from a rejection into an acceptance letter. I enjoyed Dilbert back in the day, but I really don’t think that he’s a good source for serious analysis. I assume you imagine reading this in one of his books because he wrote about using affirmations to get in to the MBA program at UC, Berkeley. Despite never achieving above the 77th percentile in any test G.M.A.T he achieved the 94th percentile as he had affirmed in the actual exam. Mind you I have no faith in affirmations other than to provide rich soil for confirmation bias. However the Adams book I read made it clear that he thought there was no scientific justification for affirmations but they had worked for him. > [@](#): > > I’ve often written about my own experiences with affirmations, the practice of writing your goals 15 times a day. It seems to work much of the time, at least in my experience, but presumably not because of any magic. At least one probable explanation for its perceived effectiveness is that focusing on goals changes the person who is doing the focusing. > > In a book called The Luck Factor, the author and researcher, Richard Wiseman (Google it), discovered that people who expect luck will notice opportunities in their environment more readily than those who don’t. And he learned that you can train people to expect luck, and cause an improvement in their ability to spot opportunities, that look like luck, when they pop up. I can imagine affirmations tuning a person in the same way, until it seems that extra luck is being provided by the universe, but all that’s happening is that it’s more easily recognized. > > Affirmations probably also increases a person’s natural level of optimism, especially if you believe it works. I can imagine optimism working to harden people against the inevitable setbacks and obstacles along the way to success. To the extent that affirmations might increase a person’s stick-to-itiveness, his perception might be that the universe is removing barriers. > > To be fair, there’s also some selective memory at play. I’m sure people who use affirmations, or The Secret, tend to remember the successes and forget the failures. I recall about six ridiculously unlikely successes of my own with affirmations, and one quasi-failure that I still think will pan out. (There’s the optimism thing.) Realistically, I might be forgetting some failures. And I have no way of knowing whether I would have had the successes without affirmation. from [http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the\_dilbert\_blog/2007/07/the-secret.html](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/the-secret.html) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/48 "2016-10-19T21:45:15Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > He’s a seventy year-old white American. Of _course_ he’s racist. My parents resent your remark. As a matter of fact, so do I. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/49 "2016-10-19T22:28:42Z")
Jip ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/50 "2016-10-20T01:09:56Z")
Should have told them to watch the show instead. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/51 "2016-10-20T14:05:19Z")
Anyone who wants an example of Adam’s “Meat Robot” theory, should just watch how Clinton manipulated Trump in the third debate. Ring the bell and Trump drools. ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/52 "2016-10-20T18:23:51Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > My parents resent your remark. > > As a matter of fact, so do I. But that’s only because he’s Jewish, right? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/53 "2016-10-20T22:23:26Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Anyone who wants an example of Adam’s “Meat Robot” theory, should just watch how Clinton manipulated Trump in the third debate. Ring the bell and Trump drools. But…but…he said he wasn’t a puppet! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/54 "2016-10-20T23:05:39Z")
Meat ROBOT. Not meat PUPPET. Different things. ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/55 "2016-10-21T00:29:19Z")
I don’t buy the detached/objective view about Scott Adams. I believe he’s [ol] [li]A cartoonist who caters to the nerd community[/li][li]Who believes he can’t express his political opinion (R)[/li][li]Because it will lose him customers but[/li][li]At the same time just HAS to weigh in when presidential elections roll around[/li][/ol] Right now he’s finally accepting that Clinton’s gonna win. And he ain’t happy [Quote=Scott Adams’ blog] 1. We will elect the first woman to be President of the United States. That’s good for everyone. and… 1. Everything that goes wrong with the country from this point forward is women’s fault. I feel some relief about that. The next four years are likely to be some of the worst in our country’s history. The Republican establishment will make sure of that because a failed America is in their best interest in the short run. Four years from now they want to offer their chosen savior (Paul Ryan). Trump would have a good chance of bullying the Republican establishment as he has done so far. Clinton, not so much. She’ll be buried in scandals, both real and imagined. [/quote] ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/56 "2016-10-21T06:11:53Z")
Now that he’s coming around the realization that Clinton is likely to win, has he also realized that a) Trump was never playing 3D chess and b) he (Scott Adams) completely misunderstood what was going on? Has he shown any introspection around his colossal errors? ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/57 "2016-10-21T14:00:12Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > Now that he’s coming around the realization that Clinton is likely to win, has he also realized that a) Trump was never playing 3D chess and b) he (Scott Adams) completely misunderstood what was going on? Has he shown any introspection around his colossal errors? Not really. In his [last blogpost before he threw the towel](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151695975701/scandal-poker-trump-vs-clinton) he was arguing that a comparison of the respective “scandals” had Trump winning (he divided them into “Scandal Poker rounds” or something and proceeded to declare them tied on every scandal except one which Trump won). Mind you: to have an equal number of scandals he had to make up at least one (Hillary’s “drinking problem”). ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/58 "2016-10-21T16:19:52Z")
Also, comparing the unlikelihood of Trump getting caught on videotape saying something horrible to Trump getting hit by a meteor is fucking ridiculous. Trump has been saying horrible things on tape for decades, anyone with two brain cells could predict that there would be a giant library of horrible Trump soundbites to play over and over again. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/59 "2016-10-21T16:51:43Z")
Adams’s point about people acting on emotion and then rationalizing it later is quite obviously true. His observation that Trump was good at it is also true. Where he went off the rails long ago is that 1. He became a huge fan of Trump and started ascribing a level of brilliance to him he clearly doesn’t have, and 2. He vastly overestimates his own understanding and cannot see his own blind spots. Adams fancies himself an expert on “persuasion” because he took a hypnosis class once and has read books like “How To Win Friends and Influence People.” Doubtless he knows a lot about it - he’s a successful guy - but the combination of point 1 and 2 above have made him elevate Trump to the status of genius and force him to take insanely contradictory stances, just make shit up (like the “scandal poker comparison,” defend Trump and make claims about him that are untrue, and deny plain evidence. As it became increasingly apparent that what worked for Trump to defeat Jeb Bush was not quite up to the task to defeat Hillary Clinton, he had to keep changing his story to fit the narrative that Trump is a “Master Persuader” operating on a strategic level only people as smart as Adams could perceive; his blog on the first debate, in which he hilariously claims Trump won handily (despite objective evidence he lost badly) and then claims Trump lost the debate on purpose and is so doing won the debate - you have to read it - is a classic example. Adams is big into saying people who disagree with him are in a state of hypnosis and/or cognitive dissonance, and yet he himself exhibits more cognitive dissonance than a university course on the subject. What Adams apparently cannot see, and yet seems very obvious to me, is that Trump’s talents of persuasion simultaneously persuaded people to vote for him and vote against him. Everything Adams ascribes to Trump as a briulliant move to persuade people to vote Trump also persuaded people to vote Clinton. To use one example, the “Great Wall of Mexico” and his ranting on Mexicans being rapists and bad hombres, according to Adams, 1. Is a brilliant persuasion move to win voters; fear sells, and fear of foreigners will win votes, 2. Isn’t actually racist because Mexicans are not a “race,” and 3. Is in fact merely a brilliant bargaining position. According to Adams, Trump always starts with a ridiculous opening offer and then negotiates down. On Point 1 Adams is clearly right. The border wall probably won him millions of votes. On Point 2 Adams is simply an idiot, and misses a key point; Trump’s positions persuaded people he was a racist. Adams will argue it’s not racism - **and yet he is the one who says that facts do not matter, that emotion is what matters**. In facts don’t matter and emotions matter, Adams’s incessant apologia about how Mexicans and Muslims aren’t races and his getting into the weeds of policy to explain why border walls and immigration bans aren’t racist is all, obviously, totally irrelevant in the Adams “Master Persuasion Filter.” All the persuasion is over before you can argue over the details, according to Adams, so once Trump has yelled about walls stopping Mexican rapists and banning Muslims, the moist robots think “Racist.” No policy detail that follows will change that - again, this is not my opinion, it’s what Scott Adams’s Master Persuasion Filter theory would have you believe. So while claiming that Trump’s appeal to emotions wins votes (and he’s right) he completely contradicts himself by denying that the emotional reaction people have in thinking Trump a racist can’t be happening because it’s counterfactual. Adams ascribes all Trump-is-a-racist sentiment to male geniuses working for Clinton using Master Persuader tricks. But although the Clinton team played it up, \*\*Trump created the image. \*\* It was Trump who did the lion’s share of Master-Persuading people he was a racist. This is almost stupidly obvious and yet Adams either refuses to admit it to a ludicrous degree or is incredibly blind. He claims the Clinton campaign team created the “persuasion” that Trump is a sexist - but any damn fool can see Trump created that himself. Trump has acted like a pig in the public eye for thirty years, altering people’s emotions about him. Clinton was rather late to the game on that one. As to Point 3, Adams is projecting onto Trump what he wants to believe. In fact, Trump’s methods for making deals, historically, have been exactly the opposite of what Adams claims. Trump doesn’t start off with a hard bargaining position; he generally starts off with a very _generous_ position, then maneuvers himself to pay or provide less than he promised after the other party is committed. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2016, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104/60 "2016-10-21T17:56:08Z")
I should get out of this topic. Dilbert still remains my favorite continuing strip and I don’t want to read it from its creator’s MRA, racist, fascist point of view. It makes me sad because I really like Dilbert, I even have the DVDs of the cartoon, but Scott Adams has such a punchable face its hard to look at [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-with-these-oddball-political-comments-by-dilbert-artist-scott-adams/766104.md?page=4)