How Scott Adams Almost Won a Vote for Trump
Scott Adams has, for months, been my favorite Voice of Trump. He is, in fact, the only Trump defender that I take seriously.
Below Scott’s tier the drop-off in brainpower is sharp. Notable second-rate Trump advocates include Milo Yiannopoulos, a young nihilist and anti-PC crusader on a quest to prove that one can be English and gay without being witty or quotable. There is YouTube celeb Stefan Molyneux, a fierce libertarian and white tribalist, and men’s rights spokesman Mike Cernovich, a hyper-heterosexual who must have greeted Trump’s “pussy grabber†video like the announcement of VE Day. Descend another level and we’re in “your-uncle-after-a-six-pack” territory.
Scott, the author of the Dilbert comic strip, is different. He is no rabid hillbilly, no “Lock Her Up†talk show tyrant. He has been downright charitable with his opponents, many of whom ought to apply for AM radio slots themselves, so bitter are they towards the mild-mannered cartoonist.
Using a scalpel and tweezers Scott has picked apart many sloppy arguments against Trump, while also explaining the double standards people use to defend Hillary Clinton. And recently, when “nuclear codes†began to pop up with most Google searches of Trump’s name, Scott Adams applied a cold washcloth of reason to his readers’ heads. He calmed them, and (with a chuckle) he promised to be the first to fight alongside the angels in any future civil war with Hitler 2.0.
Scott, you ding-dong.
As a man of nearly sixty, with money and a posh lifestyle to protect, the only time someone like you (or even me) could make a difference in halting a fascist’s ambitions would be before they gained power, before their persuasion worked on the masses.
Scott obviously considers the possibility of a genuine Trump disaster to be in the low zeroes, but let me show you how Scott Adams blew the call. This will require a little hypno-persuasion on my part.
1. You are feeling very relaxed…
Scott is an executive-level professional with an understanding of hypnosis, and his arguments reflect this. I actually agree with many of his points, even though I have been anti-Trump from the jump. And then, a few days ago, after long hours spent considering Scott’s pitch, they actually clicked.
I’m being serious here. I’m a left wing Green.
Yes,  I told myself. Goddamn it, why not?
What exactly is so wrong about a candidate getting into Twitter wars with Jon Stewart? A candidate who doesn’t think twice about re-tweeting the words “Fuckface von Clownstick†to millions of his followers while the world sleeps? That’s fucking hilarious! This could be like having John Belushi in the White House!
Friggin’ Howard Dean allowed a weird noise to derail his dreams of becoming the most powerful man in the world, but Trump could fart into a microphone for five minutes and win a Grammy for it! How can I ignore the “git-‘ir-done†potential of a man like that?
Pepe the Frog: the GOP’s deplorable new mascot.
This was my flicker of enlightenment, and it was no simple trick for Scott to arouse it. Scott Adams knows that reasonable people do not easily hand Bluto Blutarsky the keys to the kingdom. So for over a year, Scott portrayed himself as a dispassionate Trump analyst, just a guy with a novel take on the Presidential race. Then, slowly, over months, Scott emerged as a soft Trump enthusiast, while still maintaining his Spock-like detachment. It is a tactic Scott himself calls “pacing and leading”.
Adams could deconstruct any Trump misstep and use it to teach a modest Hillary supporter how Trump is just an earthy dude with golden pipes, the Frank Sinatra of politics. And now, in these final weeks, Adams has been heroically and publicly tossing back the Trump Kool-Aid and passing out Dixie cups. And brother, I took a sip.
I saw the Trump that his supporters believe in, a  Trump for me! But how? I don’t have “1488” tattooed across my knuckles, and I could never tweet that Leslie Jones is a coon…I’m  a Bernier Believer, for crissakes. But there he was in my head: the Trump of the Revolution! A Trump who spins words that the hated conservatives love, but who secretly offers them nothing!  A Trump who will punk Wall Street, K Street… every street but Main Street! A billionaire class traitor that any good socialist would want carved onto Mt. Rushmore (even as they fought to have the surrounding land returned to the Lakota Sioux).
Has Trump not rubbed W’s face in the Iraq War and crushed the Republican Party better than any Democrat ever could have? Has this hero not stamped out the conservative movement like a cigarette butt? How could four more years of this be bad?? Donald Trump’s own words to blacks and the black-at-heart finally rang true: “What the hell do you have to lose?â€
For one brief moment I was a genuine Deplorable, the name embraced by Trump supporters as their ultimate “fuck you” to Hillary. I saw clearly the politician who could defeat the “Dean Scream†curse that we voters have laid on our candidates, the Survivor challenge of walking barefoot across an oiled tightrope of “credibilityâ€, demanding that they make it to the other side to change the system we hate.
Yes, Scott Adams had me. But the truth will always out.
Hours and hours spent watching the best religious apologists have shown me that, if you open your heart and your mind to them, and give them the benefit of the doubt willingly and in the spirit of genuine inquiry, sooner or later they will claim that the fine-tuning of the cosmic background radiation is proof that Christ’s love was never meant for people of a certain skin color, or similar giveaways that reveal the ape beneath the halo.
And so it is here. Eventually even the best poker players tip their hand. Scott Adams teaches master classes in deciphering Donald Trump, the Michelangelo of bullshit, but his words of late make it clear that he thinks that Trump is working in marble.
2. I will now count backwards from ten…
The arc of Trump’s rise and the trajectory of his eventual fall were summed up at the recent  Al Smith dinner  that both he and Hillary attended. For a short time Trump won the crowd, made ‘em laugh, deflated the tension of this final face-to-face showdown with Hillary. But he couldn’t hold it. The laughs turned to boos as Trump picked scabs and called Hillary an anti-Catholic bigot. From Frank Sinatra to Michael Scott in mere moments. This is what Trump’s four years will be like.
Trump, if elected, will almost certainly not be a Hitler. To believe this is his game would be to fall down the rabbit hole that has swallowed the Republicans for the past eight years. I’m not worried about a second Holocaust or FEMA death camps. That’s pure Glenn Beck shit, the paranoia of conservatives who thought a man like Trump was what they wanted, but who now find themselves staring into the Arc of the Covenant.
Even Trump doesn’t know what he will become as he wows his audiences like a Vegas magician. His next book should be titled The Art of Winging It. But Trump’s rabbits are not being pulled out of thin air. Look closer and see a Republican Party hoisted by its own petard, a Democratic party coasting on its inertia, and a brand new political movement paving Trump’s way, one that probably could not have been exploited before 2008 when Occupy failed to ignite a left wing flame to repay the bankers who trashed the Middle Class, and certainly not before a black man became president.
You should have listened to Indy, Herr Beck.
Yes, Trump has mad skillz on his side. He also has white vengeance on his side.
Trump has appealed to every grudge and low instinct that an atomized, aimless, jobless blue collar population has ever been encouraged to nurse. He shits on judges for their Mezzo-American blood, slanders American Muslims as 9/11 cheerleaders, uses the testimonials of grieving parents to stoke rage against immigrants as murderers and parasites, and then, in a sickening reversal, slimes the grieving parents of an American Muslim hero. His promotion of the Birther hoax will blight the Republican Party forevermore as the party that turned its back on Lincoln.
And there is Trump the husband, who with a wink and a nudge gave us his unspoken pledge to be faithful to his wife. Then, when a certain video woke us up to what our brain stems already knew, that same man used his wife as a human shield, sending her alone into a television interview to lie on his behalf, her accent and sloppy English not enough to disguise her obvious fatalism at being used as a Kleenex to wipe up Donald Trump’s gob. At least Ted Cruz stepped up to defend his own wife’s honor after Trump pushed his head in the toilet… for dissing his wife.
This Trump is the one who stands in the way of any effort to shift the immovable stone of Washington. Change is only as good as the change agent, but the likes of Scott Adams don’t care. They are only in this for Trump the wrecking ball.
In his last week of daily communiqués Scott Adams has abandoned all pretense. He now regurgitates Trump’s “drain the swamp†motto as though he were quoting Melville. He predicts Election Day violence from Hillary supporters if they lose, implying that a Trump defeat will inspire calm, candlelit vigils from Team Deplorable, a people who have been amped to believe that their leader’s loss will be a conspiracy, a stab in the back. How can Scott say these things and still be convinced in his heart that he is a man prepared to strike a pose against the next Hitler?
Scott dismisses Trump’s maximalist overtones by comparing him to famous American bullies like Steve Jobs, a man whose genius helped re-found America’s economy and lifestyle. But Jobs only cracked half of the Henry Ford equation, leaving America’s Middle Class behind and shipping the jobs that might have saved Flint or Detroit to China. And there they will stay, Trump or no Trump. It’s how billionaires get rich. Ask a Trump supporter who is not an overpaid cartoonist what they think of that master stroke.
Of Trump’s wealth, his will, his branding, his legend, enough ink has already been spilled. Look upon the works of America’s Pharaoh and despair: High rises and country clubs built for the wealthy by contractors he routinely dicks over. Casinos funded by tax abatements where the victims of the shitty economy trade their last dream for a plastic chip and a free well drink. Seminar rackets that might have been cooked up by Max Bialystock. All this, and the man doesn’t even pay any income tax! Clearly there is more L. Ron Hubbard than Steve Jobs in the character of Donald Trump.
3. When I snap my fingers you will be… a jellyfish!
Trump, without altering his personality one jot, could be cast convincingly as the President in a Farrelly Bros. comedy. But still there are people who insist that a candle is burning inside Trump’s head. Scott Adams is one of them. But once there arose a moment when the real Trump was laid bare, and Scott’s commitments were put to the test.
Most of Trump’s interviewers have been stumped by his total disdain for straight answers. Trump prefers to let the unformed excrement of his thoughts simply fall from his mouth and do the talking for him. Then, in one unforgettable encounter, Trump was challenged by Chris Matthews to define his position on abortion, and even with forty years of Republican talking points to draw from he was unable to muster an answer.
Instead, like a broken VCR, Trump simply tried again and again to eject the question. For five glorious minutes, as Matthews pressed his advantage, Trump refused to stake any clear position on a signature Republican issue.
The Donald must have thought he’d taken a blow to the head and woken up in Toon Town. Hadn’t he already checked the box marked “pro life†and ended all discussion? Instead, faced with perhaps the only question that every politician knows how to bluff his way out of,  Trump muffed it. In a bullshit-free moment, when only intelligence and nuance would do, Donald’s cupboard was bare.
And how did Scott Adams take the news that the “Master Peruader†of his year-long hagiography was a  deaf mute on a topic guaranteed to dominate his presidency when Supreme Court justices begin to fall like autumn leaves?
In possibly the most pathetic instance of special pleading ever witnessed by Man, Scott accused Matthews of asking a “gotcha question†for which Trump could hold “no winning hand†(never mind that the “gotcha†was simply Matthews not allowing Donald Trump to slither away from a question that had been posed by a woman in the audience). And when Trump’s handlers (probably with the help of chloroform) finally dragged from their candidate a vow not to throw women in jail for having abortions, Scott Adams rushed to defend the man for only needing 24 hours to grasp an issue that has kept the public at full boil for nearly a century.
Even days later Scott continued to justify Trump’s bellyflop, claiming that women will appreciate having abortion authority returned to states like Texas, because, y’know, smaller government. This is the logic loop of a guy who was so pumped for the Next Big Thing in politics that he still can’t believe that all we got was the Shockmaster.
The Shockmaster Persuader
But I get it now, I understand Scott’s tribe. When Trump isn’t talking in contradictions, when he isn’t trying to bluff his way through his complete ignorance of policy (or issues), when he’s not trying to buffalo a reporter or needlessly and hatefully dumping on minorities for the sake of pulling ten extra votes in Pennsylvania… the guy is fucking exciting.
And if you aren’t a divorced, self-employed mother of two listening to this man threatening to flush away your only hope for health coverage, or the child of an undocumented Mexican dishwasher listening to the high-born Trump tell you that your father is a parasite who hasn’t paid his dues—that is to say, if you are living comfy cozy and are not on Sherrif Arpaio’s shit list—I bet this guy seems like just the broom to sweep through Washington and…
And do what? Scrap the system of tax policies, trade deals and inside favors that have made Donald Trump richer than God’s grandfather? Trump swaps dick jokes with Bill Clinton on his private golf course, for Christ’s sake. Do you think the Billionaire Prole ever shared a beer with the guy who prepares his taco bowls?
Curiosity at someone’s lack of accountability is the last reason to hand them power. “How could I have known?†will not be an excuse. Trump’s words, his public statements, repeated often enough for anyone to get the hint, are sufficient. They have to be. He has no record for us to resort to, no plan that couldn’t have dribbled from the mouth of Sarah Palin, no promise that isn’t shifting sand, no ethics, no respect for a free press, no compassion for his wife or regret for her mangled dignity… there is no model at all for how Donald Trump will behave as President, except for his lifetime spent as a walking stomach.
All we have is his word, and Trump’s word to his opponents is unequivocal: he’d like to punch them in the face. We have to take Trump at his word when he promises to harass his political enemies, including journalists, and to ignore the human rights of our prisoners at Guantanamo, and to increase their number. We have no right whatsoever to ignore these pledges.
Scott, you’d stand up to Hitler, but you won’t stand up to an opaque, piggish, thin-skinned, glory-seeking, scapegoating bully?
Big oops, Scott.
WAKE UP.
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