Scott Adams: In his own words
In yesterday’s blog I made the provocative claim that a smart civilian can learn any political topic in an hour under the tutelage of world experts. The job of President of the United States was designed for inexperienced people. Being a governor or a senator isn’t much like being president….
Read MoreYesterday I tweeted this provocative claim: This caused a predictable crap-tornado on Twitter. One of the most popular retorts came from Bill Kristol who replied “Tweeting.” As luck would have it, I’m an expert at writing humor under the constraint of brevity. So I responded thusly. That was fun. But the…
Read MoreI’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention and wondering if this will be the first time in history that we see a candidate’s poll numbers plunge after a convention. On the surface, the convention is going great. Michelle Obama made a speech for the ages. Bill Clinton was his masterful…
Read MoreIf you are following the media coverage after the GOP convention, you know that Democrats and their surrogates are describing Trump’s speech as “dark.” The first ten times I heard the word, I thought it might be a situation in which someone clever used the term once and others copied it….
Read MoreLet’s say Donald Trump wins the election. And let’s say Democrats believe everything they say about him – that he’s the next Hitler. Wouldn’t President Obama be obligated to declare martial law and remain in power? I realize this question sounds silly when you first hear it. But keep in…
Read MoreYesterday Hillary Clinton announced her VP running mate, Tim Kaine. Let me tell you how that decision looks from a persuasion standpoint. I’ll ignore Kaine’s education, experience, political preferences, and anything else that voters say they care about but don’t. Today, let’s just talk about how people will feel about it. For…
Read MoreTrump gave his nomination acceptance speech last night. I grade it an A-. It wasn’t a speech for the ages, but it was presidential enough. As convention speeches go, it was solid. As I have already blogged, all Trump needs to do is NOT act like a crazy racist for the next…
Read MoreWhen you are trained in the ways of persuasion, you start seeing three types of people in the world. I’ll call them Rational People, Word-Thinkers, and Persuaders. Their qualities look like this: Rational People: Use data and reason to arrive at truth. (This group is mostly imaginary.) Word-Thinkers: Use labels, word definitions,…
Read MoreIn a recent blog post I complained about the impossibility of buying a truck that fits my needs. I asked readers to tell me how they were able to succeed at buying a truck whereas I have found it to be impossible. The impossible part is simply getting the truck I want,…
Read MoreMonitoring Mosques People are outraged because Newt Gingrich suggested that the U.S. government should start monitoring mosques to thwart terrorism. Outrage is a perfectly reasonable response to Gingrich’s proposal if you’re dumb enough to think the government isn’t already monitoring mosques in the U.S. How do I know the government already monitors…
Read MoreTrump’s biggest problem in this election so far is that most racists appear to be on his side. At least it looks that way to the public. That awkward perception allowed Team Clinton to brand the Trump campaign as the racist team. Clinton’s strategy of racial politics has been effective….
Read MoreIs it my imagination, or has Trump been relatively non-controversial lately? Do you remember how Trump got lots of free publicity in the past year by saying approximately one outrageous and controversial thing each week, like clockwork? And do you remember how you thought his outrageous approach could never be…
Read MoreI’ve been trying for several months to buy a Chevy Truck, for a variety of functional and recreational purposes. It turns out you can’t do that. Yes, I was surprised too. To be fair, I do see people buying Chevy trucks all the time, but I call them victims, not…
Read MoreSome of you watched with amusement as I endorsed Hillary Clinton for my personal safety. What you might not know is that I was completely serious. I was getting a lot of direct and indirect death threats for writing about Trump’s powers of persuasion, and I made all of that…
Read MoreThe primary goal of government is its own credibility. That notion needs some explaining. Governments do many things, including building roads, providing social services, defending the homeland, and more. But no matter what the government is trying to accomplish, its macro-responsibility is to maintain its own credibility. Governments without credibility…
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