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Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 582

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The creator of Dilbert writes a lot about Trump’s supposed persuasion techniques. I don’t know. It does seem to work great as a distraction.

But we did know about his policies before the election. We heard all about the big wall, about breaking international alliances, repealing Obamacare.

The blue elephant in the room.

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Mrebo said:

The creator of Dilbert writes a lot about Trump’s supposed persuasion techniques. I don’t know. It does seem to work great as a distraction.

He’s a devotee of the Trump: Master Persuader hypothesis.

He predicted that Trump would win ‘in a landslide’, that it would be pretty embarrassing to be anti-Trump near the end of this year, that he would pivot to being presidential before he was elected (then predicted this again right after he was elected), that he would soon have world leaders eating out of his hand, that he would raise the public discourse so much that anyone attacking him would be laughed out of the room, that he wouldn’t attack Syria (he launched an attack the next day), that Trump would quickly build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, and that Trump would unleash some brilliant persuasive weapon against ISIS. This is just the stuff that I recall off the top of my head.

Scott Adams hopes that you don’t go back and review his past predictions, most of which turned out to be laughably inaccurate. But he’s so wedded to the idea of Trump as a brilliant person that he’s gone from being a fun contrarian popular with nerdy Dilbert engineer types to cultivating a petri dish of alt-right trolls in his comments sections.

As a long-time reader of his blog who occasionally ventures back out of morbid curiosity, what he’s done with the place is beyond pathetic.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Dilbert is still a thing?

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Where were you in '77?

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No, however, the creator of Dilbert is, to put it gently, an MRA asshole.

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I don’t get the leap from guy who drew a moderately funny comic to political sage.

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Where were you in '77?

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I think there is something to that persuasion stuff but I agree with you, NeverarGreat. I think Adams used his own tricks on himself without realizing it. I think some of his ideas as dangerously wrong - like his “Law of Slow-Moving Disasters.”

The blue elephant in the room.

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Mrebo said:

I think there is something to that persuasion stuff but I agree with you, NeverarGreat. I think Adams used his own tricks on himself without realizing it. I think some of his ideas as dangerously wrong - like his “Law of Slow-Moving Disasters.”

Especially when he said this just a few days ago:

“Do you remember when experts said withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord would be a catastrophe? President Trump did it anyway because he didn’t like the deal. I’ve seen no indication that exiting the deal made the climate worse.”

This garbage is even worse than Trump’s lies to me, because he really should know better.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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SilverWook said:

I don’t get the leap from guy who drew a moderately funny comic to political sage.

Conservatives are often desperate for anyone with any sort of celebrity, no matter how weak or dated, to support them so they latch on to what they can get. That’s why Kevin Sorbo is treated like someone with meaningful opinions in right-wing spheres.

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The Herc?

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Where were you in '77?

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Last thing I even saw him in was that awful spoof of 300. Why do conservatives decry Hollywood then latch onto actors whose careers are moribund?

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Where were you in '77?

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Celebrity worship is definitely not a partisan thing. Conservatives decry Hollywood because it is skewed heavily liberal and gets undo attention. So when some celebrity - even third-rate - express a conservative view, it is given the same kind of undo attention. If Kevin Sorbo had a blog where he expressed liberal views, I am positive we would be hearing about how cool that is from liberals. However, I frequent a couple conservative blogs and I don’t recall seeing anything about Sorbo, so his appeal doesn’t seem to be very far-reaching.

The blue elephant in the room.

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I am positive if Kevin Sorbo was a liberal, no one would even know.

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yhwx said:

“Tapper cuts off Trump adviser interview: I’ve wasted enough of my viewers’ time”

https://youtu.be/vU7v5A5P8BM

My S.O. wished the camera would have panned down so that we could see Trump’s arm.

The blue elephant in the room.

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So apparently Wikileaks has “leaked” a complete copy of Fire and Fury. I’m pretty sure that’s the only book they’ve ever released online. They’re not circumventing censorship, not releasing classified info or trade secrets. It’s as if their only goal was to dampen sales of an already bestselling and widely-available book. Who’d have thought?

At least they probably have learned by now not to release a version that’s been altered by Russian intelligence agents, like they did with Macron’s e-mails.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:

The collusion starts paying off.

EDIT: Hey, that may be the only time I’ve ever linked to the National Review, so get your ideologically conservative news served up by CatBus while the limited-time offer stands.

Speaking of the conservative news slant – twice within the period of one year I have linked to the National Review now.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455035/new-york-city-stop-and-frisk-crime-decline-conservatives-wrong

Could the National Review be heading in the direction of “self-defined conservative news outlet with actual editorial standards and some degree of credibility” to join the Wall Street Journal in that lonely group? A few more fact-based analyses and I might have to check with them more often. It’s a crazy world we live in where the National Review of all places changes their opinions to fit the facts rather than the other way around.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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CatBus said:

CatBus said:

The collusion starts paying off.

EDIT: Hey, that may be the only time I’ve ever linked to the National Review, so get your ideologically conservative news served up by CatBus while the limited-time offer stands.

Speaking of the conservative news slant – twice within the period of one year I have linked to the National Review now.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455035/new-york-city-stop-and-frisk-crime-decline-conservatives-wrong

Could the National Review be heading in the direction of “self-defined conservative news outlet with actual editorial standards and some degree of credibility” to join the Wall Street Journal in that lonely group? A few more fact-based analyses and I might have to check with them more often. It’s a crazy world we live in where the National Review of all places changes their opinions to fit the facts rather than the other way around.

Maybe. A conservative blog I visit has been hating on NR as a liberal rag for the last year.

The blue elephant in the room.

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The NeverTrumpers (well, the ones that weren’t just kidding about it) are a fascinating bunch. Sure, you’ve got your David Brooks crowd who deals with it by digging even deeper into their own bullshit (i.e. “My party never had a problem with racism and was full of very serious policy ideas until Trump came along!”). But you do have a few who are starting to take a long and sober look (warning: crazy right-wing link with only hints of the beginnings of introspection) at how their party got to where they are today. Maybe the National Review is doing this. Maybe we’ll end up a better nation for it. I’m dubious, but you never know.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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With Trump in office, I keep hoping liberals will see the danger of consolidation and expansion of federal power. Some wonder if marijuana could be the gateway drug to federalism.

The blue elephant in the room.

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Mrebo said:

With Trump in office, I keep hoping liberals will see the danger of consolidation and expansion of federal power. Some wonder if marijuana could be the gateway drug to federalism.

If Federalism’s most notable appeal is that it can throw a wrench in the gears when the Federal Government opts to do spectacularly bad things, the argument is already lost IMO. Because, among other things, who can throw a wrench into the gears when states opt to do spectacularly bad things? Whoever gets primacy gets the ability to screw people over, any good anarchist could tell you that.

That said, liberals AFAIK have never been against Federalism per se, but see the role of the Federal goverment fundamentally differently than conservatives. There’s plenty of good stuff in Federalism, liberals just hate most of the things conservatives love about it, and vice-versa.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)