"I will consider the job over the weekend and let them know my decision. If you see white smoke coming from the man-cave in my garage, it means I have accepted the position."
Said Scott Adams, responding to the response to the podcast he did with Sam Harris. Adams likes to talk about Trump as a "master persuader," to explain the methods, and he purports to be leaving questions of morality and ethics to other people.
By the way, I listened to the whole podcast yesterday...
... and I thought it was fantastic how — no matter how hot and desperate Harris got — Adams slipped in laterally and calmly and gave a Trump-supporting explanation — without ever really saying that he personally supports Trump. Adams is like Trump's lawyer within a dimension where law is the actual structure of the human mind.
I don't know if Trump is a master persuader, but I'm leaning toward thinking Adams is a master persuader persuading us that Trump is a master persuader.
Posts
132 comments:
I think the key to being a master persuader is persuading.
I'm not convinced that either Adams or Trump are more than mediocre persuaders. They're good at persuading the already swayed.
Yeah Paddy O - unlike Hillary- Trump can't persuade anyone.
I liked the podcast almost entirely because of Adams. I stopped taking Harris seriously when he started talking about how "unethical" "immoral" and "Bad" Trump was.
Seriously.
Trump is president.
All the people who have opposed him and hate him keep telling us how bad he is at everything.
It will be the same when the uniparty gets blasted in 2018.
It will be the same when trump is reelected in 2020.
When Leftists say "Immoral" and "Unethical" they mean "Disagrees with Me".
Blogger Paddy O said...
"I think the key to being a master persuader is persuading. "
Persuading who?
Trump is good at persuading actual Americans and voters obviously.
In 2017, "Ethics" in last refuge of the scoundrel.
Adams says he's very liberal on everything except Foreign policy and some economics. He doesn't care what anyone does as long as it doesn't hurt him.
But of course, that doesn't matter to the Liberal/left. Any refusal to toe the partly line means you're a right-wing extremist, and just like Hitler.
The last time I listened to Harris, he was part of some crazy PBS debate on religion.
You had Harris as the Jewish atheist, a Hindu moderator, and a Rabbi - who was Pro-God.
When they started to argue about what Jesus meant, I turned it off.
I never listen to pod casts, but did that one all the way through, and what you flagged, Scott's calmness in the face of agitation gets at why I like his periscopes so much. He's like a Tibetan lama demonstrating non-attachment and not letting afflictive emotions cloud his mind training. I like how he says what he says more than what he says.
I'm not persuaded.
I would rather say Trump is the unpersuaded leader of the unpersuaded.
The proof of Scott Adam's correctness or stupidity rests in his track record. Given his easy-to-find history of calling Trump's winning moves, and the reactions to them, way before they happen has put me in the "Scott's correct" camp, and has since early last year.
People at work still call me out as the only person who thought Trump had a shot.
And like Scott, I am not a Trump fan per se, but I am a huge fan of his disruption of the status quo.
"I'm not persuaded."
The mating call of the cowardly leftist.
Unknown said...
I'm not persuaded.
Oh, yes you are.
rcocean: You had Harris as the Jewish atheist, a Hindu moderator, and a Rabbi - who was Pro-God.
When they started to argue about what Jesus meant, I turned it off.
Lol.
But to be fair to PBS, there are only a couple of billion Christians on the planet, so they may have had a hard time finding an intelligent, articulate one to handle the Jesus stuff.
(On the other hand, maybe you should be grateful that PBS left Christians off the panel. A PBS-selected "spox for Christianity" might be an order of magnitude more exasperating than what they actually went with.)
"Trump is good at persuading actual Americans and voters obviously."
So, if you're not persuaded by Trump you're not an actual American. That's a bad standard to start with.
Trump was good at echoing a significant portion of the population. He didn't convince them, first, that immigration was a problem. He did persuade those who already saw it as a problem that he was the best person to address it. So he persuaded the already swayed. But I've not seen that he actually has changed anyone's mind and brought them to his side.
The media has done a better job of bringing people to his side than he has.
Which isn't discounting his popularity. It's just saying he was very good at expressing boldly what a lot of people were thinking. Maybe a "mid-level persuader" is a better way of putting it than mediocre persuader.
And for those who aren't persuaded, it is low-level persuading to think that yelling or insulting will persuade them.
I think Adams is a master at persuading people that he's worth listening to. It's marvelous to see him come back in the news so strong. Next up, Jim Davis will be the go to guy for climate change debates.
I persuaded myself that Trump is better than Hillary and that Trump is better than his enemies.
But what is Trump trying to persuade me off, currently? That we should build a beautiful wall or just a partial barrier? That we should stick to the Iran deal or not? That we should replace the ACA, yes--with what, exactly? That we should keep Assad in power and his buddy Putin happy in Syria, or not? That Sessions did something that would have prevented him from being hired, if known beforehand, but that does not suffice to get him fired him after the fact? That the New York Times stinks or that it is good to play nice with the very, very important New York Times?
I might say that Scott Adams represents the worst of current popular culture and popular politics. I might say that, but I wouldn't want to, if in Scott Adams' mind that made him somehow a kind of "Pope" for anti-Trumpers.
I'd sort of like for Trump to remain as President long enough to nominate a couple-hundred federal judges (and maybe two or three Supreme Court justices) who will render decades' worth of decisions that offend and horrify Scott Adams.
"I'm not persuaded."
------------------------
"Oh, yes you are."
------------------------
And what pray tell, what am I supposed to be persuaded of? Scott Adams has not persuaded me that Trump is a master persuader. Those who have been persuaded by Trump are those who already had internalized everything Scott Adams presumes Trump persuaded them of. Follow?
I jumped around and listened for a few minutes. I hit on Harris saying his show wasn't a partisan echo chamber because hey, he had David Frum and Anne Applebaum on...
I didn't listen to any more because I was afraid that it might cause permanent damage to be exposed to any more statements comparable to that one in sheer brain-ablating obliviousness.
That Scott Adams believes his blatherings mean anything to anti Trumper's, so much so that they "want" him to be their Pope, then he's a worse narcissist than Trump. He has persuaded himself that he is more important than a yawn.
I think Scott Adams becoming some sort of Pope would be a big step down / demotion. The Pope probably wishes he could become Scott Adams (including picking up Kristina as his cool girlfriend).
Glad Chuck is here. Now, the conversation will be sophisticated and interesting.
PaddyO to Achilles:
"Trump is good at persuading actual Americans and voters obviously."
So, if you're not persuaded by Trump you're not an actual American.
Oh come off it Paddy, that isn't what he said and you know it. You're not this stupid. I haven't seen you do unforced assholery before.
(The rest of your comment is perfectly sensible.)
"He has persuaded himself that he is more important than a yawn"
He is certainly more important than you and other never trumpers. That puts you behind a yawn it seems.
"He is certainly more important than you and other never trumpers. That puts you behind a yawn it seems."
Dull witted, boring response, as usual. Maybe you should ask Adams how to be charmingly persuasive instead of your ususal creepy future mass shooter persona.
I know from nothing about American football (or "grab-ball" as I call it), but is not Trump what is meant by the term "a broken field runner"?
It will be the same when trump is reelected in 2020.
7/21/17, 3:54 PM
Not sure he will run. All the attacks on him and his family, why continue to put up with it. If nothing gets accomplished, why keep beating his head against the wall.
"So, if you're not persuaded by Trump you're not an actual American. That's a bad standard to start with. "
Oh god... the pretentiousness ...
"The media has done a better job of bringing people to his side than he has."
How do you suppose that happens?
"Which isn't discounting his popularity. It's just saying he was very good at expressing boldly what a lot of people were thinking."
It is called leadership.
Few things are more entertaining than watching people who think they are better than trump who haven't accomplished a tenth of what he has talk down their noses about him.
Scott Adams represents the worst of popular culture? Good lord what a ridiculous statement. Have you seen popular culture?!? In what possible way could Scott Adams, a smart tech-savy future-obsessed blogger represent the worst of pop culture?
If you said "Adams is too full of himself, is wrong about everything, and is annoying to me," then fine, those are defensible positions. But "Adams represents the worst of pop culture" seems idiotic.
Libertarians and Republicans don't agree on everything, but it would be downright weird for a Lifelong Republican to find a Libertarian to be the "worst" politically or in there of pop culture.
Blogger Unknown said...
"Dull witted, boring response, as usual. Maybe you should ask Adams how to be charmingly persuasive instead of your ususal creepy future mass shooter persona."
Yawn.
Quite a few Trump voters were persuaded not by Trump but by his Opponent. Otherwise he was not all that convincing.
"It is called leadership."
The blind leading the blind.
The elitists are out in force. Like grunnion!
Adams claims that "Trump won big."
That is such a persistent lie. It is Adams' view of Trump, through Adams' own filter/prejudice/ego. It is Adams' own confirmation bias. His cognitive dissonance.
Trump won by one of the more narrow margins in American history. Trump himself has erroneously called his win a "landslide" and it seems as though Scott Adams has been sucked in on it.
Trump won the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a total of about 80,000 votes, with margins of 0.7, 0.2 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively. Those three wins gave Trump 46 electoral votes; if Clinton had done one point better in each state, she'd have won the election.
I am not suggesting that Trump's win was illegitimate. I am unconcerned about who won the "popular vote" (apart from the fact that the popular vote in 2016 was consistent with and supportive of most of the final national polling).
What I am saying as forcefully as I possibly can, that Scott Adams is wrong on every imaginable dimension -- and wrong in the ways that we usually hear Adams himself decry -- when Adams says that "Trump won big."
A master persuader will maximize appeal to wants, needs, and fears. Most Americans, did, and may still, want a reconciliation of moral (faith-based or axiomatic), natural, and personal imperatives.
Failing that, the master persuader will deny life to those they deem unworthy (e.g. abortion rites), denigrate their individual dignity and thereby marginalize their influence (e.g. [class] diversity), or drag themselves through the muck and conflate logical domains in order to ridicule competing interests (e.g. bitter clingers).
By hook or crook.
The acutely phobic reaction to Trump from conception to well after birth of his administration suggests a bigotry with a notably anti-native, transhuman, pro-money secular character.
The anti-Trumpers don't need a Pope, but they do need a clue.
They are married to "theoretical" conservative ideas, but not to any particular candidate.
It is bizarre.(I'm talking about Conservatives who don't like Trump).
In 1964, Conservatives pushed for Barry Goldwater -- and got hammered.
In 1976, Conservatives pushed for Ronald Reagan -- and barely lost the GOP primary.
In 1980, Conservatives pushed for Ronald Reagan -- and won the whole enchilada!
In 2016, Conservatives pushed for ..........m, but we hate Trump!
They have become politically clueless.
And, since Trump won without them, they may have become politically irrelevant.
Does anyone buy whatever William Kristol is selling?
"I don't know if Trump is a master persuader, but I'm leaning toward thinking Adams is a master persuader persuading us that Trump is a master persuader. "
Hmm... by golly you, you know you just might be right!
I heard the podcast; I had never imagined that Sam Harris could sound so deranged.
Harris is just so dead-set on seeing every possible thing in the most negative light. Example:
Trump’s college, which Harris called the _epitome_ of showing Trump’s character. (I’ll use [ ] to indicate parts of the conversation that were there IMHO but not said.) Harris: It shows (a) that Trump is a shameless fraud and thief, cheating old ladies out of their mortgages. No, said Adams, [maybe it’s] (b) A man in charge of a lot of businesses that he runs at a distance and doesn’t follow all that closely. [Harris: I didn’t think of that, but wait:] No, that can’t be! If that were true, Trump would have (c) made great efforts to fix everything and reimburse everyone he could. So you see it’s (a), like I said. Adams: No, you’ve just proven that Trump is not (c) Sam Harris, but haven’t proven (a). He’s (b), a tough businessman who lets his lawyers handle it when people sue him - not nice like Sam Harris. Harris: That can’t be, because of ___ And begins discussing the next unmistakable topic. [Trump’s College was something that Harris called an “epitome” - absolutely unmistakable. His filters blocked him from dealing with (b); in his mind Trump is not (c) so he must be (a).]
The whole thing was like that. I thought it was interesting, but frustrating.
One point that Adam’s made I really liked: “pacing and leading”. This is when you move together with a group of people till they trust you, then they let you lead them. So Trump talked in the campaign about deporting 12 million illegal immigrants. Crazy! But lots of people liked it. Now he’s president, and illegal immigration is down 50% or such, and he might not even get a Wall built, and he’s only deporting thugs and a few others standing next to them – and there is virtually no criticism or anger about this from the people who supported him. Turns out it’s pretty much enough for them that immigration is down 50%. So what has he done? He’s moved a lot of people on the far right toward the center. And no one else could have done that.
Adams didn't answer every question well, but it was enough to demonstrate that Harris just can't think straight on this topic.
tcrosse said...
Quite a few Trump voters were persuaded not by Trump but by his Opponent. Otherwise he was not all that convincing.
Compared to who? Bush I, II? McCain Dole Romney? Kerry Clinton Clinton Obama Sanders Biden Edwards Gore?
Is anyone convincing to you? Just curious. The person in the arena is always worthy of more respect than the champions in the stands watching.
"if Clinton had done one point better in each state, she'd have won the election." I think you forgot New Hampshire. And a few other states where Trump could have done just a little better and won.
Althouse persuaded Meade.
Adams claims that "Trump won big."
That is such a persistent lie.
Knocked out all republican contenders. Destroyed the professionals. Spent less money, had no establishment backing. Fairly inarticulate.
Then, spanked Hillary's bare ass.
Biggest upset since USA amateurs beating Russia in hockey. Since Buster Douglas knocking out Tyson, which destroyed the myth of invincible Mike.
Yeah, real small victory. What a moron. The biggest joke is establishment gop unable to come up with a health care bill. Talk about bullshit and lies.
Chuck and Rachel Maddow sitting in a tree
S-i-c-k-e-n-i-n-g
Trump certainly "won big" when you consider the barrage of stories about Hillary winning in a landslide and having a mandate. Here's the first return from a "Hillary+landslide+mandate" search. This was from three weeks before the election. The certainty of Trump's defeat is simply hilarious. There are hundreds of similar articles.
https://thedailybanter.com/2016/10/hillary-clinton-landslide/#!
Trump -- without a doubt -- "won big".
People at work still call me out as the only person who thought Trump had a shot.
My kids thought I was a genius. I’ve been using Scott’s predictions in our conversations about politics. I had lunch with them a couple of hours ago and gave them the Scott Adams URL.
Them: “You mean you were simply repeating this Scott Adams person?”
Me: “Yep.”
"In 2016, Conservatives pushed for ..........m, but we hate Trump!"
Here's the difference. Once Reagan won in 1984, people started to understand that conservatism was a good "label". Before then, it was better to be "Moderate" or "Liberal".
So, in the 1990's you had a whole bunch of moderates and former liberals, calling themselves "conservatives". Even the "neo-cons" dropped the name and called themselves conservatives.
So, now in 2017, we have "conservatives" who couldn't even keep men out of your daughters restroom, who voted for Hillary, and think American patriotism is "weird" and "fascist". Hell, Sean Hannity was refused a "conservative" award because Christopher Buckley (who voted for Obama and Hillary) didn't like him.
Big-time WSJ "Conservatives" Burt stephens and Bruce Bartlett voted for Hillary. That's all you need to know.
Adams claims that "Trump won big."
That is such a persistent lie.
Dumb ass Trump outsmarted the best of the LLR's and multi billion dollar dem attack. Destroyed the best of the best.
Not claiming Trump is smart, rather claiming the others are not as bright as we were led to believe. Evidence of that assumption available on almost every AA comment thread.
"He sucks, but I voted for him anyway:,
or
"Trump a poopey head and going down for sure, this time"
What I am saying as forcefully as I possibly can, that Scott Adams is wrong on every imaginable dimension -- and wrong in the ways that we usually hear Adams himself decry -- when Adams says that "Trump won big."
You were wrong Chuck.
Trump won.
We were right.
And Trump would have defeated Obama. He wouldn't have choked like Romney and the losers that supported him did.
"And Trump would've defeated Obama."
Truly delusional.
@rcocean said...
I liked the podcast almost entirely because of Adams. I stopped taking Harris seriously when he started talking about how "unethical" "immoral" and "Bad" Trump was.
Seriously.
Sam Harris cannot be taken seriously because he believes Trump to be unethical, immoral and bad? So what proof exists that he isn't? Those of us who approached and investigated the open past of Donald Trump know that he is all of those things and is likely a criminal.
Now the water is beginning to boil about his shady business transactions and Special Prosecutor Mueller is opening the gates. Bloomberg reported that Mueller is “looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008.”
This should be the beginning of the investigation of years upon years of shady transactions. It is widely suspected by many, including me, that a peek under the hood and into the books of the Trump organization will reveal serious financial crimes.
So it is no wonder that Trump is looking into whether he has the power to fire Mueller and his staff and to pardon himself, his family and close associates. Perhaps someone should tell him that SCOTUS has ruled that acceptance of a pardon is admission of guilt.
Unknown said...
"And Trump would've defeated Obama."
Truly delusional.
I can link a dozen more stories like this one.
But truth be told I would prefer you retained your ignorance for a while longer. We need some time to root out some of the more egregious Obama failures and finish of the media.
The best part of the podcast, or maybe the most revealing, was when he claims society is going to hell in a hand basket (paraphrase) and Adams says, what's the evidence of that? The roaring stock market? The death if ISIS? I think he gives a 3rd example I can't remember.
And what's the response?! His evidence is we are all talking about politics now. That's the evidence.
And this is why it's important. As I've been saying here and other places, this perception is purposefully being used by our media.
They have ramped up the drama to 11 in order to create a perception that everything is chaos and falling apart. This isn't a Trump phenomenon. This is every Republican presidency. Republican presidents get Cindy Sheehan. They get the homeless problem. They get so stories about our current state of health care. They get called out for talking to Putin at a G20 dinner surrounded by other guests.
All to make us weary. Because we all just want to relax. We want to work, vacation, spend time with our family, and not think about all of this other crap.
And the media is saying, "Look, you don't like the drama ramped up to 11? Vote Democrat."
It's not overt. But it is insidious and they've been doing it my entire life. And this podcast shows it works on some people!
Trump did something right to win. Scott Adams has an explanation that makes sense, where I have not seen another.
Hillary was a horrible candidate, but with everything she had going for her I thought Trumps chance was minuscule. And Trump is still getting stuff done, with the worst actions I have ever seen by the GOpe, Democrats, cultural elites, and MSM. Court nominations is only one area. Lots else going on, which not much is heard about due to all the TDS.
Trump is not acting like a lame duck, where historically with all the mud being slung at him he should be.
It would be nice if a report card was done all the parties. Media and Democrats are doing worse, not to mention congress.
Unknowns are mid term elections, Muller investigation. Medias continued decline in credibility, rise of alternate media, etc. Not to mention a foreign emergency or recession.
"But truth be told I would prefer you retained your ignorance for a while longer. We need some time to root out some of the more egregious Obama failures and finish of the media."
Just because someone at Politico thinks so, doesn't make it so. African Americans didn't come out to vote in the same huge numbers for Hillary as they did for Obama. That is very basic.
"Finish off the media"? Freedom of the Press not important in future Achilles Land, huh?
Achilles says, "Trump won."
And tries to use that to say I am wrong. Point missed.
Trump did win. If Scott Adams had said that no more than that Trump won -- an obvious, uninformative fact -- I never would have written about it.
Adams didn't say that. Adams said "Trump won big." There is a reason why I put that in quotes. My entire post was devoted to the fact that yes, Trump won, but he won narrowly. And none of you can rebut the simple layout on my part of the narrowness of Trump's electoral win, by just about any measure you'd care to use.
It might not even be such a big deal but for two things. First, it is Adams doing what he likes to scold others about; he's seeing things through his own distorted filter. And second, it is something that Trump himself does. Yet another of Trump's personal distortions. Trump really thinks he won "big."
"African Americans didn't come out to vote in the same huge numbers for Hillary as they did for Obama."
Why not?
Adams has persuaded me to listen to (at least part) of a podcast. He recently persuaded me to watch an entire YouTube video. He must be a master persuader!
"And this is why it's important. As I've been saying here and other places, this perception is purposefully being used by our media."
The media has done that my entire life. When Republicans are in office, "everything stinks", when the Democrats win "Its happy days are here again".
I noticed the contrast the most when CLinton came in office. Suddenly, in Jan 1993, the US Government was ethical again. The homeless problem disappeared, and America was back to work and prosperous.
Even George Snuffleupagus admitted that Trump's victory was the biggest upset in 100 years. That's a big win!
Turns out it’s pretty much enough for them that immigration is down 50%. So what has he done? He’s moved a lot of people on the far right toward the center. And no one else could have done that.
I dunno if Adams believes this or not, but he gets it wrong.
We liked hearing him say he would build the wall and deport them all because it drags overtones window to the right. I know lots of very right wing conservatives. None want a complete stop to immigration and mass deportations. What they want is a strong border. Stronger immigration policies. What we want is pretty common sense.
But if you start there, you get nothing. We remember Reagan and his amnesty. He got screwed when it came to border security. And we have been getting screwed ever since. So now we just want to hear talk about security. For once.
An actual, hushed conversation I had recently.
"Have you read any of Scott Adams's stuff?"
"Oh, yeah."
[knowing, nodding look]
"Did he call it or what."
"And the stuff about now..."
"The whole thing with two different movies."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
Anyone, like Harris, who wasn't disturbed by the "Ethics" or "morality" of Obama or Clinton but thinks trump is "Immoral" etc. Is either:
Intellectually dishonest, or a clown.
Once you realize how most leftists are always "selling", its impossible to take them seriously. ABC - Always be Closing, glaflfy. Advise taken by crooked real estate salesman and the liberal/left.
I believe, although I am working from memory, I gave Trump a 40% chance of winning. It may have been a bit more or less but I had him as an underdog. How could I not with ABC News polling Hillary ahead by twelve just a week before the election.
My distrust of the MSM was not significant enough.
How excited was I when Trump won bigly, even though he was my third or fourth best option?
Is gadfly in the Top 5 most annoying posters? Little comedy valur, unlike Chuck who is a barrel of monkeys.
Using Chuck's ridiculously narrow definition of "won big" I guess Appalachian State's victory over Michigan wasn't a big win because they only embarrassed the Wolverines by two points! Lulz
Scott Adams is wrong on every imaginable dimension -- and wrong in the ways that we usually hear Adams himself decry -- when Adams says that "Trump won big."
Trump won big because it was against all odds, it was against all the conventional wisdom, and all the right people have lost their minds over it. The margin of victory is beside the point. It's that he won at all.
Fabi said...
Even George Snuffleupagus admitted that Trump's victory was the biggest upset in 100 years. That's a big win!
So Trump's win was "big" because it was a big upset of what mainstream media pundits expected? Those mainstream media pundits whom you revile and would never trust?
Remember Trump didn't "upset" the polls. Trump didn't come up with millions-more votes than anybody imagined. The final pre-election polls had Trump at about 44% and the final popular vote count had Trump at about 46%. Within the margin of error of all the polls.
I'd certainly concede that it was an upset, and a surprising one. It was a surprising win in the way that it was accomplished, with astonishingly close results in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But if anybody wants to say that this was the biggest upset in 100 years, they weren't paying attention to Truman-Dewey-Thurmond race, where polling was off by an order of 5-10 points. And they weren't considering that the 2016 polling called the race accurately within the margin of error.
Go Mountaineers!
"Otherwise he was not all that convincing"
Bullshit. Outside of California, he won the popular vote and converted a ton of Obama Dems to his side in the Midwest and Pennsylvania.
National polls are as meaningless as the popular vote, Chuck. Hillary was predicted to enjoy a huge electoral college victory. Are you pretending that "Trump doesn't have a path to 270!" wasn't the most repeated "expert" phrase in October of 2016? Lulz
Fabi said...
Go Mountaineers!
We invited them back, in 2014. It was a move that many criticized our AD for. But I liked it. They came back to Ann Arbor, and that time it was 52-14. It was 42-0 before App State scored.
I was an outlier, in being happy for the rematch. I think it has something to do with my long memory, my capacity for holding onto grudges, and desire for revenge.
Outside of California, he won the popular vote and converted a ton of Obama Dems to his side in the Midwest and Pennsylvania.
And California was distorted by having a Senate race between two Democrats. One can hardly forgive Republicans for not turning out.
"I'm not persuaded."
People completely filled with blinding hate never are.
Fabi said...
National polls are as meaningless as the popular vote
Of course they are!
The only thing they can possibly be useful for, is when a smartass like Scott Adams claims that Trump's win was a "big" one.
Because it wasn't. It wasn't a large majority of the votes; it wasn't a majority at all. It was a majority of the electoral college, albeit a modest majority by 20th-21st century standards. Not a "big" electoral college win. And a freakishly narrow win in the sense of threading the Pennsylvania-Michigan-Wisconsin electoral-vote needle by miniscule margins.
Harris pulled out the Hitler analogy and lost the entire debate. If he really thinks working class America voted for Hitler, he's just and asshole.
And if he thinks Hillary or other politicians occupy some type of moral high ground above Trump, he's a fool too.
Holding on to grudges and desiring revenge? Say it ain't so, Chuck! ;-)
Harris said Trump was destroying the fabric of society in the United Satates and the upped his desperation and made it the whole world.
The desperation of anti-Trumpers to go way too far in their doomsday predictions, only solidifies the Trump base. It lets them know they were right. They [we] know these people are completely full of shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBQdhR--cmY
Rachel Maddow. And Chuck.
It was a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE win. And an even bigger FUCK YOU!!!!! to Chuck.
Appalachian State had a big win -- Trump had a big win. Similar scale and parameters. To argue that Trump's win wasn't big is pedantic and disingenuous.
Scott Adams accurately predicted in the summer of 2016, that Trump, through the art of persuasion would win the Presidency. He beat all the "experts".
Now, with hindsight being 20/20, Adams must be completely full of shit...according to the experts.
I stayed up waiting hoping to see if Trump wins EC before CA was called. All because of Scott Adams. That would have been a super tell from the culture. Still his win is a positive tell.
Has the 'Black Swan' guy been interview about Trump and his win.
Adams isn't good on climate change.
Climate science has rules that are not scientific about how to process data and conclude stuff.
If they sent climate science papers to signal processing guys they would be rejected.
All scientists are not alike.
If climate science is a science at all.
Physics is a social organization united by a common set of equations.
Climate science is a social organization united by a common set of predictions.
"Donald John Trump will be the 45th president of the United States, having bested Hillary Clinton in what can be considered the biggest upset in American political history."
-- National Review
People who are claiming Trump did not win big really want to believe and not admit to themselves that they d lost big, and don't want to change their world view ... It is scary to them. This of course include MSM.
Harris is invested in a certain world-view.
I think we can call that modern-tech-elitist.
He's pretty much a model of the modern elitist.
Stanford Phd's get that with the diploma I think.
And they obtain depth from things like, as with Harris, Eastern Philosophy and atheism.
And more to the point, he makes a living, or at least has a career in this world-view.
The trouble is - well, we could go on at length about their troubles, and have.
In short its not Harris so much as it is Harris' tribe, or perhaps Harris' audience.
They expect litanies, sermons and opinions, from him, much like a priest.
People like that can't be argued with, because it is very costly to even concede a point.
He must be rigid, like a wall.
As for Adams, compared to Harris he was and is a free man.
He is a maybe-sort-of elitist, or on the periphery, a court jester of the elitists.
Not a lot of people every took him seriously (I have, for 25 years, but we are few).
Besides being independently wealthy he has no ideological reputation, nor does his livelihood or career depend on such a thing. He isn't a priest.
He could have argued any side, 2015-2016, and he could probably change his mind tomorrow with no great effort.
He can go anywhere, speculate, explore things, be tentative, flow. He is water.
Two like this aren't going to make a good argument. Its like water arguing with a wall.
If accuracy do analysis and prediction were and actual qualification for TV journalism, Adams would be hosting Meet the Press. But we all know those shows are just coordinated propaganda, so he is disqualified.
Adams made a fortune making fun of people at work we all know are full of shit, sold their soul, or are over their heads at work. Like Lumbergh in "Office Space". But guys like Lumbergh don't realize they're the joke.
Neither do grand standing anti-Trumpers like Joe Scarborough, Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, and now Sam Harris.
James K said...
Outside of California, he won the popular vote and converted a ton of Obama Dems to his side in the Midwest and Pennsylvania.
And California was distorted by having a Senate race between two Democrats. One can hardly forgive Republicans for not turning out.
And in most congressional districts, two Democrats. The vast majority of ballots in CA had no Republicans on the ballot except for President. And I'm sure California Democrats are trying to figure out a way of curing that.
Joe Scarborough and Bill Kristol make their livings by holding certain opinions.
Sykes seems like a similar case, but I don't know much of him.
So they can't really be argued with either. Were they to get into a give-and-take, they would be unable to take. This is of course because they aren't really free men.
Poor Sam is so cross eyed with hate that he can't see straight. Scary, really.
Few things are more entertaining than watching people who think they are better than trump who haven't accomplished a tenth of what he has talk down their noses about him.
I especially enjoy the envy and bitterness of the losers.
They call us "hillbillies," then the next line they era complaining about all the money we have.
It is pretty amusing, especially after McDonald's shift change,
Also, lots of chuck comments make it much faster to scroll through when I have been at work all day,
That's an interesting quote from the National Review, Fabi, but it wasn't the National Review editorial board opining. It was their now-departed reporter, Tim Alberta. I never understood how Tim Alberta -- who is a perfectly good reporter but who is not a conservative -- ever got the reporting job at NRO.
Tim is now working for Politico. Which seems like a better place for him.
I'm at the 13:36 mark of the podcast and -- even though the exchange is nascent -- Harris is so emotionally overwhelmed that he doesn't have a chance of competing. It is to chuckle.
Where did I claim it was from the editorial board, Chuck? It was written by Alexis Levinson, at the time National Review’s senior political reporter and Tim Alberta, at the time National Review’s chief political correspondent.
@Michael K
Could you please learn to spell Chuck correctly. It ain't rocket science.
BTW, I was shocked and pleased as all fuck that Trump was elected. I never - in a million years - thought the boobs that elected Obama in Penn, Wisc, Mich, or Iowa would vote for Trump.
And that's why the Republicans -despite themselves - got the Presidency. Because Jeb, Rubio, or Cruz would've done better in the Red states than Trump, but there's no way in hell they would've won Penn or the Midwest.
BTW, NRO just has "published" a column by the Kraut calling McCain the heir to Reagan. Which is the funniest thing I've ever read. Maybe Mondale's former speech writer doesn't understand what a "Reagan Conservative" is.
McCain's base was the NYT and the WaPo. There was no Republican he wouldn't attack, nor Democrat he wouldn't defend, as long as he got some good press from the MSM. His Amnesty plan - cooked up with his big buddy Ted Kennedy - would've given 12 million illegals the vote.
He did everything he could to undermine Bush II's presidency, and seriously considered running as Kerry's VP in 2004. And he wanted Liberal Democrat Joe Lieberman as his VP in 2008.
And that made McCain - the heir to Reagan - according to NRO and Krauthammer.
That guy has a low opinion of his listeners or else he's so please with what he has just said that he keeps saying it over and over, one of those people who likes the sound of his own voice. Yeah, he's more liberal than liberals or rather like them in that he just isn't as smart as he thinks he is.
It seems to me the fact alone, that people like Chuck ended up voting for Trump, made it a very big win. Huge. Bigger than anything really.
Great thread.
I read some peoples comments, like Buwaya,and others and I feel educated.
I read others, like Chuck, unknownInga, and others, and I feel smarter.
Winning!
I've come to have a better appreciation of Scott Adams than I had early on.
Not loving Adams is a tell for cognitive dissonance.
I love the guy. He wants good things for the world. Genuinely. And he's more effective (less 'ethical') than many.
FullMoon, it's not even necessary to read the comments that make you feel smarter. Merely being reminded of the author's existence is sufficient. Michael K and buwaya p are my ctrl-f favorites.
It is so strange. Who thought this cartoonist would become such a force of nature
Harris is a professional talker. He makes his living on the circuit. The debate game is very similar to professional wrestling. They put on a show but nobody ever gets hurt. I've seen Harris and his opponents make arguments with a hole big enough to drive a truck through and the other guy changes the subject. You aren't supposed to nail him like Adams did repeatedly. He fell into the trap of believing his own press releases and thought that Adams was just some dumb comedian. Welcome to the bigs, Sam.
Sam Harris seems to be a young immature guy and not very smart, he really got on my nerves.
During their conversation, you could substitute the word "Obama" for "Trump" most of the time and describe the way conservatives felt about Obama. He's bizarre, he's scary, he's a con-man, he's a degenerate. and on and on. What's bad for the goose is bad for the gander.
If buwaya had a blog, I would make it the fourth everyday read on my list.
A few years from now all the Althouse Trumpkins will talk about how they had their reservations about Trump and about how they didn't really support him, just like they did with dubya.
Adams will probably change his tune too. All this master persuasion blather will evaporate when he realizes that he was sold a bill of goods.
This is the first podcast I will have listened to completely (and perhaps shouldn't have started with a two+ hours long example!) and Adams is far more reasonable and nimble than I would have assumed. Sam Harris -- conversely -- is a standard issue lefty, pretending to be an intellectual. Almost all of his premises were false and I lost count of his non sequuntur after twenty minutes. In spite of his rhetorical fallacies, Mr. Harris likely considers himself elite. Or elitist.
I see in his bio that Sam Harris is a philosopher.
Oy.
This guy Harris is totally oblivious and unwilling to open his mind, so young and dumb.
"This is the first podcast I will have listened to completely (and perhaps shouldn't have started with a two+ hours long example!) and Adams is far more reasonable and nimble than I would have assumed. Sam Harris -- conversely -- is a standard issue lefty, pretending to be an intellectual. Almost all of his premises were false and I lost count of his non sequuntur after twenty minutes. In spite of his rhetorical fallacies, Mr. Harris likely considers himself elite. Or elitist."
Harris was deep into the denial, and his cognitive dissonance was almost palatable. Whenever he would bring up something negative about Trump, I would think "What about Obama?" or "What about Crooked Hillary?" To this day, I don't think that he has ever gotten Trump's joke about asking the Russians for Clinton's 30,000 deleted emails. Maybe he didn't want to get the joke. Or maybe he just is severely humor impaired. Or, maybe, the left here doesn't want to get the joke, because it would be an admission that her deleting those emails was illegal. Of course, Harris denied that she had done anything illegal or wrong - presumably because the fix was in with AG Lynch.
Those are good points, Bruce Hayden. Harris' point of departure for each argument was a conclusion -- firmly entrenched. Adams tried to advance excellent counterpoints to his preconceived notions without success. To yield would crush their worldview. It's painfully tiresome to listen to someone like Adams make good faith arguments without it being reciprocated.
Nyamujal said...
A few years from now all the Althouse Trumpkins will talk about how they had their reservations about Trump and about how they didn't really support him, just like they did with dubya.
Adams will probably change his tune too. All this master persuasion blather will evaporate when he realizes that he was sold a bill of goods.
A few years from ow there will be 60 republicans in the senate and Trump will win re-election by a wider margin than 2016.
NYT will collapse and become online only. They will rent out almost all of their downtown space to keep the flagging news operation limping on.
CNN will be permanently in the teens in ratings in the US and ATT will fire everyone in the US news division and try to reboot the brand.
I find the Althouse fascination with Scott Adams fascinating. Perhaps it's because she cannot understand Trump without a translator.
Having worked among large corporations, I loved Adams' cartoons.
The only brilliant thing Adams has done is to actually listen to Donald Trump. I recommend it. It greatly simplifies the daily outrage about the man. I don't mean react to his words. I mean listen to him like his voters did. What is he signaling about his values and priorities? What is important to him if elected? Why have Evangelicals flocked to his support?
Donald Trump is the most enigmatic political actor in a generation. But he's not that hard to understand it one refuses to go off topic by objecting to his mannerisms or personal style. He was not my candidate, but once he won the nomination, at the behest of friends who supported him from the outset, I vowed to cut through the verbiage to attempt to understand what Trump really was about. I became convinced that my friends' assessment was accurate, i.e., that Trump has two levels of being. The outer level is a warrior that will do what is necessary to protect the man. Witness his politically powerful response to Hillary in the debates when he said, essentially, "if I'm president you'll be in jail". Of course that was not his intention if elected as we later found out, but it was a terrific rejoinder that protected his candidacy. Trump's inner level is a well-intentioned, American-loving guy who has the will and personal strength to push against all odds to make America better in the Constitutional, historic sense. He fundamentally believes in America as it was founded in a way that Barack Obama never did.
Since then, nothing Trump does is much of a surprise to me. In fact, it's fairly conventional conservative policy mixed in with some liberal aspects. What else would one expect from a guy who grew up in a Democrat ocean but was mugged by reality to favor many conservative positions? I knew all along that he would be more liberal on immigration than someone like Ted Cruz, but that's OK to most Americans. Trump starts at the radical conservative place and compromises to the center from there. Most are flabbergasted at that because they are used to seeing politicians who start from the liberal place and only compromise to the center to maintain their political life (witness Obama).
So I don't believe that Adams is brilliant except in the sense of advancing his career in pursuing a space that no one else would, i.e., actually trying to understand Trump. Although Adams is smart and a great communicator.
I think Adam's powerful contributions to this interesting dialectic were marked mostly by what he didn't say: Harris made multiple easily vaporized statements and Scott consistently chose not to take the easy kill-shot. And instead, he would go in 'sideways' and make an original observation/question that caused Harris to stop and think about what he was saying. Adams was actually trying to persuade someone who has a whole lot of rigidly fixed, even concrete, ideas. I agree with AA completely. My guess is that -for once- Harris is still thinking about the conversation he had. Hopefully they will go at it again sometime.
One of the things that I found interesting about what Adams said was in relation to Trump being a serial exaggerator. Harris, of course interpreted that facet to mean that Trump was an inveterate lier. Adams pointed out that it is instead how Trump starts a negotiation- with an extreme position.
My mother did some exaggeration, and my partner is worse. If she wants me to buy something, she inevitably grossly underestimates the price. She might tell me that it only costs, say, $5. I know by now, that means $10-$15. When she is faced with the correct price, instead of admitting fault, she blames it on inflation. She does the same with time - underestimating how long things take. Of course, once you are involved in them, you are going to finish them, even if you wouldn't have started the project if you had known the real time requirement.
Trump does some of his exaggeration this way, by underestimating the time, cost, etc. Like the cost of his wall. But he also exaggerates in the other direction, starting big. Then, when he gets to where he probably expected to be, he seems reasonable. The thing that amazes me about leftists like Harris is that they are so deep into their denial and their cognitive dissonance, that they don't recognize this common negotiating strategy when employed by Trump.
I skimmed through it and the two things I found to be most interesting were:
1) How defensive Harris gets when Elon Musk's motives for quitting the advisory council were questioned at about 1:41. Adams offers some light criticism, stating that it was more about branding than principle, and Harris won't even entertain the idea.
He seems to be one of those people who have built up this mythical image of Musk in their heads. I imagine if this were done a decade ago he'd be worshiping Steve Jobs.
and
2) Harris' inability to comprehend just how much contempt people have for politicians. Adams makes the point that one reason Trump's "I'm no angel" defense is so effective is that everybody already assumes politicians are all doing the same things (or worse) and Harris can't seem to accept that.
In Harris's world he is the only one pure of thought. Trump can't be genuinely patriotic and want to serve his country.
Its another form of elitism. The no true Scotsman argument.
Fabi said...
" https://thedailybanter.com/2016/10/hillary-clinton-landslide/#! "
What a surreal read. Nearly everything they predict those nasty Republicans would do in a Hillary Clinton presidency is what those noble resistance-fighter Democrats have done in a Trump presidency.
If nothing else Adams does a masterful job of forcing the discussion into the stream of his own terms. His strategy is very simple. He only argues the points where he has a good argument. He simply concedes everything else. Sam Harris gains nothing from those concessions because Adams doesn't care.
This is something I've observed in business and relationships. As something becomes disfunctional, the person who cares the least wins.
Harris continually falls back on arguments of assertion -- "I know Trump is this...I know Trump is that..."
Harris is losing this. The fact that we're talking about politics is the sign that Trump is ruining society? Where the hell has Harris been the past 24 years???
Its funny to see my leftie friends now say that Nate Silver wasn't that far off and that the trump upset was within the margin of error for polling. When I ask them why every media outlet they readin including the bay area local news was predicting a huge hillary landslide including the NYT, they just get quiet. I think its a positive step as it seems they are accepting the people voted for trump and the russians hadn't manipulated the voting machines after all.
Yes, clint -- it's called "Fen's Law". The left falsely projects upon the right all of their dishonorable actions and characteristics.
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