Behind the Bastards - We Read The Dilbert Guy's Attempt to Make Trump into a Religion

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Robert is joined by Garrison Davis to discuss Win Bigly: The Dilbert Guy's Terrible Book About Trump. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

911 what's your emergency? It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. In a killer, we were still on the loose. In the 1980s, we were in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. We weren't safe anywhere. Would we be next? It was getting harder and harder to live in Mompine.

Listen to the Murder Years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The True Crime Podcast Sacred Scandal returns for a second season to investigate a led sexual abuse at Mexico's La Luz del Mundo Mega Church. Journalist Robert Garza explores survivor stories of pure evil experiences at the hands of a self-proclaimed apostle who is now behind bars. I remember as a little girl being groomed to be his concubine, that's how I was raised. It is not wrong if you take your clothes off for the apostle.

Listen to Sacred Scandal on the IHR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up y'all, this is Eric Andreik, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. your podcasts. Alright, I just want to say I don't know what we're getting into. I don't know what you picked and I want to apologize to Garrison Davis in advance. That's right, Motherfuckers, it's a book episode of Behind the Bastards. The only podcast. That's right. That's what we are. What have you done to us?

What's happening? I'm having a great day, Sophie. I'm feeling good. I'm sitting down. I'm having my first cafeo-lay made with milk from my good. Oh, you're making a cafeo-lay. Good for you. I think that just means coffee with milk from my. Oh, you're making a cafe ole good for you. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. I think that just means coffee with milk. If not, don't tell me. I don't care. Um, okay.

Anyway, garrison, how are you doing today? Hi, gare. I'm doing fine. I'm having, I'm having a chai tea. Um, brave. So I also just said to make everyone mad about saying, thank my tea. Anyway, I'm drinking some of this Cuban coffee that I smuggled into the country to support

the Castro regime, specifically to make people in Florida angry. And yeah, it's delightful. It's wonderful. I'll get you some when you come over next to watch that Nazi movie we're going to watch. Jesus Christ. But speaking of Nazis, do you know what we have to read today? No, not quite. It's a book by Dilbert creator Scott Adams.

No. Why? I just saw the fucking Dilberido on Twitter today. I'm like, oh, God. Oh, man. Yeah, the Dilberido is a fun story. I am currently writing. I just finished part one last night

and I'm starting on part two today. The Scott Adams episodes, which will be good. Jesus Christ soon with someone else, the cartoonist as the guest. But I wanted to sit down with you and go over a Scott Adams book, Garrison, because when I was a wee lad,

like literally like 10 or 11, I read some of Scott Adams' books, and I felt like this would be a bonding experience for all of us. And for Sophie too. Why? The book we're reading today is, Win Bigly, Persuasion in a world where facts don't matter. Some versions of the book, I think, he credits Donald Trump as a co-author. No, he's not.

It's his book about, so for a little bit of context, Gary. Scott starts this comic called Dilbert in the late night, right at the tail end of the 1980s, kind of the end of the Reagan era. And it gets really big around 1995. So early in the Clinton era, right at the start of the dot com boom, right after kind of a bunch of companies of, you know, these big companies like GE,

did huge rounds of layoffs. Oh no, oh no. I looked at the cover, oh no. Oh, oh yeah. So if you, why don't you show Garrison that? For a while, people thought Scott Adams liberal or maybe even kind of stealth left wing guy because Dilbert was some people saw it as kind of like an anti capital establishment or something. Yeah, and a lot of it's about how stupid these like mainstream like management

tactics are and these things that like all of these corporate leaders doing. I like fucked up and often cruel they were. The reality is that like Scott was just bitching about things that annoyed him personally and is absolutely in no way anti capitalist or anti, really anti any of the bad things that he used to write about. Chris, the hardcover is $32. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not, I didn't pay for it, don't worry. Okay. So, I have to be, I have to be, I have to be KG about how I don't pay for books.

Yeah, last time I told people, Amazon closed the loophole. Oh, really, really. Robert. Yeah, they won't let you return a book when it's past 10% red or something like that now. Ah, damn. They caught me. I mean, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really, I'm you haven't, Gary. I would never do anything like that. Can I just say before we get into more of your alleged crimes, really nailed the hands on this cover? Oh, you see that yet, Gary. Yeah, looking at it. Yeah, he's yeah all three fingers on So they're very Puffy it was was a

King Charles the The goal for the hand model for this it was probably just Scott Adam himself Because he also have really really really really swollen hands Maybe he sees the world of the brooch and draw his Dilbert. What if, what if, what if, what if that's not just how he like, like, interprets reality is just through these Dilbert trunks. It would have to have an impact like a, on your brain after a while and not a positive way. Clearly, it hasn't.

Yeah, his, his brain's not working correct for what I could tell. Scott, one of the things that we all learned from the great Bill Watterson is that the best thing you can do as a creator of popular art is never let anyone know anything about you. Quit it, hide if you're fame, and then spend the rest of your days as a hermit in the woods painting landscapes. Yeah. Scott did not do that. He started a hermit in the woods painting landscapes. Yeah. Scott did not do that.

He started a blog, which was a terrible mistake. And then he took the Twitter approach. And then he got on Twitter, which was an even worse mistake. And over time, people became aware that Scott had some pretty regressive opinions, specifically around women. He starts posting some like, in-seller-jason shit. And then when Trump comes around,

everyone is kind of surprised who hasn't been following him closely, that he gets like super into Trump. And at first he takes this like weasily approach where he's like, well, I don't agree with him about a lot of stuff, but I'm really impressed by what a master per suitor he is. He's like a super genius communicator.

And he's playing, he's one of these 3D chess people. He's like one of the first Trumps playing a game of 3D chess on all of you. And I think one of the funny is that so Scott, when you really dig into all of his claims, is wrong about nearly everything. Like Trump didn't, wasn't a master persuader. Like he took, his first election was largely a product of taking advantage of the way the electoral college works. He never got most of the country on board with his ideas.

He's not good at persuading people. He was good at speaking to the bigotry and the anger of a chunk of people who are already bigoted and angry. But Scott gets convinced that Donald Trump is basically like a magician, like a psychic magician taking over people's minds. And thinks that this is a good thing because Scott is into hypnosis and he's also into affirmations.

Interesting. I've actually read a, there's a whole book about Trump's ties to a new thought church back in the 60s and 70s. That shows us a lot on how, how like Kipnosis became popular. And like this weird like New York business scene that Trump was in as a kid, and how it kind of informs the way that he goes about

in like interactions and the way he does affirmation. Yeah. Yeah, there's the kind of guys that he's super, that Trump is kind of inspired by are sort of like a mix of kind of quasi-prosparity gospel dudes and like Napoleon Hill think and grow rich kind of people. Yeah. Where it's talking about like, yeah,

the power of positive thinking and all this sort of stuff and creating wealth and opportunities for yourself. Scott's really into that stuff too. And I noticed this as a kid, it was really interesting. His first book, or not his first book, but the first one I read had some pretty reasonable stuff in it. He was early on very motivated by what's called the Peter Principle,

which is this idea and business theory that people tend to get promoted past their level of competence, and that this is a problem, that people who are good at their job get promoted past their level of competence and that this is like a problem, right? That like people who are good at their job, who are good at their job, get promoted to a point where they're no longer good at what they're doing and that this is what causes a lot, which is as far as I've seen quite, quite an accurate thing. And Scott takes from this idea that like, you should always be aware that that at any given time in the world, like most people are, are idiots, right? Most people don't know what they're doing, don't in the world, most people are idiots, right? Most people don't know what they're doing, don't understand the world around them are kind of like in-over

their heads. And then he uses that to kind of pivot to, like, so I developed the system of affirmations. And I can't explain why it works, but it clearly does. And if you develop, like, adopt this system for yourself, maybe you'll be able to achieve things that would otherwise be impossible. Which struck me as odd as a little kid. And as Scott gets kind of older, he gets more and more into this stuff. And it's interesting. He talks a lot about how, like, when he was young, he took mushrooms. And it was this wonderful experience for him. And it changed his life. But people shouldn't do it. It changed his life specifically because it showed him that like reality was largely a product of thought and of like the perception. But then he came to the conclusion

that like, no one else should do drugs. You should just read my books because I'm going to recreate the psychedelic experience. Only I have started enough to be able to do this. Yeah, I'll explain my books that I'll explain it to you. So I'm going to start by reading the preamble, which he's called the Day My Reality, Split Into Two. Which is horrible. Oh, boy, Kerosene. I have the Amazon preview.

So I can look at all the different names of all the different chapters and parts. Oh, yeah. And there's some, there's some wild titles throughout this book. Yeah. You can, uh, once we get through this preamble, you can let me know which ones you most want to hear about and what we'll go into them. But I feel like we should start where he does. Yes, yeah. In February of 2016, I began to experience two separate realities at the same time. And one reality candidate for president Donald Trump had just ended his chances of becoming President of the United States by refusing to disavow the KKK and David Duke on a CNN

interview with Jake Tapper. Trump said he didn't hear the question. This was a big problem for candidate Trump, and it was also a big problem for me. I was one of the earliest public figures to have predicted Trump's win, and I was in the middle of an unplanned career pivot from guy who created the Dilbert comic to something like a political pundit. Sure. Sure.

Yes. That is how people see you. Oh, take it. Look, let's check it out that in 2023. Let's see. Let's see how good that's going. I have. Oh, boy. I have an unfortunate like fact dump for you, Scott. And it's that until the day you die, the only way people will refer to you is the Dobert guy.

Like they call you, so it'll say, like, have you heard what Scott Adams said? And in evidence, please talk about those Scott Adams. And then you say the Dobert guy. That is how everyone talks about you. As I've been writing this, the Sky Adams episodes, I've had that conversation like 11 times.

Yeah, I'm writing a piece about Sky Adams. Who, you know, the Doberd guy. Oh boy. My blog traffic went through the roof whenever I wrote about Trump's skill as a persuader. I don't know much about politics, but I know skill for persuasion when I see it. As it turned out, there was a big demand for what I called my persuasion filter on

the race. Producers for news outlets, both large and small, were scrambling to get me on their shows. I wrote and spoke so much about Trump's persuasion skills that people labeled me a Trump supporter, although not in the sense of supporting his policies. By then, my writing about Trump had already cost me half of my friends. My lucrative speaking career had dropped to zero, and I didn't expect any new, Dilbert licensing deals. I had become toxic for any kind of mixed crowd, but I was okay with my situation,

because I expected to be right in my prediction that Trump would win it all. Winning fixes most problems. So true. So true, buddy. Yeah, you've only your popularity only increased after Trump won. Although the polls disagreed with me, I thought my prediction of a Trump one was looking good until the Jake Tapper interview on CNN. In this version of reality, I had foolishly alienated my friends. I annihilated my professional reputation and cut my income in half.

And all I would get in return was a Wikipedia entry under my name, saying I had supported an alleged racist for president. The situation was less than ideal. I publicly disavowed Trump because of his CNN interview, just to get out of the blast zone. But by then, it was too late to salvage everything I had already lost. Like an idiot, I had managed to turn a respected career as one of the top cartoonists in the country into a grimy embarrassment that wouldn't wash off.

That was one version of reality. I experienced a second version of reality at the same time. This version involved Trump brushing off the CNN KKK controversy and going on to win the presidency. And that version of reality, I would be redeemed in the end, at least in terms of being a credible political forecaster. Winning always feels good. So it's interesting because like I went through a period of thinking, oh my God, Trump's going to win. And then, oh my God, maybe Trump won't win. And then, oh my God, Trump's going to win

during the 2016 election. And I never interpreted it as I was living in two different realities. I interpreted it as American politics is very unpredictable. Almost anything can and does happen. And I didn't know what was going to occur, which is how most people would would would put that like describe that. I think it's interesting. His like obsession with like clearly he views predicting the the presidential race as a win,

which I think probably is part of why he went so crazy when Trump lost because he takes it deeply personally that Trump lost. Um, it deeply personally, that Trump lost. Anyway, interesting, interesting stuff. Yeah, especially because his predictions seem to go hand in hand with his own like affirmations. Yeah. So you kind of need them both to come true to order for your system to make any kind of internal logic. Yeah, part of this is because again, he's like, he's really, he's convinced not just that

like he's not saying what Trump is, he's convinced not just that like, he's not saying what Trump is doing is a credible political election strategy, which I think any honest person has to admit it was. Obviously he won. What he's, what he's saying is that Trump is a master per suitor. And so for that to happen, he needs to be actually convincing people. He's the best choice for president, as opposed to again, kind of feeding into this grievance politics that the right had been stoking for forever and becoming the avatar of it, which is a different thing. But Scott had to believe that he had to kind of buy into the idea that like the

massive Americans had come around to Trump's, like, political ideology, which was never the case. And so he's got to, like, leap into contortions in order to justify kind of what happens Yeah, it's it's good stuff Scott ends this this little chapter by saying for the next several months I lived both realities, but I trusted only one of them I double down in my prediction of a Trump win if that sounds crazy to you Well, that's nothing. We're just getting started. There's plenty more crazy in this book. Oh boy The share is muddy. Introduction where I prime you for the rest.

I'm a trained hypnotist and I'm going to take close book. Return that shut. The only person I want to hear talk about their hypnotism training is Werner Herzog because he's going to hypnotize a chicken. And that is, that was a great time for everybody. I do not think that the Dilbert guy could be a successful hypnotist. I'm sorry. I don't.

No, no. For one thing, he has, his eyes are as lively as a Dilbert comic. Yeah. It's just unsettling. I'm not going to look into them. So here's Scott again. I'm going to tell you about the spookiest year of my life. It happened between June 2015 and November 2016. Okay, that's a little more than a year. Everything you are about to read in this book is true. As far as I know, I don't expect you to believe all

of it, but I promise it's true to the best of my knowledge. I've waited decades to deliver the message in this book. I waited because the world wasn't it, but I promise it's true to the best of my knowledge. I've waited decades to deliver the message in this book. I waited because the world wasn't ready, but also because the messenger years truly didn't have the skill to deliver it right. The story was too hard to tell. Yeah, it's just one step removed from a religion. This is so clear. Yeah.

No, well, that's the thing. So when Scott talks about, and this is in a book that he wrote, a fucking 20 years before this one's almost like 15, 16 years, he talks about how like, in a book that he wrote, a fucking 20 years before this one's almost, like 15, 16 years. He talks about how, like, as a kid, he realized that, like, prayer didn't work, and so he became an atheist, but he didn't like atheism. And interestingly, like, the thing he didn't like about atheism is it didn't let him predict the future. Like, that was his, that was his issue with it.

So, like, he developed this personal belief system that aliens had like, we're like managing life on earth and that he was like the child of an alien sent to earth for some like special purpose and lived under that belief system for some period of time. I met a few people like that at the at the Oregon Ghost Conference a few months ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's kind of always bit of cook. So he talks about how he waited

and waited and waited and he wasn't ready and he was learning and preparing to deliver this important message. And then in 2015, Trump writes his golden elevator down to announce his candidacy for president. Um, like most observers at the time, I didn't fully understand what I was seeing. It wasn't until the first Republican primary debate that I realized what was happening right before our eyes. Trump was no ordinary politician. He was no ordinary business person either. In fact, he was an ordinary in any sense of the world.

Trump is what I call a emboldletters master persuader. That means he has weapons grade persuasion skills. She says, based on my background in that field, I recognized his talents early after watching him in action during the election. I have to say that Trump is the most persuasive human I have ever observed. I have to, I have to, I have to check my persuasion skills when I, when I'm at the airport, they will, They will not let me go in the carry on with the cash. You know, because their weapons grade, you know, you don't have to take those on.

TSA, you'll catch it. It's an easy way to get. They've got those dogs to sniff her weapons grade persuasion skills. Scott's going to drive everywhere. So many problems. This is the same thing with all of the esoteric fascist and stuff All so many problems to be solved if we just force people to play D and D We just you just gotta get you gotta get that out you gotta give these people like an outlet for this shit

If you're talking about like weapons grade Persuasion you're just talking about D and D just roll roll some dice and get some friends together have that inner party D. A. D. Just roll roll some dice and get some friends together have that inner party cast charm like for the love of God. They can take a will save Jesus Christ. Yeah, it is it is remarkable. Um, President Trump carried those persuasion skills into the White House where his supporters say he has gotten a lot done and his critics say he hasn't. Oh boy. Who is to say who's right? No one says any it like, yeah, his supporters love the stuff he does. His, his, his detractors don't say he didn't get a lot done.

They say he did a lot of bad things. No, he did, he did, he did, he did nothing in the white house. Like, he was just sitting around. He was just playing golf every day. It's such a weird because he like describes his like his supporters say he did all of, you know, he fall his his and he did this. And his detractors say he was a chaotic administration that didn't get any,

no, as his detractors say he did a lot of stuff that hurt people. And like, yeah, the fact that his administration had a lot of leaks and like internal chaos was kind of evidence of the fundamentally bad people that were involved in it. But like the his no one was like nothing got done by Trump. Like a lot of bad things were done by Trump. Anyway, President Trump's critics and mine in brackets

asked me how I could call the president a master person. He capitalizes the im in the pee every time he says master persuader. Um, he'sizes the M in the P every time he says master persuader. Um, he's trying to make it up for a down. Yeah, he's trying, he wants people to take this very seriously. And like it's for one thing, a silly thing to call somebody. We already have the term like charismatic, we have the term demagogue, like those, those

work like charming, that works. You don't need master persuader. Just is so inherently silly that I'm not going to take anything else that you're saying very seriously. But you know what I do take seriously, Garrison. Oh, is it the very brave and stunning products that allow us to continue this show? Yes. Yes, the heroic products. been stunning products that allow us to continue this show. Yes. Yes.

The heroic products. Some people are too scared to advertise on this show. They don't, that's right. They do not want you to hear the truth. No, they don't want you to hear the wisdom of a master persuader like me, who's gonna convince you to, you know, they don't want you to put some money into Blue Apron, you know? They don't want you to do a high surgery. Do it all.

They don't want you to hear what's on page 127, how to design a linguistic kill shot. They don't want you to know. They don't want Scott Adams. It is so easy to write a stupid book. Like writing a good book is really hard, but writing this book, this is like 45 minutes. Like, this is a solid light afternoon of work. You knock this out while finishing a

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You shot her! Oh my God! It's a nightmare we could never have imagined. An Achiller missed it on the loose. My small town rocked by murder. There are certain murders I'm scared to discuss. In the 1980s, we're in high school losing friends, teachers, and community members. One after another, after another for a decade. We weren't safe anywhere.

We're teenagers terrified to leave our own homes. Would we be next? Who is killing all the kids? And why? In that moment, I saw rage. And why do you some want the town secrets to stay dead and buried forever? I'm not sure why you're digging up all this old stuff again, but I'd be careful.

Don't say I didn't warn you, Nancy. Listen to the murder years on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's up y'all? This is Eric Andre, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. I'm talking about your most amazing hair and several experiences of the performer. I tell gnarly stories, and I talk to friends about their worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways. Bomming on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life, like the time I stole a girl's

phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. I want to know what's the worst way they ever bombed or performed way too drunk or high. It was there every time where they thought they were going to crush and they stunk it up. Subscribe to my podcast Bombing with Eric Andre to hear more crazy stories from me and my friends. I'll have guests like Sam Jay, who will say Sloan, Michelle Butteau, Max DeMarco, DJ Doug We're back and I just persuaded Garrison to support eliminating the capital gains tax using

my weapons grade persuasion skills. I rolled a Nat 20. You know, I think we should just have a federal sales tax and that's evenly distributed across all the money spent. And that is the way to solve all of our economic problems. That's right. That's right. A lot of people who get paid by the Heritage Foundation are saying that.

So President Trump's critics and mine asked me how I could call the president a master persuader when his public approval levels were in the cellar. The quick answer is that low approval didn't stop him from winning the presidency. No, but you're not saying he's a master winner of the presidency. You're saying he persuaded people and the evidence is most people never liked him. Anyway, whatever.

It's not, he's so obsessed with the idea that Trump is persuading people and that's what the debate is about. When really like, nobody's, nobody's arguing that like the people who like him are saying that like the folks who are against him are engaged in the evil conspiracy against America. And the folks who hate him are like, he shitty and he took advantage of, of fucked up and archaic election system in order to win. Like nobody's, nobody's, nobody's reasonable thinks

that Trump is good at convincing the masses of things. Like that's just not what he did. Anyway, that's what Scott's convinced that he did. Yeah. But here's the fun part. I also believe that Trump, the master persuader, keeps using that term, was going to do far more than win the presidency.

I expected Trump to rip a hole in the fabric of reality. So we can't do it to a deeper truth about the human experience. Well, that didn't actually happen. That is true. Oops. Yeah. Either either that or a series of decisions that were made that included the development of a parallel digital culture driven by algorithms, like faded the divisions between realities and a fucking homonkylie was able to creep through a political shogoth, if you will, broke into our reality. And most of that is probably Zuckerberg's fault, but someone someone someone was going to do it. Somebody was going to do it and it was Donald Trump. But anyway, we'll give Scott that one, okay?

We'll give Scott that one. You know, he does he does title his next section, why facts are overrated. So yeah, that is that is true. We'll skip right to that one after we finish this little bit. The common worldview shared by most humans is that there is one objective reality. I don't know, most humans actually agree about that. And we humans can understand that reality through a rigorous application of facts and reason. I definitely don't think human beings agree on that.

For one thing, religions exist. This view of the world imagines that some people have already achieved a fact-based type of enlightenment that is compatible with science and logic. And they are trying to help the rest of the world imagines that some people have already achieved a fact-based type of enlightenment that is compatible with science and logic And they are trying to help the rest of us see the world the right way as far as I can tell most people share that interpretation of the world The only wrinkle with with that world view is that we all think we are the enlightened ones and we assume the people who disagree with us Just need better facts or perhaps better brains in order to agree with us That filter on life makes most of us happy because we see ourselves as the smart ones and it does a good job of predicting the future,

but only because confirmation bias will make the future look any way we want it to look within reason. When I saw what I saw with Trump's candidacy for president is that the within reason part of our understanding about reality was about to change. Bigly, I knew that candidate Trump's persuasion skills were about to annihilate the public's ability

to understand what they were seeing because their observations wouldn't fit their mental model of living in a rational world. This is interesting because for one thing, I think the first accurate warning about Trump, which came out before or right around the time when Scott started making his posts was by my former colleague, Cracked Adam Todd Brown, who wrote a whole article about how Trump was like very influenced specifically by old fascist political leaders and was using a lot of those tactics in order to build a base of support within the Republican Party. And that he would indeed win the Republican primary.

Adam called that months before any of this happened. And there were a lot of other people, and particularly a lot of actual like scholars of fascism, who were warning about him well prior to him winning the, the primaries. And these were not people who were like, say, like the attitude that like people were saying, he can't possibly win. I just doesn't gel to me with what a lot of people who were paying attention were saying. I think a lot of it. And that's different from saying like, well, I don't know if he's likely to win in like say, January or like December of 2015. But um, yeah, I don't know.

It's I think he's silly here. The difference between what Scott's doing is right. Scott's saying that the reason why this worked is because there's like this magical thinking aspect where Trump is just naturally better at being this mystical persuader versus actual scholars identifying the use of a playbook. And those are two very, very different things. Yeah, and it's again, he's kind's obsessed with this framing that he's put together

of Trump as a persuader. And I think kind of leading him to lose what could be kind of some of the actual useful conclusions that you could draw based on some of this stuff. A lot of people's belief in normalcy and like the, like, political normalcy is what caused them to not see Trump coming and not see the danger. This was particularly a problem for a lot of a, a, a establishment Republicans who did not think that something like this could happen. It didn't think like an outsider like this could one.

And I think most, most people observing kind of looked at the past of Trump's previous runs for president and generally of the long history of like weirdo candidates and thought that it was likely to go that way. That's not like a belief about like I wouldn't call that confirmation bias. That's kind of um because again like reality didn't wind up bearing that way and most people rightly saw this as a problem right away. They didn't think like reality has broken. They were like, oh, American politics is more broken than I had thought. The American electorate is more fucked up than I had thought. The Electoral College is a worse system than I had realized, which is kind of like a reasonable way to translate this.

But Scott's got to make it all about like how Trump, like cunningly manipulated reality as opposed to Trump kind of taking advantage to flaws within the system that people didn't realize. A lot of people didn't realize where his flawed as it was, but a lot of people in fact did realize and warn about it and recognize what was happening here. He's again, kind of got to make himself the only person who thought that Trump could win, which he clearly wasn't.

But anyway, whatever, it's fun. So yeah. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. I think we were in, did we get to watch that? Yeah, no, I've got his next tier. So he's talking about what he lands politically. I label myself an ultra liberal, and by that I mean liberals seem too conservative to me.

I'll give you some examples. Generally speaking, conservatives want to ban abortion while liberals want it to remain legal. I go one step further and say that men should sideline themselves from the question and follow the lead of women on the topic of reproductive health. Men should still be in the conversation about their own money, of course.

What does that mean, Scott? What is that line mean? What are you talking about these three? They're not going to pay for an abortion. Yeah. Are you saying that men should not have a, be compelled to pay child support ever? Is that the statement? Because I'm kind of trying to interpret that.

And I don't know where, where men's money comes up in the conversation of like reproductive rights, other than if you're bringing up the fact that like, you don't think men should be, have to be compelled to pay child support if they get someone pregnant. Cause it's the woman's choice. Is that, I think that's kind of where Scott's coming in on this.

I guess so. Yeah, it's interesting. My personal sense of ethics says that the people who take the most responsibility for important societal outcomes should also have the strongest say, my male opinion on women's reproductive health adds nothing to the quality of the decision. That part's fine.

Women have it covered. The most credible laws and abortion are the ones that most women support. And while life for death issues are on the table, credibility is essential to the smooth operation of society. That's great, good for you, Scott. He says that he is legal for, or he is for legalizing marijuana,

and he also thinks doctors should prescribe recreational drugs for old people. Holy shit, based. Yeah, I'm all right with that. That's fine. That's fine, Scott. When it comes to complicated affairs about economics and foreign affairs,

my opinion is that I never have enough data to form competent opinions. Neither does anyone else. Well, that, Scott, now, actually a lot of people do have an opinion. Do have, especially on like foreign affairs, it's like, well, actually, Scott, there's people who's like entire lives are understanding

the interaction of, for example, the United States and other foreign countries, or understanding what countries that are having problems with food insecurity, or not lack of access to clean water, or difficulties dealing with the AIDS virus. There are people who dedicate their whole lives to understanding those issues in the context of other countries.

There are a lot of people who have understandings about what are good policies there. That's a very silly statement, Scott. Um, anyway, that's, that's, that's fine. Whatever, Scott, uh, generally speak, what, huh? What chapter is this on? This is a introduction still. Okay. Overstone introduction. Yeah. Yeah. We're still in introduction. Generally speaking, conservatives think we live in a country where everyone always has already has equal opportunity. I don't know. That's what they say, though. I'll give them that. That is a statement that gets made. Liberals generally think the government should do more to a guarantee equal opportunity. I go one step further and suggest considering slavery reparations for African Americans in the

form of free college and job training funded by a 25 year tax on the top 1% Hey, that's fine. I I wonder if he still has this opinion. I don't know that he does It's also interesting that he's like I'm not gonna state an opinion on abortion because as a man I shouldn't have one but he is like here is exactly how I think reparations for black Americans should work Yeah, yeah, That is interesting, Scott. Maybe you could just say I support reparations and let someone else figure out how it's supposed to go.

No, the double guy has a plan. But the double guy, yeah. The double guy's got to figure that. That's a reparations plan. But hey, look, at least he's closer to the right on that side than I think you would have expected given his most recent race statements that got the Dobrik Khan canceled. Yes.

Okay. So I guess that's the end of the things that make him an uber liberal. Fine. Fine enough. So I think we're going to move on to a Y-fax or overrated. Part one of his book. The most important perceptual shift in history. My spooky year was fun for me,

but it was also a dangerous time for the world's collective mental health. Enlightenment can be a risky business. When your old worldview falls apart, it can trigger all kinds of irrational behavior before your brain rewrites the movie in your head to make it consistent with your new worldview. We all have movies in our heads

that we believe are accurate views of reality, and those movies are very different. Normally, we don't notice the differences in our personal movies, or we don't care, but when politics are involved, the stakes are higher. Then we notice, emotions are already raw in election years, and millions of people are focused on the same topics at the same time. That's a barrel of gasoline and a lot of matches in one place. The last thing the country needed was millions of people simultaneously going nuts. I hoped it could reduce that risk by writing about Trump's persuasion talents,

preparing the public for what I saw coming. Uh-huh. It's interesting. He is. There's a degree. This and some other parts of the book. He's like, kind of trying to repackage Robert Anton Wilson's ideas about like reality tunnels. And doing it number one in a way that's kind of like overly simplistic. And also doing it in a way where the goal is to like bring people to a specific understanding of reality rather than understand the different kind of realities that people live in and being able to kind of move through different reality tunnels as the that's kind of advantageous

for the things that you're trying to do. Yeah. Like his attitude on this is so much more brittle than I think the kind of elegant concepts that Robert Anton Wilson brings up when he talks about, like how kind of inhabiting letting yourself and fight figuring out how to kind of like meta program your mind to inhabit different realities can allow you to deal with stuff like addiction can allow you to like become, you know, more artistically productive in certain, can allow you to deal with stuff like addiction, can allow you to become more artistically productive in certain ways, can allow you to achieve things that you would otherwise have difficulty achieving, because perception dictates to a substantial extent how we interface and experience reality. What Scott's talking about is so much more

brittle than that, and you also get the feeling that he believes that he and the master persuaders are the only ones who can actually like see the tunnels people are moving through, and it's about kind of manipulation of large groups of people as opposed to understanding yourself and taking more control over your own interactions in the world. Yeah, and I, because he's also, he's like promoting himself as like this figure that's like seen, I've like seen the divine prophecy when Trump comes down the golden elevator. And now I will distill the secrets onto you.

And it's all this like, it is, it is, it is a very, it is, it's for completely different ends than what someone like Robert and Wilson's doing. It's also like, I'm not sure how, I'm not sure if the Dilbur guy can recognize how far into a reality tunnel he is in. Yeah. And how much of that like self-awareness can they extend out to other people? You Scott talks a lot about his own ignorance of certain things, like I think history, and it's kind of evident here, because he talks about how like, you know, if you watch the entire election and concluded that Trump was nothing but a lucky clown, you missed one of the most important perceptual shifts in the history of humankind. And I agree it's wrong to view Trump as just a lucky clown. Trump

is an authoritarian utilizing very time-worn tactics to take advantage of the worst aspects of American culture, which have been evident as long as this country has existed. Scott, like I don't think, either is pretending not to have any kind of understanding of like American political history and some of the different figures that Trump learned from. He doesn't know about kind of the history of, I don't know, how Nixon got elected of the kind of the Southern strategy, all this kind of shit that you see echoes of in the way Trump did his campaigning and is going to do his campaigning for the next election.

Scott, he certainly, I don't know if it's that he doesn't know this or he doesn't think that it's profitable to bring it up, but the framing of this is like Trump hacked the human brain somehow and that's how he run one rather than like, it's always been profitable to trade on bigotry and fear in American politics. And Trump figured out how to take advantage of social media to do that extremely efficiently. But that's not the way Scott describes this is happening. So here we go.

No, because instead Trump condemned we seen as this like a seen as this, like a mystical prismader, as opposed to someone using a very tried and true playbook for gaining political power. Yeah, it's interesting. When you talk about this kind of stuff, it reminds me a little bit about how people talked about and still to some extent do, talked about Hitler's rise a lot where they described it as like he kind of like brainwashed the German people and he was somehow able to like gain this deep degree of control over their minds using these almost like his mythical charisma and persuasion techniques.

It was a massive noose. Yeah, no, he engaged in a number of time-worn campaign traditions. And he also understood new technologies like radio and the airplane and their application in a democratic election in a way that other people didn't yet. And so as a result, there was kind of less immunity from his political opponents to those strategies and less understanding of how to counter them. And he was able to combine that with kind of the vinyl cowardice of a number of folks who were, you know, his political opponents, but not diametrically, politically opposed to his attitudes and able to sneak

into power that way. Like Hitler's, there's nothing like hard to explain about how Hitler took power. It was a mixture of like savvy political techniques and then social engineering and basically bribery. And it's, you know, with Trump that's less on the bribery side of thing, but it's like, yeah, he won election. Like there's not much of a difference between how he came to power and how George W. Bush came to power. Yeah, exactly. Like, it's, it's, yeah, but anyway, he's a master persuader. So if you seek enlightenment, these are two of the most important concepts you will ever learn. Cognitive dissonance. This is a mental condition in which people

rationalize why their actions are inconsistent with their thoughts and beliefs. For example, if you think you are smart, but you notice yourself doing something that is clearly dumb, you might spontaneously hallucinate that that was a good reason for it. Now, Scott, you might want to read that part again. You might want to go over that sentence a couple times, buddy. Um, yeah, this is a common phenomenon in all normal humans, but we generally believe it applies only to other people. I think you're revealing a lot about yourself there, Scott. I actually think most people are humble enough to be like, yeah, I often fall short of like

how I believe I should be acting or behaving. You know, I am not always consistent with the things that I know are right. Sometimes I'm dishonest. Most people I know are capable of admitting that they're flawed people. And it's interesting that he has this attitude that like, I'm the only one who understands that cognitive dissonance is a factor in my life. Like, no, I think most of us are aware. It's hard to be consistent with the versions of ourselves that theoretically are the best. Anyway, whatever. He talks about confirmation bias, which he also describes as a common phenomenon that we believe only happens to other people.

I saw in the election of 2016 a dangerous situation forming. If the public misunderstood Trump's methods and intentions, and that seemed likely, things could turn ugly. Worse yet, the public might not appreciate the extraordinary richness of their choice in the election. No matter what you thought of Trump or his policies, he certainly was different, and he certainly knew how to make things happen. I thought the public deserved to see the Trump candidacy as clearly as possible without

the biased framing that his adversaries were applying. You might be wondering how confident I was about my prediction that Trump would win. Well, no one is psychic. I can't say no with total certainty with the future holds for example I couldn't predict the types of what types of scandals would pop up along the way But I do know persuasion. I know it's power in a way that few people do and I'd recognize that with Trump's level of persuasion skill He was bringing a flame thrower to a stick fight Speaking of there's there's a in part four, there's a section called, how a trained

persuader of, was it, how a trained persuader evaluates scandals? Yeah. Scott starts talking about how good he is at predicting here. And he brings up his 2004 book, The Religion War. Now, Garrison, this is one of the worst books ever written. the religion war. Now, Garrison, this is one of the worst books ever written. If you're interested in reading some reviews of this and one of his other terrible fiction books, the podcast House of Decline, H-A-U-S, has been doing a read through. That includes my friend and cartoonist, Rory Blank. That's quite good. But here's how Scott describes it. I predicted the rise of an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East, and their use of hobby-sized drones for terror attacks.

That happens to be a good description of ISIS in 2017. Now that's not what Scott writes in this book. In this book, he's writing about like a fictional war between like all of the Western countries, like out like Unite under this like Christian, you know, democratic military alliance to fight the Muslim world, which in this book, a Palestinian man engineers the destruction of Israel and then unites all of the Arab countries. And also I think like Iran and stuff, so like not just Arab countries, but like, like Sunni and Shia all get together in this Islamic caliphate and launch a long term terrorist attack against the west that includes like constant suicide drone bombings of like like western cities.

That's actually not a good description of ISIS. ISIS for one thing didn't destroy Israel. They didn't actually overthrow any state. And while ISIS did use hobby drones, they didn't use them for terrorist attacks. They use them as part of a military like strategy, like they use them as spotters for their mortars. They use them to drop bombs on soldiers. In other words, Scott kind of imagined the use of like this, this kind of like perpetual

terror war against the West by this evil Muslim empire created by a Palestinian man who had used democracy to destroy Israel. And he's saying, that's exactly like what happened with ISIS in 2017. It is not, Scott, this is not, you did not predict ISIS. Are you saying Gilbert has not an ISIS understander? I don't think that he is. Anyway. Yeah. What do you, what do you want to go through next year? Master, persuader. There's a funny section called About Facts.

I mean, a lot of these are pretty good. I mean, there's the myth of the rational mind. Pretty funny. We'll probably check that out. Mass delusions, when reality bifurcated, which is Mass delusions, when reality bifurcated. Which is not a sentence, when reality bifurcated. I guess it no, yeah, because when reality, like, yes, like, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, that works. I see what he means now. Yeah. Anyway, Trump's rosy O'Donnell moment. You know what bifurc, we're gonna have to check that one out. But you know what Bifurcated is the moment that he's also a Casey Anthony truth. I hope so. Because I know who else is a Casey Anthony truth or Sophie.

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so we'll say Sloan, Michelle Butteau, Mac tomorrow, DJ Doug Pound, Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman, and more! Listen to Bombing with Eric Andre on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network players network on the IHR radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts We're back. I hope the subreddits having a good time figuring out what was bleeped That's a real bleep. That's not one of the ones where I like put in a fake No, I'm like really I'm like real bleed

And I'm not about it. I don't yeah, I don't I don't sure how much do we have to believe out there? It is really hopefully it's gonna be quite a bit because we can get in trouble for that one But I'm super pissed off about it because I'm so fucking right Are we gonna have to bleep trubs rosio Rosio Donald moment to just to just be Trump's bleep?

No, no, we can say that. We can say Rosio Donald in that context. It's fine. Anyway, someone on the subreddit will figure out what we what we probably said, but as long as we don't say it's okay. Just know I was really fucking proud of it. It was very funny, so thank you. So about facts.

On August 13th, 2015, I predicted in my blog that Donald Trump had a 98% chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills. Wait, why did he think 98%? Why is that so? First off, that's a nonsense number. And it's funny. He says a week earlier, he's talked about like Nate Silverhead put the most respected political forecaster in the United States and put Trump's odds of winning their public nomination at 2% in his 538 blog.

Yeah, which it's like, yeah, I guess it's fair that people didn't note that he was going to enough people didn't note that he was likely to win the the primaries early on. Although it also is worth noting that Nate Silver is one of the people who actually accurately called the way in which Trump was going to win. Like when he gave him like a 30 something percent chance, which was higher than any of the other pollsters and he laid out basically the collapse of the, the Democrat firewall in kind of the Midwest and how that could lead to an electoral victory. And was pretty much correct, which is more impressive than Scott saying,

98%. Oh boy, some of the rare and notable predictors of Trump's win included Mike Cernovich and Colter, Stefan Mollinu, Milo Yiannopoulos, Bill Mitchell. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, night, that, that, that, uh, luckily he was wrong. Trump's Twitter followers adopted him immediately and have my back every step of the way. She's in the critics. She's right.

She came after me on Twitter and elsewhere. Trump supporters flooded into back me. I didn't ask them to do it. They just did. Uh, wow. Um, so that's why he wrote this book. He did it to, uh, solidarity with Trump's Twitter followers. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh followers. Oh, that's great.

That's good. Yeah, it's it's good stuff. Okay, we'll be getting some great persuasion tips. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One is reciprocity. If you're nice to people, they want to be nice to you in return. That's a really tip for you, Garrison. Yeah, really.

Yeah. I know about that. Tip number three, all of these, his brilliant techniques, like being nice to people, work even if people know what you're doing. That's good. This is all like very basic shit. There's been scientific studies about how stuff like reciprocity works. None of this is like new. All of this stuff you can find in

a million different books about how to negotiate and shit. It is pretty boring. Let's move on to another chapter that's less boring than this. The next sex third grade fucking persuasion tactics shit. The next section is how to see reality in a more useful way, which starts off with the myth of the rational mind. Okay. Wait, Garrison, I got to give you this. He keeps talking about Nate Silver later in this chapter. I got to go into this here. Yeah. Okay. This is telling. I picked 98% as my Trump prediction because Nate Silver of 538 was saying 2%. I did that for branding and persuasion purposes.

It is easy to remember my prediction both because of the way it fits with Silver's prediction and for its audacity, which people perceived as wrongness. The prediction was designed to attract attention and it did. It was also designed to pair my name with Nate Silver's name to raise my profile by association.

That worked too. Social media folks mentioned me in the same sentence with Silver countless times during the election, exactly as I had hoped. And every mention raised my importance as a political observer, because I was being compared with someone already important in that field.

Keep in mind that at this point in our story, I was playing the wrong sport. I was a cartoonist writing about politics and persuasion. I needed to remember credibility I could get to build an audience for my Trump blog. It's interesting because he's talking about how like I subtly hacked people's brains to make myself seem more credible. No, the people who this it wasn't like serious political pollsters who were taking Scott Adam seriously. It was like rando Trump supporters on Twitter who liked you because you were saying what they already believed.

Again, Scott consistently talks about what he's doing as persuasion. You didn't persuade anybody. You joined a crowd of people all cheering for a guy and they liked that you were cheering for the same guy. Like in the same sentence where he talks about, yeah, confirmation bias. It's interesting because again, it's like, yeah, credit where it's new, Scott, you said before Trump won the primary that he was gonna win the primary. I'll give you a credit for being right there, but you're talking about persuasion.

You didn't persuade people. You went to a group of people who all thought Trump was going to win because they were Trump's supporters on Twitter, and they liked you because you are also a Trump supporter on Twitter. That's not persuasion, Scott. Um, okay, now we can move on. What is it you wanted me to get into next? Um, the myth of the rational, the myth of the rational mind on page 33 looks pretty good. And then there's, then there's, then there's mass delusions on 62. God, there are so many fucking chapters.

This, it's a lot. This is horrible. Wait, where the fuck is the myth of the rational mind? 33. 33. How many chapters are there? Well, I don't know. There's like five parts, but each part has its own little

sub-rooping. He has a bunch of short shitty chapters, and they all have like Dog shit little weird stupid titles go bigly or go home great. Yeah great titles Wait, but what was what was Donald Trump's Mobile well, we'll find out that there are so many little chapters. I want to read here the making of a hypnotist Who could be hypnotized hypnosis superpowers finding a hypnosis school All right the myth of the rational mind students of philosophy remember that Plato

Remember that Plato talked about the subjective nature of our personal realities in the allegory of the cave Plato asked is oh God We don't need Scott We don't need Scott I was just playing the allegory of the cave to us. I'm sorry. No, you all learned about this in a high school, right? Which is the last time Scott learned any more or the matrix who cares? Matrix. Yeah. Who cares? Okay. The point of Plato's allegory is that figuratively speaking, the humans might be chained to a cave created by our own faulty brains and senses, experiencing a shadow world that is entirely different from objective reality.

Other famous philosophers, notably David Hume, have questioned the nature of the algorithm. Oh, gosh. The existence of free will. If as some philosophers claim, humans have no free will, and we are nothing but victims of cause and effect, that means our common view of reality is absurd. In this model of the world, we are little more than meat robots who wrongly believe we control our own decisions and actions. And now he's talking, he's like summarizing Wikipedia pages for four guys except Kant next. He's like Google.

God, there's nothing I want less than him talking about an animal fucking God. No, we have to read at least one sentence of Scott. He uses a lot of words to say reality isn't necessarily anything like the way we perceive it Conn uses a lot of words you have to give him that I just like that that's his abbreviated version for Philosophy Well, he does say he explained that our brains don't have direct access to base reality We have to settle for interpreting the input from our faulty senses. Okay.

Good job. There you go. There you go. I only mention, yeah. Mass deletion, Sunday, 62. I only mentioned them to show that smart people throughout history have made arguments about the subjective nature of reality that are compatible with what you will read in these pages. No, no. Not the case, Scott.

That is not what you're saying. Play-doh, play-doh, David Hume and the con to agree with me. Because for one thing, what Scott's been building to this whole time is not like reality is entirely subjective in the response and like the the the result of like flawed senses It's I Scott Adams understand reality. I'm the only one who I was the right one and you need to understand How I'm right about reality in this weird specific way like great I

Ammanual contemplatory. She ate her scott- That's f**k. It's good stuff. What are we looking at next? Mass delusions on page 62. Yeah, okay. And that one is back to back with when reality bifurcated, though, you know, just be good stuff within those like nine pages. I am excited to get into that.

I do like, if mass del solutions is only like five pages long. No, no, you don't need that much space to talk about mass illusions, you know, it's after confirmation bias. Ah, there we go. And right before Salem, which trials and Orson Wells is more of the world. I feel like I feel like the Robert, like the word searches you could do to find things in this book would be incredible. I might do our good old stand by word search and just see what he has to say about the Jewish people.

Like control, F.J. Yeah, control left you. If you don't know how frequently mass delusions occur in your daily experience, many of your opinions about the world are likely to be nonsense. In your daily experience. Yeah, that's because mass delusions are the norm for humanity, not the exception. Don't believe me. It's easy to check.

Just ask your neighbors about the religious and political views. You'll find plenty of disagreement with your worldview. And so according to you, your neighbors and all the people who agree with them must be living in some sort of hallucin- No, they're not. That's not what you're talking about. Okay, you can tell that my dad is a conservative and believes different things about the way rich people should be attacked. I don't think he's hallucinating. I think he like has a series of opinions based on a mix of like things propaganda that he's consumed and what's financially best for him. But that's not a hallucination. You can tell in this meds never read a single page of Plato, David Hume Orcod and only

read the Wikipedia summary because like when I encounter somebody in my community who expresses a racist view or drops a slur, I don't think they're hallucinating. I think they're a shitty person. Like that's that, like there's a difference between those two things. Like it's like saying that like you have to believe if somebody disagrees with your worldview

that they're engaged in a hallucination. Like for one thing, just a lot of times, you encounter people who feel different, when I encounter someone who is not a bad person or not expressing anything mean, but is like, I don't know, a Muslim or a Christian or something else that I'm not. I don't think that they are a Muslim or a Christian

or whatever because they're engaged in a mass hallucinate. Like I didn't go to India and meet a bunch of Hindu people and go, wow, look at all these hallucinating people. Like no, it's just a religion that's not my own. That's the way the world is. Lots of people believe things I don't. It's like the weird way to go about the world. It's so weird that he believes everyone else thinks this way.

There's certainly like bigots who think that way, but like, I don't know, I've had a lot of conversations with people of different religions and philosophical stances and political stances and disagreed with them or not just felt the same way. And neither of us walked away being like, well, that guy's fucking tripping balls. Like that's such a strange way to describe this. Um, anyway, whatever. Do you remember when millions of Americans believed President Obama was a secret Muslim? That was a mass delusion.

Now, who was pushing that mass delusion, Scott? Was it Donald Trump, the master persuader? I guess he didn't persuade enough people. No, he didn't persuade Scott. Do you remember when President Trump got arrested and there were protests in the street because they thought he was the next Hitler? That was a mastoloo.

He did try to coup the government and then put himself in as a dictator, Scott. To me, to me, to me, to me, to me, to me, to me, this was what, in 2017, when this book came out? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. But also, that is just evidence the people who protested may have caught something

that Scott didn't. Although I don't think he thinks J6 was bad. So it's fine. Do you remember the dot com bubble? That was based on mass delusions about the value of money losing startups. Every other financial bubble was also a mass delusion. Well, partly, but there were also largely cons, like a lot of the people who made money on the dot com bubble. New, it was going to collapse and very intelligently figured out how to make as much money as they could by taking advantage of dumb people. Much like people did with crypto or every other financial bubble, like it's it. He's only focusing on like the side that's delusion and not the side that's bad people trying to take advantage of other people. Also interesting to me. Um, I hope here we go. Below is a starter list of more than 30 notable mass delusions. Wikipedia lists over 30 examples of mass hysteria through years.

Wait. Did you see that? He's quote Wikipedia. Wikipedia. And now he's just like, yeah, he's going through the sale. He's just dropping the list he He is quote Wikipedia in his book. Wikipedia. And now he's just like, yeah, he's going through the sale. He's just dropping the list he found out honestly. This is the first. He's the first English dictionary. Describe his best delusion.

I do have some respect for Scott here because this is a really, like the next, like, many pages of the book are just him like summarizing the Wikipedia entry for mass delusion. And that's an easy way to write a book. It's hard to write a book when you do real research. This would get like, this would be like, like, if you, if you tried to submit this in school, it would be like, sent back, you're like, no, you have to find a real, you can't cite Wikipedia. You can't, you can't explicitly say, I got this list from Wikipedia. You can't you can't explicitly say I got this list from Wikipedia. Yeah, it's it's funny. Anyway, this chunk of the book ends on him saying Trump was wrong to call

climate change a hoax, but he was also right because he called out the Paris Climate Accord, and it was expensive for the US and wouldn't lower temperatures. So the fact that Trump said climate change was wrong is fine because the Paris Accord was a lie that would have benefited China. That's, that's Scott Adams's opinion on the Paris Climate Accord. I'm glad he's changed from being a cartoonist into a political analyst. Again, I'm glad I love like switching from Scott being like nobody understands politics, which is why I don't give my opinions on politics to the Paris climate accord couldn't lower like Scott. I don't know man. Like his stance is his argument is that like no one disagrees with it any of this.

I don't know, I bet they do Scott. You haven't cited anything here. You just say on this. There's no citation. He has no like. He has cited Wikipedia. He did, he did, he did it previously site Wikipedia on a separate topic. Okay. So what do we want to close out on here?

Rosie, Rosie. The Rosie O'Donnell was good. There's so many good ones. Like, when, when, I don't want to know what an racist in the Vatican means. Oh, God. Which is what immediately precedes Rosie O'Donnell. I also would have briefly look at how to design

a linguistic kill shot. Oh, you know what? I think that this is, so this is Trump's Rosie O'Donnell moment. Okay, so yeah, this is like him explaining how Trump's genius strategy of like insulting people works. As the election started getting traction in all of our minds in the summer of 2015, I was experimenting with a new comic that featured a talking robot that never moves.

He just reads the news. You can see in this comic that I had already noticed Trump's successful use of persuasion that was confusing the pro the public. And this is a robots read news by Scott Adams. And it is in fact a poorly drawn robot reading the news. Donald Trump keeps saying dumb things because he is so darn dumb unlike you. He is also surging in the polls while putting almost no effort into it. So how is smart working out for you? I don't know, man, this seemed like he was constantly touring the country and doing events. I don't think anyone thought he wasn't putting effort into it. I guess this is a real own on the people who said that Trump

was dumb, which, you know, I, to be fair, I have always thought was a mistake on behalf of some Democrats, but I don't know. Whatever's got Scott, it's not really a joke, but we'll give you that one. So, but I didn't know how big a deal this was until what I now call the Rosio Donald moment. In the first Republican debate on August 6, 2015, Megan Kelly was moderating and her first question to Trump should have ended his campaign on the spot. Only a few people in the world could have escaped her trap. Kelly started to...

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So this was when Megan Kelly was like, you call women, you don't like fat pigs, slugs, or disgusting animals. And Trump said only Rosie O'Donald, right? O'Donald, sorry. Yeah.

Scott calls this a masterstroke of persuasion, executed perfectly in front of the world. He got goosebumps. Oh, what the? And the master, he insulted somebody. He made a mean joke. People do that all the time. I got it. I got it.

I don't usually do it while running for president, but they do it all the time. Like, I like that Scott describes this as like a transcendent experience for him. Yeah. Yeah. He's like full body orgasming over Donald Trump making a mean comment about Rosie O'Donnell. Making a misogynist jerk. Yeah. It's fun. So yeah. That's Trump's weapons grade persuasion is insulting Rosie O'Donnell during an interview with Megan Kelly. An interview largely made for people who are already voting for him that I don't know if I think actually convinced anybody of anything, but, you know, again, there's always like

pieces of accuracy here. Yeah, one of the things about Trump's political strategy was effective was that he didn't do the normal thing of like apologizing and backtracking when criticized, which is, you know, effective. It allows you to spend less time dealing with like the critiques of your political opponents. It's again, also a pretty well-worn political strategy, particularly for authoritarians. It's not wildly new. But there you go. That's got Adams explaining how Trump persuaded America by calling Rosie O'Donnell fat. I think no other comedian had ever done before. I think that multiple South Park episodes never

did. Well, there is an index at the very end of the book that I have access to. They cite black swan, so that's good. That's good. Yeah, it is index. Yeah, it is index in the back. He cites Dilbert 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 30, 40. He cites Dilbert 14 times.

Yeah, that makes sense. He's like, it's Donald Duck and drained the swab back to back. That's good. The KKK has a few shout outs. The last thing I do wanna see is the how to design a linguistic kill shop. Because I think we should at least give listeners one piece of actionable advice.

Yeah, so they can do so that you can keep a linguistic kill shot loaded up in case somebody like mugs you on the street. You can conceal carry it actually fairly easily in all 50s. In all 50s. In all 50s. That's on page 129. Okay. Over the course of the election, we saw Trump assign one sticky nickname after another to his opponents.

It seemed as if each new nickname was a winner. Clinton's team tried a few nicknames for Trump, but they failed badly. None of this is a coincidence. Trump's nicknames are deeply engineered, and they were tested in front of live audiences. And then he goes, and like, I do think, actually, if you're looking at like, what are things that Trump did that made him a successful campaigner, his ability to like, that's part of why I don't think that Ron DeSantis has any chance of beating him. Yeah, putting Ron, and then it's over, and it's done. Yeah, so let's give him here. Yeah, it's also like the most obvious tactic that he engages in. Um, but here we

go. Um, wow, he has two Elizabeth Warren nicknames on here. Um, that's, that's good. I bet there's somehow racist. It is interesting. He doesn't have any of his nicknames for Biden on here. Maybe because Biden wasn't a big player in 2017. Yeah, and I think you're right. Yeah, if you thought the names were nothing more than common insults, you missed a lot of his persuasion engineering. I'll walk you through it in this chapter. How powerful were Trump's nicknames? So powerful that the day I heard Trump say low energy Jeb, I predicted Bush was done and blog that opinion in August 27th. Keep in mind that literally no other pundits saw this nickname

as important to the elect now. I like it. I like it. He's true. But also everyone who saw from the moment I saw Jeb Bush on the fucking debate stage. I said, well, this is a guy who can't be president. He was like everyone knew he was pitiful. I like that. There were some, like, I like that he rames. I like it. I like that he framed just like listening to Trump as like reading tarot cards. Yeah.

It is interesting. Because again, there's a reasonable case to be made for talking about the way in which Trump uses insults and mockery as a political strategy. But like being like, and that's why Jeb Bush isn't the president. No, Jeb Bush is the president because he was never going to be the president. That was never in the cars because he is Jeb Bush. Oh, that's that's so funny. He just talks about why the nicknames are accurate nicknames. Okay. Yeah, that, that, uh, he just talks about why the nicknames are accurate nicknames.

Okay. Yeah. That's, that's, that's good. Um, yeah. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, do you want to read him analyzing lie and Ted for three pages? She, he does, he does a three page analysis of lie intent lying Ted. What a hard doesn't include the sentence lie intent simply looked like a liar.

Look, he's not always wrong. I can't get mad. It's an I saw Ted Cruz. I was like, that guy is a liar. I like that we can always turn this guy to this just for this kind of, just cutting edge political analysis. Absolutely. Yeah, it's also funny, like part of what's fun about these nicknames isn't that like,

they're super complex and it isn't that they engineer opinion. It's that it's so easy to like cut people who are kind of obsessed with the like playing at being at the politas of like a political etiquette and just being a dick is powerful, right? If you're playing a different game than everyone else, yeah, that's powerful. But also like it only worked the one time. He tried all of this again in 2020, and he lost by the most that any president has ever lost in terms of, like, actual votes. Okay. Okay. I'm at the end of the book now. I just found, I just found three amazing, amazing things back to back. So at the very end, after the acknowledgements,

there is three, there is like four appendixes, but the first three are the ones that I think are really interesting. The first one is the persuasion reading list, which might have some really funny finds at the end. There's also, appendix B is how to be a better writer. It's two pages long. I think, and then appendix C is how to be a better writer. It's two pages long. I think. And then a Pendix C is how to find out if you are in a simulation.

Yeah, yeah, I was looking at that just a second ago. So you can, first of all, get a list of books to read, become a better writer, and then find out if you're living in a computer. All within the span of seven days. That's gonna approach to writing a fucking nonfiction book. I think, and I think he literally appendix C is just one of his old blog posts that he's quoting. He talks about simulation theory. Man. Oh god.

simulation theory. Oh, man. Oh, God. Yeah, I'm not interested in anything less than I am. Fucking brain to idiots talking about the theory that we live in a simulation. You know what's simulated? You're fucking dick Scott. Your fucking penis is a simulation. Um, yeah, that's, that's, that's what I gotta say. Well, I think, I think, I think you should find one book on, on, on the reading list that we should recommend and then give one, one writing tip via Scott Adams and then we can call it a day. Okay.

Uh, his writing tip is to write whatever you're writing the way Trump writes things because he's a writer. Are you serious? Yes. Trump's done a good writer. I think there is a difference between Trump was effective at a good shit poster on Twitter and Trump was objectively a great shit post. Yeah, but not on purpose.

I don't know. We can debate that, but also like, I don't think like it's kind of like saying like how to be a better right now, how to be a better poster on Twitter. Sure. I would take. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can take Donald Trump's advice on that. Writing is a little bit wider of a discipline.

And you might wind up having some difficulty if you if you try to take the Donald Trump approach to, I don't know, becoming an editor on Wikipedia so that Scott Adams will appreciate your work. Nothing against Wikipedia, it's just funny that that's the only source he cited, other than Plato. Okay, here's some other advice that he has. Your first sentence needs to grab the reader.

Go back and read my first sentence in this post. I re-wrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That's the key. His first sentence is good writing is also persuasive writing. Jesus Christ. Scott. That's the dry issue shit I've ever heard.

Oh my god. So for his, on his persuasion reading list, I accidentally wound up on this, but it includes how to hypnotize anyone, the confessions of a rogue hypnotist. And then in brackets, I have not read this book for this story. What? It probably gives you a good taste of the topic. Are you serious? Yeah.

That's so funny. He's recommending a book he hasn't read. And he admits it. Yeah. He didn't even read it. He put on his reading list. It's probably a good idea. I don't know. He had a bit of...

There's a Tony Robbins book on here. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Trump the art of the deal, of course. Yeah. Uh, tell you to take a fucking Dale Carnegie class. Uh, great. Sure.

Yeah, that tracks. Yeah, that tracks. Yeah, good stuff. So yeah, what a guy. I think that's that's a good look at Scott Adams's book. Yeah, I think I think I think that is a that is a decent decent dive into the mind of Scott Adams. Are you ready to go into the world now, Garrison, and become a master persuader? Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be working on my, I think if I get, I mean, Oregon does not have the, does not have the round capacity limit yet,

because I'm trying to figure out how many linguistic kill shots I'm allowed to carry with me at any point in time. But once, yeah. Yeah, I think you can still have 30 linguistic kill shots loaded and happy in violation of state law. So I'll spend a few hours coming up with those

so I can just have them at the ready. Yeah, I'm just gonna call people low energy, Jeb, even if they're not aimed. Yeah. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Hahaha. Uh, that was the, that, that, that was pretty funny. Hahaha.

Um, okay. So, uh, yeah, that's, uh, that's our man. Harrison, do you have anything you would like to plug? Um, I guess the one thing I could plug is I recently on it could happen here. I finished a shocking five episodes worth of content about the last week of action in Atlanta to stop cops that he I believe we should have that put into a compilation as well by now. But yeah, that is that is on the it could happen here feed for the last week of action. As of recording, the City Council process to approve the funding for that is ongoing.

There was like 500 people showing up, I think just like two days ago, as of time of recording, to give public comment. And that process is going to last a few more weeks. So we will see how that goes. You can you can keep up to date with that with the with the Atlantic Community Preschool active. So yeah that is that is it. Excellent. Well you can find me. Yeah we can. Yeah, we can. Bye! Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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