He's playing himself. You can't get canceled as a political cartoonist -- it's normal for them to make a point through extreme, and often very "offensive", situations. That's their job.

Adams has often said nutty things then when there is blow-back falls back on "it was just a joke and some people have no sense of humor," then goes on to say things that indicate that he was serious about it all along. I try to avoid Adams, but the story I remember best is him claiming that he was voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because, "Clinton supporters have convinced me – and here I am being 100% serious – that my safety is at risk if I am seen as supportive of Trump"

He also said in 2020, "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year." That was just a standalone tweet, not the punchline of some joke. He followed it up with, "Republicans will be hunted."

Some ultra-liberal.

>> This, of course, mirrors an ongoing controversy in certain conservative circles over the use of gender-neutral terms in place of the word ‘woman’ in order to include trans men and non-binary individuals in increasingly pertinent conversations about bodily autonomy.

I think is a terrible strawman.

>> This, of course, mirrors an ongoing controversy in certain gender critical circles over the use of gender-neutral terms in place of the word ‘woman’ in order to maintain women-only spaces.

There you go.

I enjoy his strips and this post made me discover the more controversial ones, which I had missed. Thank you to the author.

Instead, I found myself laughing at all of these comics. Yes, Adams has gone full nutjob, but the restraints of the comic strip format seem to keep his more bizarre views in check.

I can't fathom how HR can justify selective racism without lawsuits galore.

If it ran totally counter to experience nobody would care and it wouldn't be funny.

(That's to say, Scott Addams, the comic's author, went deep into la-la-land, and never came back).

Bottom Line Up Front: Progressives should rework their messaging so that it does not highlight and reinforce differences.

If you look at Conservative media criticism of Progressives, you'll see a lot of Anti-Wokeness. Progressives need to understand why this criticism is so effective. Pushing the envelope makes people uncomfortable. There is a very powerful emotional drive to return to a comfortable state, especially when we feel like we are attacked.

Examining the media split of the 2010's, several things come to mind:

1. Directed and funded media pushing a conservative agenda.

2. The Tea Party Movement and Trumpism.

3. The end of shame as an effective tool.

To expand on the end of shame - in the past, people were more likely to change their behavior in order to avoid being called out for prejudice or discrimination. This doesn't work anymore. Another place you can see this is in the reaction to public masking requests. Shame did not work to get people to mask.

Shame is very motivating, but the motivation does not always take the direction intended. If another group is willing to offer cover for beliefs or actions, then individuals will be motivated to join that group instead of being shamed. If you can find something for "ashamed" people to be proud of, they will flock to that banner.

This brings us back to messaging. "Make America Great Again" just sounds like a good message, if you can divorce it from the source. People who are tired of being attacked or shamed may find comfort in that slogan. MAGA does not say anything about race or gender, which is part of why Trump found voters (a relatively small part of his voters) from minority races and women. Trump could not say that white men should be proud of being white (just think of the implications), but he could say that Americans should be proud of being Americans.

----

Now. After all of that, you may have some opinions about me, so let me tell you a little about myself.

I believe that structural inequality, including structural racism and structural sexism, is very real and very damaging.

I believe that individuals should practice anti-racism. I think that anti-racism training that intentionally includes shame is NOT effective or good.

I don't have a strong belief that Progressive politicians are trying to shame white men, but I do see a lot of this shaming in less formal settings, and in communications and training material. Some of it may make sense in context, but it is never good.

I do think that it is natural to feel some shame when we reflect on the past. I don't think we have to live with that every day forever. There needs to be a path to resolution.

When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees how to "interrupt whiteness" [1], or Coca-Cola how to "be less white" [2], or Cigna simply forbidding hiring whites [3], nor did academia require mandatory diversity pledges for new hires and promotions [4]. Dilbert is doing what we are told art is supposed to do - hold a mirror to society. Do you like what you see?

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-interrupting-whiteness-...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/coca-cola-facing-backlash-says-less... (Note that in all the "debunkings" of this story, Coca-Cola never claims the presentation wasn't shown by their hired diversity experts as part of its diversity training. Merely that Coca-Cola the company didn't require those specific slides. But the slides are completely in-line with rhetoric championed by diversity experts routinely hired to train employees.)

[3] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cigna-critical-race-...

[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oat...

We should be asking what the hell is up with society.

I listen to his podcast every now and then. The guy's funny, and has a knack for disassembling news into their dark patterns and pointing out absurdity. Definitely not the same guy portrayed in this article.

> [Dramatic pause] And inevitably, this will be what leads to the downfall of Dilbert.

Geez. Drama much? I can almost see the author patting herself on the back when she wrote that sentence. What a waste of a life.

"But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something"

Let me try to explain this.

The sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" joke is a good example. The structure of the joke is Y is something no one will seriously identify as. This means "X = Black, Y = White" pattern matches.

For the LGBT "context", the common usage of sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" translates to "I don't think transgender identities are valid". The Non-LGBT context doesn't assign a specific meaning to the phrase.

This sets up a scenario where one group has a rule saying "X -> Y" and another has "X -> ?".

And here's where the problem comes in. Comic strips have limited bandwidth and they rely on context to be understood.

So when Dilbert says "I am Black identifying as White", the LGBT context immediately translates this to Y, wherewas the Non-LGBT context does a page fault and looks elsewhere for what it could mean.

In isolation, this looks like LGBT people are being overly sensitive, but every human is "overly sensitive" in some way. We all operate in our own context based on what we've experienced.

Yes it is. It's literally The One Joke™, with a thin veneer of corporate policy wrapped around it as plausible deniability.

As far as checking sources, one of yours is a political advocacy organization that explicitly acts and lobbies against DEI.

As a former newsroom employee, I am well aware that there is no such thing as an unbiased news department.

I had never heard of City Journal, but the article was so clearly written from a biased perspective that I clicked through to the main page and was hit with the Soros lead story.

Same with the Washington Examiner, never heard of it, but the "top stories" sidebar shows a VERY clear bias.

Personally, I am happy to accept that there are specific instances and anecdotes where DEI and progressive policies have been overzealous or enforced in a way that disadvantages white men and others who explicitly and loudly reject it.

I'm also willing to acknowledge that there is overwhelming, and far more plentiful, data that support the arguments of systemic racism. I believe DEI as a concept is a good thing that occasionally goes wrong, much like literally any system applied on a large scale. Patents are good, patent trolls are bad. The ADA is good, ADA trolls are bad. DEI is good, using it as a political hiring filter is bad.

He won a Pulitzer prize for a contemporary comic about Watergate.

And what is that, pray tell?

And women not only outnumber men in college, but that divide is increasing rapidly and now includes most higher degrees as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/business/dealbook/women-c...

The whole thing to me feels as though there are a lot of people making a fuss about absolutely nothing just so they have something to make a fuss about. To drive the divide you need that fuss, not the request to change pronouns or to try to strive for racial equality. Those make sense, and if someone really disagrees with them then they won't be able to stop society changing around them.

Which is a lot of what this is all about: people rejecting change simply because that wasn't the world they were born into and they think that it is in their power to reject change in the environment. They're living dinosaurs who will eventually be overcome by history, even if they have their occasional spasms.

Give us an example? Surely not last Sunday's. I think maybe 3 weeks ago I got a good chuckle but that's every other month or so.

Being facetious, are we?

Talking about petty nuisances related to trying to solve the greater problem while not even mentioning what the greater problem is usually an indicator that you don't see the greater problem as a problem.

The greater problems being racism and transphobia in the context of this discussion.

You just described Trump's campaign strategy to a T.

The topic wasn't how much of their time they spend talking about politics, it's what kind of opinions they express when they do choose to make some public statement related to politics. And the answer to that is that they know who butters their bread (Hollywood Producers) and whenever they say something political, more often than not it's not going to be something that causes them problem for their employment.

I don't understand what beliefs you're referring to? I thought they were asking people to promote diversity, what "belief" is there in that?

That is what I find peculiar. At least in the United States, being "conservative" or "progressive" and their various synonyms aren't really defined strictly by Miriam-Webster but by the zeitgeist.

> You might disagree with the changes being made, but (social) progressives believe they're making them for the betterment of humans.

Most people believe this of their own policies, not just progressives. That's a very unhelpful way of describing these two poles, as is relying on the dictionary.

Ethno-nationalists want to progress into a world where conflict is avoided by clear borders between naturally antagonistic groups, while globalists want to revert to a time before clear nations and borders, to plunge the world into perpetual ethnic conflict, such as what happened in India and Africa after colonialists drew borders without regard for which groups lived where.

Anti-immigrationists want to progress to strict enforcement of the US border, while pro-immigrationists want to maintain the status quo of loose enforcement and origin-agnostic immigration policy that has been in place since 1965.

Ukraine wants to maintain the nationalist, separatist status quo of an independent country, while Russia wants to progress towards a larger, unified, multicultural whole.

See? Easy.

Sure, there were stretches of time where it didn't address anything particularly politics-related, but to suggest that it was not political seems to quite spectacularly miss the point.

That's a legal precept, not a cultural one.

We've culturally never adhered to it as a nation, nor really pretended to.

We've really not done that great a job of it even in the legal realm, at the level of policing. The courts are a better story.

And yet, most commentors here would want you to respect such a person.

Welcome to HN.

Good find. He was telling the same story 15 years ago.

Absent some other evidence, it seems the main reason to be skeptical is simply that it's not a pleasing thing to hear.

  Why would Scott Adams say that his boss told him it was about race?

To me, we're beyond whether his race was a factor in promotion - he by direct provided self description is probably not a good candidate. But I'll guess beyond that.

Maybe his boss wanted to keep him in his current position but needed a scapegoat to blame as a factor beyond both their control. Keep in mind this would have been more acceptable to suggest in 1970s/1980s than 2022.

Maybe Scott Adams is making this all up or taking a partial comment and constructing his own flawed narrative around it, or, in the very least, neglecting key context to fully understand it.

Again, I don't know what you want me to say here. I never brought up the origination of Dilbert nor understand where you are driving this discussion to.

I have a hard time believing such a conversation happened.

Yet Adams' claim - of discrimination for being white and male - is somehow presumed to be 'different' from the 'truth', just because he "claimed that long after the fact"?

The truth does not change depending on the age of a claim.

Evidence would be interesting, but unsupported accusations don't add anything to the conversation.

Anyone could respond "he claimed that...which is somewhat different from it being known to be true" after any claim. It's just a way of derailing discussion and reducing the cognitive dissonance of a statement you'd rather not believe.

If they say "We think this is a better way to move forward" and somehow manage to avoid giving the impression that they really just want to try to recreate some imagined version of the past, I generally give them the benefit of the doubt.

Personally - I think Scott Adams is more than a little bit batshit insane, but I certainly don't think he's punching down in the strips presented here.

When people who are and have been marginalized, after centuries of fighting, finally get some of the establishment on their side, it doesn't suddenly become "punching up" to mock and satirize the efforts to get them the recognition, opportunity, and equity they deserve, even if said punches are, on the surface, aimed at individuals with positions of power.

It's how Dilbert is every engineer, PHB is every clueless boss, and Wally is every elder peer, Asok is every junior peer. That's what makes the comic relatable. It also, as the article points out, what provides constraints to these characters as well.

If it was mocking HR policy, then it would be signified with Catbert. It's not. It's very simple.

"Candidates must be from one or more of the following equity-seeking groups to apply: women, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, and racialized groups"

https://www.universityaffairs.ca/search-job/?job_id=58317

That's cold comfort to people living in california, like scott adams.

Exactly my point in regard to the upthread question:

“Is it now well known that Dilbert exists solely because Scott Adams was told - as a young executive - that he would not be promoted further because he is a white male?”

I have no idea if that occurred or if it is why Dilbert exists, though I certainly know that is part of the story that Adams tells about it.

While she is actively dedicated to social progress, (supports gay marriage, believes in the right to abortion, etc.), she feels we will be most successful at achieving this goal with leadership who prioritize fiscal conservativism.

I suspect that many Republicans are in this camp.

Wanting to be truly equal is progressive.

0 - Many groups have historically and currently been victims of bias.

1 - Good anti-bias training makes us better managers and colleagues.

2 - Psychology research is on much weaker footing (replicability) than most of us would like.

3 - One of the quickest ways to limit your career at a company is to point out when they are going overboard on Diversity and Inclusion initiatives and policies.

Au contraire... I wish I had time to rebut this but I've got some interviews slated for the next 3 hours. I appreciate your perspective, though.

I guess the only argument I can come up with of at the short moment I have left is that similar arguments are made about religion in general, even ones that the mainstream would consider to be "cults." This doesn't actually debate the point you made about my pseudoscience claim, but what I'm saying is that I might agree with you in that sense you were describing regardless of whether unconscious bias training is scientifically valid or not. (although I think there are other problems with it even if some good can come of it)

Not the poster you replied to but it's possible that the quality of training was different

I can't agree with you that this kind of training is very good, however. It is often very political and propagandist.

But I value taking good things from everywhere. E.g. I am not a Christian but I know there are some good things in their teachings as well

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again. Doesn't mean it's less blind.

As a man who used to be very quiet/timid, and get talked over constantly, I'm fairly unsympathetic to this specific anecdote as having anything at all to do with bias.

Quiet people get talked over. Period.

First, supporting the Republican party for fiscal reasons necessarily means that you're supporting their social positions as well. To paraphrase the old line, what do you call someone who only voted for the Nazis because they supported their economic policies? A Nazi.

In other words, the social policies of a party, especially insofar as they affect the repression of minority groups, a permanent and undeniable stain upon any degree of economic progress that they may also create through their policies.

To put it yet another, more personal way: If you were in a group that the Republicans have targeted with hateful rhetoric or legislation in the last 20 years (gay, trans, Muslim, Latino, etc.), would you forgive me for voting for them if I rationalized it by saying "Well, I think their policies are better for the economy. Sorry that you can't get married / are facing discrimination in your daily life. Thoughts and prayers!"

Second, the data does not support the theory that Republicans are better for the economy. Under Republicans, GDP on average does far worse, recessions are more likely, employment goes down, debt and deficit go up... by just about any metric, they are simply not very good at governing the economy.

So if someone says they vote for Republicans for economic reasons, it's because they like the Republican lines on 'lower taxes' and 'personal responsibility' at a dogmatic level, not because they've done any kind of thoughtful analysis.

Anarcho-primitivism is a discrete variant of the overarching conservative phenomenon: when an-prims go say "go back" they mean a specific and particularly reactionary set of social transformations. This doesn't mean that ordinary conservatives don't desire social regression; it just makes them not as openly reactionary as the most reactionary social conservatives.

You're right, of course: any short and pithy summary of an ideology is going to have gaps. American conservatism is "funny" in the sense that it admits of additional gaps: there is a significant (although continually diminishing) population of "purely fiscal" conservatives who have dominated American intellectual conservatism, for example. And this is true for progressive movements as well, particular in the context of labor.

I don't consider myself a progressive per se, but I think their framing would be something like this: change, if not good in itself, frequently begets opportunities to make things better.

If a progressive movement started advocating eugenics, they would be advocating a return to previous social mores - that's conservatism in a nutshell. Just because that movement also happens to hold "woke" ideas doesn't change the direction they want to carry progress.

This isn't a moral gotcha for anyone who has more historical memory than a goldfish - the problem is that most people don't seem to care to, so they come up with contrived examples like yours bc they can't keep the thread of human history for longer than a generation.

Liz Cheney for speaking out against Trump. Paul Ryan for compromising too much. Jon Huntsman for having adopted Chinese kids.

I too am a fiscal conservative who largely identifies as Republican. Alas, it's very hard for me to say that today's Republicans represent me. No one actually tries to balance the budget and it's all about incredible social wars that kind of doesn't matter. (Like complaining about the number of lesbians in modern cartoons or whatever).

The fiscal conservatives that speak up fail the Republican purity test and are consistently kicked out. Literally all of them.

The few remaining fiscal conservatives have converted into cult of Trump, like Graham, to keep their voters placated.

No, because as we saw in the 1930 and 40s this strain of virulent fascism is not new, but sadly quite traditional - this was the conservatism bubbling through in reaction to modern liberalism.

> It's conservative to wish Roe had remained on the books?

If Roe had been an office worker they wouldn't have even qualified for early retirement, that's how briefly those rights existed - then reactionary conservatism struck to return us to the good old days.

If to make a "point" about history you have to limit your discussion to things that changed only in the last 30-50 years, you might have an alternate agenda.

I'm not here defending Republicans, I consider both parties to be controlled by big businesses.

My point is the electorate isn't going to vote for proper fiscal conservatives so it's a bit ridiculous to expect politicians to be fiscal conservatives. Maybe if the US dollar loses the reserve status and the connection between policy and consequence tightens then maybe after an economic disaster the public may want fiscal conservatism.