E76: re:joinder - Lose Bigly: Scott Adams Explains Business, Politics, and Persuasion

re:verb

Are you winning bigly?

No?

Neither is Scott Adams, the infamous cartoonist, blogger, and self-proclaimed “expert predictor”, whose formerly ubiquitous comic strip Dilbert was recently pulled from national syndication. In September, Dilbert featured “anti-woke” content caricaturing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the corporate world, and it was promptly “cancelled” by Lee Enterprises, owner of about 100 newspapers that had formerly carried the strip. Nevertheless, back in 2017, Adams claimed to be an expert on the subject of winning–as well as communication and “political reality”–in his book / political manifesto Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. Adams famously predicted that Trump would win the 2016 election, and he grounds most of the book’s arguments in the ostensible ethos he has garnered from this single successful prediction.

Win Bigly is the subject of our latest re:joinder episode, in which Alex reads some of its most head-scratching passages for Sophie and Calvin, and all three co-hosts learn far less than they expected to about what makes Donald Trump a “master persuader.” We do our best to make sense of Adams’ arguments before picking apart their most spurious assumptions: Adams’ questionable narrative of the 2016 election, his bizarre heuristic / coding scheme for “persuaders” (from “weapons-grade”, to “cognitive scientist”, down to “commercial grade”... ?), as well as his overall epistemology and ethics, featuring the claims that Trump’s victory “blew a hole in the fabric of reality,” and that this is a good thing -- not politically, but because it proved Scott Adams right. All told, Adams draws on his questionable credentials as a business person, communication expert, and philosopher to provide one of the most bizarre analyses of Donald Trump’s rhetoric ever written.

This is (probably) part one in a series, since we were only able to get through the introduction. Please join us for future installments! As cognitive scientists – rather than weapons-grade persuaders – we need all the support we can get.

Works and Concepts Referenced

Beasley, V. B. (2010). The rhetorical presidency meets the unitary executive: Implications for presidential rhetoric on public policy. Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 13(1), 7-35.

Bitzer, L. F. (1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy & rhetoric, 1-14.

Our re:blurb ep on rhetorical situation.

Hume, D. (2003). A treatise of human nature. Courier Corporation.

Hume, D. (2016). An enquiry concerning human understanding. In Seven masterpieces of philosophy (pp. 191-284). Routledge.

Tulis, J. K. (1987). The Rhetorical Presidency. Princeton University Press.

Our re:blurb episode on Dialogicality (featuring Clint Eastwood’s “Empty Chair Obama” speech)