This was a more interesting article than I thought it would be, and I never loved Dilbert, and I think this was an interesting exploration into why. This isn't sort of a surfacy fuck MAGA thing, but there is a nihilism in it that is described by Scott Adams in this quote:
"Mr. Adams said he hadn’t changed. Instead, the political parties had. The liberals used to be the rebels, the outsiders, the ones poking fun at the self-serious establishment."
Maybe it's that there builders and destroyers and Scott Adams has always seemed more like a destroyer? I'm willing to entertain philosophical screeds on nihilism, but actual nihilism is intensely offputting, and his whole life seems to have reflected that nihilism. I think there are ways to "poke fun at the self-serious establishment" (and I appreciate plenty of folks who do) that still reflect a belief in _something_. I can like almost anything, but as I make the distinction, I think that it's important to be building something, that can be a thing that is very different from mainstream life. I can appreciate almost anything someone put a lot of heart and soul into, but oddly;
I often think about the commentary that "people get more conservative as they get older" and the MAGA movement isn't conservative, it's something else. It is this nascent conservatism that I've been nurturing in my older years; currently best informed by some of the writings of Roger Scruton that makes Scott Adams the MAGA movement so distasteful.
techblueberry•1h ago
"Mr. Adams said he hadn’t changed. Instead, the political parties had. The liberals used to be the rebels, the outsiders, the ones poking fun at the self-serious establishment."
Maybe it's that there builders and destroyers and Scott Adams has always seemed more like a destroyer? I'm willing to entertain philosophical screeds on nihilism, but actual nihilism is intensely offputting, and his whole life seems to have reflected that nihilism. I think there are ways to "poke fun at the self-serious establishment" (and I appreciate plenty of folks who do) that still reflect a belief in _something_. I can like almost anything, but as I make the distinction, I think that it's important to be building something, that can be a thing that is very different from mainstream life. I can appreciate almost anything someone put a lot of heart and soul into, but oddly;
I often think about the commentary that "people get more conservative as they get older" and the MAGA movement isn't conservative, it's something else. It is this nascent conservatism that I've been nurturing in my older years; currently best informed by some of the writings of Roger Scruton that makes Scott Adams the MAGA movement so distasteful.