Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 23, 2026
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on Twitter users to me. That would feel like a direct attack on the Republic. That's how I take it. To me that wouldn't look like free market. That wouldn't look like any kind of free market thing. That would look like just the worst thing. And so my first impression was Apple would never take a risk that big because they don't take risks like that, right? That's just not an Apple thing. But here…

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uld give up and leave the line? That would be a pretty straightforward prediction. If we can just make the lines longer on Election Day that's all we need because people don't have infinite time. They vote during the workday and some of them just need to say I'm going home.

So it looks to me without any proof of this right it looks to be like the inefficiency was the feature not the accident and it's being treated like a feature not an accident because we're not trying to fix it, right? If you saw some big move for Maricopa to say my God we've got to change this system you know we've got to make sure nothing like this ever happens so here's what we're going to do to fix all of this. No. As far as I know they plan to run the next election in the same way. I'm just going to guess but I'll bet you the next election has some long lines and some unexpected technical problems that don't look like any rigged election at all. It's just hey it's technology. Technology sometimes is you know a little bit tweaked wrong. No big deal. It's sort of normal. You'd expect a few hiccups in exactly the right place so we got the most problems and the place that would actually change the election. All the other there are other places that had problems too but a coincidence wasn't it that the one place that would definitely change things that place had the problems, long lines. And as many times as they check the machines the night before how weird that they didn't work the very next day. How weird. Yeah I don't know.

Here's my take. Here's my take on the elections. Guilty until proven innocent. Guilty until proven innocent. That's my standard. And to me they look guilty. So you can let's see if I get kicked off of social media. YouTube and the whoever is watching me on YouTube and decides whether to monetize me is my opinion that the credibility of the last election is below the level in which you should accept it. Now I don't have any specific claim about a specific bad shenanigans. I'm just saying that the overall situation with which we've been presented doesn't appear designed to make us believe it. It doesn't seem designed for us to believe it. It's designed for us not to believe it which causes more problems for Republicans, right?

What's the worst case scenario for Republicans? An election they say they don't believe, right? That was the trap. It's the perfect trap. If we can trap those Republicans into doubting a second election everybody's going to think that they're not good citizens, right? So YouTube I don't know who did what. I'm making no specific allegations of bad behavior. I'm simply saying that if you look at the design which is intentional the intentional design is to make it less credible. So I accept what I've been told. I've been given the officials have given me a non-credible election by design intentionally by design and so I accept what they've given me. It's not credible so I reject the 2022 election in my opinion. It I don't have a specific allegation. It was presented to us in a way that we're being told not to believe it and so I accept the message.

It would be easy to say here's what we're doing to make you feel more comfortable with the result but I don't see that. You know if you had that I'd say oh you're designing the system to make me feel comfortable with the result. I get that now. I feel I do feel more comfortable. But if you design it in a way the design is very clearly to make us less comfortable with the results because they know how to do it the other way, right? Do you think there's any doubt among the professionals how to make the election completely unquestionable? Yeah just paper ballots count on the same day have witnesses. It's easy. There's no question about how to do it. So it's a choice and it's a choice both sides appear to be making.

So if both sides are making the choice to have non-credible looking elections you as a consumer should take the message and say oh you're presenting us a non-credible election. We'll accept it as a non-credible election. Now having said that I agree with certifying it. I agree with certifying it. Same reason I agreed with moving on when Trump allegedly lost in 2020 because you do have to move on. You do have to move on and that's a separate question from fixing the problem. You have to fix the problem but sometimes you just have to move on. You can redo the election? Yeah no but we would just be redoing it with a system that's not credible.

But do you mind that the vote was maybe not as accurate as it could have been given that some people may not have participated? Here's why I'm not complaining as much as I could. It was the first thing I said today. I don't think the vote is what matters. I think it's censorship determined the narrative. The narrative determined the opinions. The opinions determined the vote and pretty much you know ninety percent of how we ended up where we were is from the censorship not from anything else. So the vote was important and it may have been the last straw because it was a close election so it probably did matter just because it was close but ninety percent of it was just that the censorship determined what people saw. What people saw determined their opinions and then they voted on their opinions. So it wasn't actually an informed public and then the public makes opinions and votes for the representatives sort of the way a republic should work. Nothing like that happened. Nothing like that happened. The brainwashers decided what we would think and then we acted on it. That's all.

Right. Do a redo? Yeah we maybe we should have some kind of a standing redo system so you can redo it quickly.

Now here's what I'd like to do. I would love to see a survey of how many Republicans got out of line and then separately how many of them didn't vote in the normal way but maybe you had to put their ballot in the special ballot box that didn't have a good chain of custody. So wouldn't you like to know how many Republicans got out of line? Because it might be none. It might be none because it could be the Republicans were just you know screw it I'm here all day you're not going to make me get out of line because you know Republicans are pretty much tough characters which is exactly why I like them, right? The thing I like most about conservatives is that when they have a principle they're really going to stick to it like they're really sticky on principle and if the principle is you're not going to discourage me from voting maybe every single Republican in the United States stayed in line as long as it took. It's possible because Republicans are not like regular people, right? They're not. They're very stubborn and they don't like to get beaten you know by a game. You know they're not going to be they like to be beaten by a magic trick.

All right. Thought experiment. Why can anyone do that list of things to succeed but not anyone can avoid overeating? Oh good question. So I told you the things that somebody needs to succeed and why do I think that somebody has free will and they can do that thing when I don't think that people can stop overeating? Because they like to eat and the thing is that eating is an addiction and addictions are a whole different deal, right? So if you have an addiction you have to be in addiction mode to deal with that. But what I was talking about was sort of a non-addiction. You're just a kid and you're trying to figure out your way in the world. There's no addiction involved. So if there's no addiction involved you can certainly brainwash kids in the direction you want.

Make a clip of my mom's useful advice maybe. So yeah maybe so. The trouble is that my mom had that be the best at one thing advice which is the opposite of what I ended up doing to good effect.

All right. You need a micro lesson in hoarding. Oh yeah maybe I'll do that. Make a listen to hoarding. You want to stop hoarding I assume you don't want a micro lesson on how to hoard more. Yeah maybe so. That's a good reframe I think.

Let's talk about China. Let's talk about China. You know there's an interesting thing. When I see the aerial views of the protests so the things that are different number one it's not that unusual to have protests in China. What's unusual is that they're country-wide. That's unusual and they may be bigger you know in each individual place than we've seen before. But here's what here's the thing that I'm really taken by when I look at the crowds. So you see a big crowd from above and you'll see the let's say the riot police I guess they tend to be dressed in all white and or police uniforms and you can see how many police there are and then you can see the size of the public crowd and it looks to me like the crowd is more powerful than the law enforcement like a lot.

And I don't think that the law enforcement wants to open fire and start massacring people because that then the public goes to the next level as well. And I'm watching that and I'm thinking it looks like the Indian elephant trainer situation is what it looks like. Let me explain that. I use this example a lot. If you're an elephant trainer how do you get this gigantic mammal that could crush you if it wants to to follow your orders? How do you make an elephant afraid of you? Like I always wondered like why does the elephant do anything for this little person? Like it makes sense why your dog does what you want because you're bigger than your dog usually, right? You feed it. But it seems like the elephant would just want to crush you if you beat it with a stick.

But the way they do it is they hurt the elephant when it's a baby. So when the elephant is a baby and it doesn't know how to fight back or anything the elephant trainer you know hits it until the elephant is afraid of the human and then the human never becomes less afraid of the human. The elephant never does. So the elephant becomes a big monster but still thinks that little human can beat it up. So that never changed.

And I feel like the Chinese public is the elephant because I watched the number of people there are protesting and it's a far bigger force than the number trying to stop them. It's not even close. Now yes if that force wanted to use firearms then then it's not a fair fight but if they use the firearms then the crowd gets bigger too, right?

So here's what I don't think the Chinese public knows. They have complete control already. The Chinese public has complete control and they don't know it because if you saw the size of the crowd they just have to rush. They just have to rush the other people. They just have to say all right we're just we're going to take you down and just use numbers and just take them out. And I feel like the public either the public doesn't want to escalate or they think they don't have the power like the elephant that was abused as a baby because they've been abused since birth to do what they're told. And even as rebellious as they are now which is impressive to watch I feel like they still don't know how much power they have.

I look at it from above and I say this is a five-minute problem. People would die but it's a five-minute problem. Every one of those law enforcement people could be grabbed by a person in the crowd brought down. Five minutes. In five minutes they would own the city but they're not doing it.

Now here's the question. What would have happened in America? Forget about guns for a second. Just im

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agine imagine the protesters are unarmed in America. Do you think America would not have already taken down the law enforcement? I think Americans would have already taken them down because we're not trained like the elephant. We're trained to think we are in control. Yeah maybe maybe it's one of the things that makes Americans such one of the reasons we're is we grow up thinking we're in control,…

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