Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 9, 2026
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MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2402 CWSA 03/03/24

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d of the most important thing happening in the world. Yeah, Glenn will talk about the octopus in a second. Then he says blah blah blah about Glenn Greenwald's claims about the CIA. Tucker says I mean it's confirmed. It's not like a fever dream. That's what I keep saying. We know it's true. And he goes it's real. They played it in the last election domestically. And I guess it shows how dumb I am…

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g and teaching. It's kind of amazing. And I was trying to think what other jobs are illegal in some states but not others. And I thought abortion. So you couldn't be an abortion doctor where abortion's illegal, right? Abortionist. You couldn't have a weed dispensary. Is there anything else? Yeah, not that they have anything in common. But just imagine being in a job that some major state thought about it hard and said you're bad for the world or we're going to make you illegal in our state. Oh, prostitution. There's another one.

Anyway, so here's my question. Could Trump ban DEI in the country by executive order? Could you ban DEI nationally in corporations, not just government entities but corporations? Could you ban it by executive order? Now my understanding of executive orders is very thin but what I think it means usually is there has to be some existing laws on the books or it would have to be right within his job description somehow. I guess he can only interpret existing things. Is that right? An executive order is not a new law. It's a new way of interpreting some existing law, right? So is there any existing law that would allow somebody to do an EO that would ban it nationally? Well it would be a civil rights, civil rights. I would think civil rights would be sufficient but I might have a better one coming up. I'll make you wait for it. Well I won't make you wait for it. Maybe I'll just skip right to it.

I asked Google, so you have to question it, whether you could sue somebody for brainwashing. Is it illegal to brainwash somebody? That's kind of interesting because where's the dividing line between just influencing and brainwashing? Well I would say this. If you're influencing somebody just to vote for your candidate we accept that. That's good. If you influence somebody to buy your product we're okay with that. We don't call that brainwashing. But suppose you influence somebody to do something that's clearly damaging to them personally. What would that be called? Well I would call that brainwashing and I would think that that would be illegal. So if you're brainwashing somebody else for your own benefit and there was no benefit to the brainwashed person I would think that you're doing something illegal.

So I looked it up and it did say that if you inflict emotional abuse on people, yeah emotional abuse could be the trigger for the brainwashing being illegal. If you just brainwash somebody but they were happy about it you're fine. But if you brainwash them and they're in great mental distress because of it, yeah that feels like you actually attack them. It's basically assault.

And here's what I'd like to see. I'd love to see maybe Republicans sue the DNC, the Democrats, and sue the Biden administration for brainwashing black Americans into thinking they are victims. Now here's the argument. The argument is that we know very well that if you tell somebody they're a victim they'll have a less good life. Would you agree? I think 100% of social science would agree that if you tell somebody they're a victim, you know in the normal course of things, I'm not talking about somebody who's literally a slave, you could tell them they're a victim maybe that's better than not. But in the normal course of people just living and thriving in our society if you took one group of them and you brainwashed them into believing they were the victims you would be doing tremendous damage to them personally, psychologically, economically, socially. You could actually decrease their ability to reproduce literally because it causes them to have some separation from the people that they think are oppressing them and maybe some of them would have married some of those people in another world. So you can actually reduce their ability to reproduce, their ability to thrive, the ability to have a good job.

Now the whole point of DEI is if you complain enough something good will happen and that would be maybe the defense. Maybe that would be the defense. Hey something good will happen if we complain enough. But I'd like to see the science. I think the science would show you that the conservatives who are black in this country generally are happier. I'll bet you could find that in a poll. There's your science. Do a poll of conservative black Americans versus liberal black Americans. Who do you think would be happier? Probably the ones who think they can take their own fate into their own hands, the Republicans, and make something out of themselves even if there are difficulties, even if there is discrimination, that they can still thrive. But if you thought you couldn't thrive because of all the discrimination you would be at a great psychological economic disadvantage.

And now I don't have any illusion that somebody could win such a case but it would be the greatest reframe of all time. The greatest reframe of all time would be suing Democrats for brainwashing black Americans into the worst situation they could be in becau

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se of the brainwashing. All right. And it has the odd political quality of being true. But the reframing of it would be amazing. You could lose and win, right? You could lose the court case but you would win by simply making it a thing that people have to talk about. That there is a difference between persuading and brainwashing. You know the difference when you see it. TDS is a result of brainwas…

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