A Return To The Mail Pile: How Then Shall A Man Live? The Scott Adams Question

How lonely is America anyway?

Kevin Costner in his best film, The Postman. Yes, I said it.

Dear Reader:

I get quite a bit of mail but I always have time for my old friends. I think it’s the case that I was rightly rejected from a great many right-wing things in that way that they could sense that I wasn’t quite, not really, one of them. Of course it didn’t help matters much that Obama and his ilk had decided that I, too, had to be rejected on account of my white maleness. The irony of all that rejection is that it seems a near certainty that the Democratic Party can’t help but nominate white men for president. In any event, I thought I might take this moment to reply to an old friend, in public. Shamefully I hadn’t replied to his letter written at the end of May. I do so now, in italics.

Dear Charles

I have not written in quite a while. But your column about Scott Adams caught my attention.

I started listening to Adams when I worked delivery in Portland for two years. I would start my shift by getting a senior coffee at the Mcdonalds. Then I would put on the Adams podcast and enjoy the coffee as part of the simultaneous sip. I generally listened to the first hour of Adams. The driving allowed me to listen to 4 hours of podcasts.

Dear John:

I sometimes wonder how bad an American I am by how rarely I have been to McDonald’s. To the extent I go there it’s to feed a homeless person or use the bathroom, which I only use if I absolutely must. Adams, I think, meant the podcast precisely for you — those of who must work — and need a companion to pass the time.

It’s been a great many years since I was on Joe Rogan — ten years? maybe more? — but every so often a young man, usually Hispanic, will tell me how much he enjoyed me on Joe Rogan. It’s a strange thing to have yourself reflected back to yourself. For him I was talking right then and there to him. To me it was a decade ago. To him, yesterday afternoon. Of course Joe Rogan wasn’t Joe Rogan when I went on Joe Rogan and yet, Joe Rogan became Joe Rogan and there are not a few liberals lamenting how they might create a “Joe Rogan of the Left.” I don’t think it quite works this way. I think that there are bends in the river and that — sooner or later — these things happen as they must. Have I read too much Tolstoy and ruminated too much on free will? Perhaps. But I don’t think he’s wrong. It seems just as obvious to me that Rogan will not have as much of a role in a future presidential election because he has had one in a past election. The GenXers seem altogether too hired for the actions demanded of us.

How many things are there like this podcasting all around us? We have to tread very carefully lest the actions we take five or ten or fifteen years ago come to beat us up in the present or future.

When I think about the podcasting world I wonder what sort of country we will become with all these young men and women listening rather than reading or watching. Who pays Tucker Carlson? And Ezra Klein? And so on and so on. Is there really that vibrant an advertiser market? Have you or has anyone you know bought something from one of these podcasters?

I can’t say that I find podcasting all that bad, to be honest. Indeed I think we might wonder what a Republic of Podcasters as opposed to the Republic of Letters of yesteryear. There’s something very American about being alone and listening to someone else, probably in your car, likely on your headphones.

All that said, the law seems to be that when you reach a certain age you’re obliged to start a podcast. I hope I die before I get there. In my wildest fantasies I hope we have entered a Republic of Substackers? I think not. But then again, I don’t know. I shall be writing and writing until they take away my pens, notebook, and computer from me.

Adams struck me as a quintessential boomer. Optimistic, forward looking, hard working and a self-made man. He was a particular kind of libertarian boomer. He enjoyed his weed and went through wives like most men go through cars. He really believed that the right policies carried out by the right people would work. I enjoyed his discussion of policy, his rants against the teacher’s union and his common sense. He also looked critically at the communications strategies of people. Early on, he saw that AOC was gifted and going places.

Talent has a way of making itself impossible to ignore. So it is with AOC. So it is with Scott Adams. I have never really worked in that sterile, beige place we call a “corporate office” but were I to, I’d imagine I’d like to have Dilbert — who always struck me as Adams’s alter ego — for a laugh and by extension company.

I am not one to begrudge a man his vices and I am not one to believe in wife abandonment but I think Adams could credibly make the case that his wives had abandoned him long before. Every writer or artist I know struggles with the demands of a fulling personal life — the worlds we conjure up are oftentimes might more compelling and rewarding than the one we all inhabit. Will Dilbert ever have cancer? Hard to see.

But Adams’s libertarianism only went so far. I had asked Adams for his help on freeing Ross Ulbricht, which Trump ultimately did. Adams refused. He blamed Ulbricht for fentanyl and by extension the loss of his stepson. I felt for Adams then, just as I do now.

Does it really matter that our children share our blood? Or is it better that they share our ideas? In that sense I think Adams has quite a number of children.

His experiences gave him perspectives on issues that I had never even thought about.

He pushed hard for the Covid Vaccine.

I remember him defending Matt Gaetz.

Adams comes from the sort of places where people talk as Trump talks. Trump as fantasy. Trump as the Man. Trump as a character no less real than Paul Bunyion or Paul Revere or George Washington. Adams’s analysis of Trump’s ties to Norman Vincent Peale and the power of positive thinking really changed my view about how produced Trump really was. Who was this Trump that sprang out of the television and into the White House?

When it mattered Adams did the right thing by Gaetz even if Gaetz was too cowardly to appreciate it and the significance of being an Israeli skeptical Republican before October 7th. This would have made him Churchill — his father’s hero — but it was not to be. I tried to get Gaetz to understand that but he wants to be Governor of Florida and not President of the United States and I suspect he will get what he wants but not want what he gets.

When one speaks publicly one runs certain risks. We all make mistakes but I remain pretty pleased with myself for dodging the coronavirus vaccine. It wasn’t without its consequences in my life, I must say, though I suspect I avoided the worst of it. I didn’t get to see my grandfather before he passed. Nor was I allowed to visit my child. Nor was I permitted to go to my brother’s wedding (they all got covid anyway)!

You can get angry about these sorts of things — or you can see them as instructive. I will never trust the judgment of anyone who told everyone to get vaccinated or that it would be a few weeks to flatten the curve or whatever. In fact I became a lot more skeptical of most of the medical establishment, something I have long believed.

There are a number of things like this, of course, where being wrong has the consequence of stealing people’s time or ruining their businesses or affecting their marriages and we must tread carefully, especially when we’ve been lucky enough to be given a public responsibility. I am so very grateful that I had the resources to survive whatever happened in 2020. I had guns, I had water, I had toilet paper, and I had books. I spent Covid traveling around the country in my convertible and reading books I had lied previously about having read.

What can you say? There’s something downright gross about how many of our very online friends encouraged everyone to stay online but that’s business, isn’t it? Business wants you engaged. Tech wanted you a part of it. Oh that precious data. I don’t really know why but I wasn’t seduced by all the doom and gloom but I didn’t.

I have a theory about it. Death has always been a companion of mine, since I was a small child. When I was a boy my mother had cancer. One of my friends died of cancer. So did one of my only friends in high school. Nobody makes it out of this life alive. Better get living.

I also noted his over the top pro-Israel views. He pushed for war with Iran (this is 2020-2022). I wondered if this was his way of buying an insurance policy. It struck me as a little too much for someone with his libertarian leanings.

After I ended delivery work, I stopped following him closely. I am glad for this new insight from your column.

As a boomer who has also had his PSA monitored and had the biopsies to see if there is any cancer, I have an idea what he has been through. I also have a hard time believing that the Bidens did not know about the prostate cancer. Unless the dozen or so Covid vaccines and boosters turbo charged it. I am think that I am ready to believe anything about the covid shots.

There is a tragic side to Adams. No children. No wife. What is his legacy after he dies? Limbaugh was similar. Lots of radio time. No children or grandchildren.

I was surprised to read Trump’s attack on the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo.

Almost like he had been reading you.

I am hoping that this attack will open a discussion about the heavily Roman Catholic character of the Fed Soc.

Reflecting on the Protestant origins of this country is part of its recovery.

Comprendre c’est tout pardonner. (Is that Tolstoy again?) I have had a great many friends tell me over the years how they wish that they, too, could speak out about the Israeli war machine and Netanyahu but that they fear an end to their career. I send them the Live Not By Lies stuff. Some of them even read it. One day we might even get to read Two Hundred Years Together.

My cowardly friends applaud me, in private, of course, and even whisper. When I ask “why are you whispering” they say, “they are listening.” I used to think that was ridiculous. I no longer do, in a post-NSO world. I just don’t want to participate in the mass mistreatment of other human beings.

Lincoln here is helpful. “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.” Israel is not a democracy. Israel is a tyranny. Do you want your children to be Palestinianized? At some point Israel will run out of Palestinians to kill. And who then shall they kill? Perhaps all of us. All I needed to know was that Netanyahu liked Pfizer for me to know that that vaccine was never going to go anywhere near me.

We launched Traitwell so that people could compare their DNA to see if they had a risk of developing bad covid. I was trying to do my part, to send the other captives the key through the door. Did it work? Not really. Sort of. But it will next time, I promise.

Once upon a time I was seduced by Rome though it didn’t quite take, I’m sorry to report. I wish I could believe in Catholicism but I don’t. I wish them no ill will and some of the people nearest and dearest to me are Catholics but I am not in their number. Could I have a deathbed conversion? Absolutely. Do I admire much of what the Catholic Church stands for? Yes, I do. And I suspect that many of my Catholic friends will clean up its excesses. Why should Leonard Leo be the final word on what it means to be a Catholic? You can’t be more Catholic than the Pope. Does Opus Dei understand this fact? Or do they just love Fascism more than they do Christ?

It is not the least bit surprising to me that my friends in the Trump Administration are reading my Substack and those of my friends. So many of my friends in the Biden Administration read me too. I see the traffic. I see who opens the emails. Thank you. I appreciate your kindness.

I am delighted that you are enjoying southern hospitality. Once upon a time I bought a few hundred peaches in South Carolina. They were delicious though I have long had a peach allergy. I take it as a metaphor for the South. Wonderful, but not for me, especially not in the summer. I lament living south of the Mason Dixon Line or East of the Rockies but we do what we do for love and country. Some day I hope to live where I want. Maybe back in Alaska?

When you reach the environs of D.C. look me up. All of my friends are free to visit me in the Emerald City this summer. The things of friends are in common. I am happy to hear your family is well.

I’m not there with you on Doug Wilson — it seems very Mormon-adjacent and terribly strange — but maybe I should have a look at it myself. Trust nothing in Politico. It’s too Confederate. It’s too East German. It’s not terribly American.

But then what is these days?

This might be.