One of my fav Dilbert strips, still on my kitchen bookshelf where I taped it 20 years ago
Dilbert vs. Leviathan: Scott Adams’s Greatest Hits
by James Bovard 
Scott Adams, the cartoonist who gave Dilbert to the world, passed away in January after a hard fight against cancer. His glorious BS radar deserves to be prominently displayed in the Smithsonian Institute. No one had a sharper ear than Adams for contemporary American bloviating.
The Dilbert cartoon strip was launched in 1989 and caught fire in the 1990s. For many downtrodden office workers, posting a Dilbert cartoon in their cubicle became a tiny flag of independence.
But Scott Adams also did many of the best political cartoons in the nation for more than a third of a century. Adams left almost no Washington sacred cow unkicked. A 2012 cartoon caricatured the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund with the International Bank for Bailing Out Countries That Are Bad At Math. A Third World despot clamoring for a handout complains, “Our Treasury is empty and we’re not sure why.” Actually, Congress has had the same problem for almost 25 straight years. Congress also perennially bankrolled the World Bank and the IMF even though those agencies refused to disclose how they were squandering U.S. tax dollars.
At his best, Adams sowed bipartisan cynicism on political processes. In a 2006 cartoon, Dilbert’s co-worker Wally taunts him after an election: “I heard that the guy you voted for just confessed to having an affair with a squirrel.”
Dilbert replies: “Shut up. The guy you voted for is being sued for choking his secretary.”
Wally replies: “In some countries, they don’t get a choice of who to vote for.” Dilbert concurs: “I feel sorry for them.”
That cartoon could have practically been the theme for my 2006 book Attention Deficit Democracy (St. Martin’s Press). As that book warned, “The biggest election frauds usually occur before the voting booths open.”
Skewering jargon
Adams brought razor-sharp analyses to the everyday abuse of the English language. A 2018 strip exposed Washington’s favorite scam. Dilbert’s boss explains: “Your project summary needs more jargon and acronyms. The goal is to make ourselves look smart while making the readers feel dumb.” Federal agencies perpetually play that charade on slow-witted congressmen. But this is on par with taking candy from a baby. Congress requires federal agencies to produce thousands of reports each year, but the studies go unread on Capitol Hill and instead literally serve as door stops, according to the Washington Post. Members of Congress routinely fail to read the thousand-page bills they enact. Sen. Jim DeMint lamented in 2010: “I think that passing 94 percent of the bills without anybody reading them or knowing they are being passed is not a good way to do business.”
You think????
Vapid jargon wafts over federal programs like toxic gas on a World War One battlefield. In an American Spectator piece on AmeriCorps in 2000, I taunted federal grantees for touting boneheaded “goals that look like they may have been lifted out of a Dilbert cartoon.” For instance, a Mississippi program promised that each AmeriCorps member would “Give a reflection and self-assessment” and a “Self/diagnosis in an end-of-year survey.” As a result, each member would achieve “a 75 % increase on average in understanding about self.” Heck, if AmeriCorps could put hundreds of thousands of shameless therapists out of business, that would be fine with me.
After I swooped down to the Mississippi Delta to investigate that squirrely claim, the chief of that program was convicted of fraud and sent to federal prison. But AmeriCorps’s ludicrous success claims continue to be accepted at face value for decades afterwards.
Adams did skeet shoots to blast phrases worshipped in Washington. In a 2018 strip, Dilbert tells his shiftless coworker Wally: “I keep speaking truth to power, but it isn’t working out for me.” Wally replies: “Try lying to weasels. It doesn’t look as good on a bumper sticker but it gets the job done.”
That cartoon might have been inspired by President Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel to head the Central Intelligence Agency. A dozen years earlier, Haspel had engineered the illegal destruction of videotapes showing CIA agents torturing Muslim detainees in secret prisons around the globe. But Haspel’s supporters on Capitol Hill clamored to confirm her as CIA chief so she could “speak truth to power.”
Actually, promising to “speak truth to power” is the favorite sham in the least trusted city in America. But people who speak truth to power tend to end up fired, exiled, or imprisoned. Tell it to Edward Snowden. There are far more Washington politicians praising honesty than there are honest politicians. “Truth delayed is truth defused” is a much better description of how most politicians behave.
Justice and privacy
A 2018 cartoon perfectly captures the double standard for justice for the American elite. A policeman shows up with handcuffs for Dogbert, Dilbert’s pet beagle who doubles as an evil mastermind of the universe, but announces: “Before I arrest you, I’ll need to know your net worth. We have a slightly different process for arresting rich folks.”
Dogbert announces: “I’m very rich.”
The cop replies: “In that case, I’ll wear the handcuffs.”
That cartoon came out about the time that Sen. Robert Menendez, formerly the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, was prosecuted for taking bribes from foreign governments. After a hung jury resulted in a mistrial and the Justice Department dropped the charges, the Senate Ethics Committee “punished” Menendez by requiring him to repay the kickbacks he pocketed. Despite the disgrace, Menendez again became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2021 to 2023. He was finally convicted after federal agents caught him with gold bars that he pocketed for serving the government of Egypt.
Government surveillance spurred some of Adams’s best smackdowns. Anyone who ever castigated TSA’s Whole Body Scanners will appreciate the 2016 strip in which Dilbert returns from poverty-stricken Elbonia and is told he appeared naked on their national TV. Why? Because “the only television show in Elbonia is a live feed from their airport full-body scanners.” No wonder that people believe that TSA actually stands for “Three Stooges Audition,” “Total Sexual Assault,” “Tear Suitcase Apart,” “Thousands Standing Around,” “Too Stupid for Arby’s,” “Take Scissors Away,” and “They Steal Anything.”
The 2020 election
Playing on the controversies around Joe Biden’s 80-million vote total in 2020, Dilbert’s company commences making electronic voting machines. After noting widespread public distrust, Dilbert’s boss tells the company CEO: “We plan to fix that by rigging voting machines to elect politicians who will tell people’s there’s nothing to worry about.”
The CEO responds: “Why don’t people trust us?”
Dilbert’s boss replies: “I was wondering the same thing.”
Scott Adams avoided the legal debacles suffered by Fox News because he was smart enough not to specify any voting software company by name.
That Dilbert strip ratified the wisdom in a federal report that came out shortly after the contested 2020 election. Writing about how the U.S. government paid for pervasive electronic voting fraud in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted, “There is no difference between stuffing 100 ballots and pressing a button on an electronic voting machine 100 times.” SIGAR warned that “because governments often control electoral commissions and the procurement of election technology, they are well placed to use it to commit fraud. The introduction of technology can also weaken the ability of political parties and observation groups to detect fraud.” In a blunt warning that should have echoed far louder in the American media, SIGAR noted, “The true purpose of adopting election technologies may not be to actually reduce fraud, but to create the illusion of doing so.”
The COVID pandemic
The COVID pandemic was one of Scott Adams’s finest hours. After Dilbert complains about a colleague wearing a facemask during a Zoom call, the colleague challenges him: “Can you back up that claim with a randomized clinical study?”
Later, Dilbert confides to Dogbert: “I’ve noticed it’s a lot easier to hate people lately.” Government policies encouraged people to distrust or hate anyone who failed to submit the latest idiotic command. A New York Times piece headlined, “Social Distancing Informants Have Their Eyes on You,” noted, “In some cities and counties, vigilantism has been encouraged by municipalities that have set up special phone numbers, apps or online forms to report violations.” Two hundred thousand complaints were quickly registered in Massachusetts alone, including against a maskless female stripper at Kittens Gentlemen’s Club.
In , President Joe Biden dictated an illegal vaccine mandate for a hundred million American adults. A few weeks later, Dilbert featured the evil HR director (HR is always evil in Dilbert cartoons) Catbert notifying staffers: “When you signed your employment documents, you agreed to let us manipulate your DNA. Judging from the looks on your faces, none of you reviewed the documents before signing.” Shades of a Microsoft software usage agreement! Catbert commands: “Roll up your sleeve so that I can erase that disapproving look on your face.” Unfortunately, voters weren’t warned in 2020 that Biden would claim that he was entitled to inject them with an experimental vaccine — at the same time the feds hid the evidence that the shots were causing skyrocketing myocarditis rates in young males. The Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that most of the Biden mandate was illegal. But that was too late for millions of Americans who submitted to federal commands to get the jab.
Adams also gloriously impaled conniving pharmaceutical companies. In a 2022 strip, Dilbert tells his boss: “People on Twitter are questioning the safety of our new pill.”
The boss replies: “Tell them the data they are using is fake.”
Dilbert responds: “They’re using OUR data.”
The boss retorts: “That’s how I know it’s fake.”
Actually, COVID vaccine makers didn’t need to provide false data to Uncle Sam because Washington politicians were determined to pretend to be saviors regardless of the vaccine’s failures or side effects. In late 2020, the FDA approved the COVID vaccine for emergency use, despite zero independent data on the vaccine safety. The emergency use authorization meant vaccine makers had zero liability for any deaths or injuries resulting from the injections. FDA approved Pfizer’s application for a fourth COVID booster simply based on tests on eight mice. As health professor Leana Wen noted in the Washington Post, “A Lancet study found that those who were vaccinated but never had COVID were 4 times as likely to have severe illness resulting in hospitalization or death compared to the unvaccinated who recovered from it.” Since early 2022, most COVID fatalities have occurred among the fully vaccinated.
The Capitol protests
At his best, Adams obliterated the dogmas propagated by bootlicking Washington pundits. After the , 2021, clash at the U.S. Capitol, Adams scoffed, “What kind of coup takes over a few empty rooms and controls the country? ‘We got your empty rooms and your lectern too! Bow to us!’” Most of the protestors peacefully left the Capitol after a few hours and none of them fired any shots at police or anyone else in the Capitol. One Trump supporter was shot at point blank range by a Capitol police officer, one Trump supporter reportedly died after being trampled, and two other Trump supporters reportedly died of a heart attack or stroke. Regardless, Democratic members of Congress compared the ruckus to Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks. No wonder the House Select Committee on the Attack never called Adams as a witness.
After decades of flogging politicians across the board, Adams has been a Trump zealot since 2016. Not even jaded cartoonists are perfect.
Lessons for success
In a bushel of books. Adams offered plenty of life advice for the perplexed. In his 2014 book How to Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big, Adams advises: “If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.” That’s a modern version of an axiom from the Greek philosopher Epictetus that I taped to my bedroom wall 40 years ago: “First say to yourself what you would be: then do what you have to do.”
Perhaps Adams’s best advice was to guard your concentration like the crown jewels. Modern technology is one damn distraction after another: who has not heartily cursed dings from untimely text messages? “My morning is all about stilling the outside world so my mind can soar,” Adams wrote. There is a magic to morning lucidity that usually vanishes before high noon. Admittedly, I never aspired to Adams’s dairy-farmer-style 5 a.m. awakenings.
For millions of his fans, Adams will always be remembered as the guy who brightened their lives by brilliantly mocking the absurdities and indignities they endured. Americans should also remember all the political balloons that Adams punctured. Adams is gone, but his humor is a gift that will continue enriching American lives for generations to come.
James Bovard is a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of the ebook Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty, published by FFF, his new book, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty, and nine other books.
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