Excerpted from: Dilbert Newsletter 48.0 "A Little Ray of Bitter Sunshine" To: Dogbert's New Ruling Class (DNRC) From: Scott Adams (scottadams@aol.com) Date: June 2003 DNRC Status ----------- There are 695,000 members of DNRC. Each of you is capable of altering the course of sporting events via a process called rooting. All others on earth are the so-called Induhviduals who will someday be our domestic servants when Dogbert conquers the world. Dumb Rich People ---------------- I recently read an article by an economist who said that poverty causes people to become terrorists. He used big words and was very convincing. Then I watched TV coverage of a high school hazing ritual in an upscale suburban neighborhood. Dozens of well-to-do Induhviduals paid for the privilege of sitting in a field and having mud, paint, garbage, eggs, pig guts, and excrement shoved up their nostrils while being beaten with blunt objects. I'm not an economist, but my theory is that you can convince a certain percentage of Induhviduals to do any dangerous thing, whether they happen to be poor or not. So let's stop picking on poor people. If peer pressure can convince 20% of rich kids to start smoking cigarettes -- and it does -- it isn't much of a leap to convince them to grow scraggly beards and drive exploding cars. It's mostly a difference in timing. Osama inherited half a billion dollars. So I rule out poverty as a cause of terror. I blame rich Induhviduals, and peer pressure. Peer pressure is the most powerful force on the planet, and we need to use it to our advantage. For example, I recommend that the Western media and politicians stop using the menacing-yet-cool phrase "Al-Qaeda" and start referring to the group as the "frickin' Induhviduals." Like the proverbial dog chasing a car, the Induhviduals haven't considered what would happen if they caught one. For example, let's say they (the Induhviduals, not the dogs) accomplish their stated goal of destroying the economies of the Western world. Is that really a good plan for people who live in a desert and import most of their food? Just for the record, if I'm down to my last potato, I'm not sharing it with a guy who wants to kill me so he can get a better supply of virgins in paradise. That lesson is a little thing I call Economics 101, infidel style. For the Induhviduals, it must look as if Americans are really dumb to have the most awesome arsenal in the history of the world and still be unable to stop terror attacks. They don't realize that the way Americans look at it is that, so far, we're "really mad," but not yet "REALLY, REALLY mad." Oh, there's a difference. Americans understand that somewhere between "inconvenient air travel" and "complete breakdown of Western civilization," the "REALLY, REALLY mad" part kicks in. I won't give away what happens then, but remember you first heard the phrase "New Iowa" in the Dilbert Newsletter. And let's stop calling the terrorist supporters "fundamentalists," because that sounds like it could be a good thing. I recommend a more descriptive label, such as "slow learners," to keep things in perspective. Then let's airdrop science and economics textbooks on their terrorist training camps with condescending notes, such as, "Maybe this will help. Call us if you have questions." This would be a small step, in the sense that reading books about economics is only slightly better than suicide. But you have to start somewhere. That's my plan. If you have a better one, be sure to include it in your next newsletter.
For some reason, I expected Scott Adams to be a little more to the left then he really is (apparently).
Woofer, may be I was being too sensitive. Some things that stuck out to me (and you be the judge): 1. His quick dismissal of poverty as a possible motivation for terrorism. 2. His belittlement of terrorists' motivation as merely a response to peer pressure. 3. That the terrorists should be motivated by simple economic realities. 4. His suggestion that a religious motivation for terrorism is nothing more than wanting a lot of ***** in heaven. 5. His assumption that the terrorists don't really understand how bad-ass (by which I mean totally sweet!) the US military is. Also, that they are too stupid to have any understanding about basic economics or science. 6. That he'd suggest an imperial conquest of middle-eastern countries. 7. His implication that fundamentalist muslims are bad in every way. Plus, his equating fundamentalist muslims with terrorists. It's just Dilbert, which hardly warrants a presence in the D&D forum, and I'd hate to actually start a serious discussion on a joke newsletter (which was mildly amusing anyway). I was just a bit surprised to read it and see so much Trader_Jorge in Scott Adams.