Double Vision on Democracy
15th January 2022
During the 2016 primary and general election seasons, “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams offered a useful heuristic for understanding America’s partisan and psychological bipolarity on Donald Trump. The two Americas were watching “two different movies”: one featuring a dangerous authoritarian and proto-fascist and the other a brash and plain-talking tribune sticking it to the corrupt uniparty establishment.
The actual phrase Scott uses – and he uses it a lot – is ‘two different movies on the same screen.
I’m sure you’ve all seen this:
Asked what it is, people will say either ‘a vase’ or ‘two faces’. And yet it’s just one thing.
That’s what Scott is talking about.