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Anybody who knows me knows a couple of things about me. One, I believe education is the only sound way to move humanity forward, and two, education need not necessarily be formal to produce an educated person. Plenty of folks have done it on their own, and while harder and somewhat precarious, one who is determined will be educated.
One of the things that was indelibly imprinted upon my cerebral cortex around the time I was in law school, or perhaps after that hellacious thing called “the bar exam”, was the realization that some people can matriculate fully through nearly the hardest subjects imaginable, and be dumb as the proverbial rock. When I got to know lawyers who were stupid, I immediately concluded that there were an equal number of stupid doctors, physicists, and psychiatrists. An important object lesson when you contemplate handing over your gotten gains to an investment counselor.
As everyone who is anyone knows, Ben Carson, neurosurgeon extraordinaire, and compelling story of rising out of poverty man supreme is the new darling of the excruciatingly insane right. When Alan Keyes, Allen West, and Hermie Cain have stumbled while carrying Confederate dreams, Ben has jumped forth willing to sacrifice his integrity and soul for a chance to be “somebody” nay, the only-body with dark skin in the white party of the GOP.
I read about Carson well more than twenty-five or thirty years ago when I was a fledgling lawyer in Detroit and indeed I was impressed with his story of being raised by a single mom in Detroit. He was indeed a stellar image in the tarnishing mirror of inner-city poverty. So I don’t come to the party late as it were and as so many of my rather uninformed, Patriotic platitudinous Tea Imbibing acquaintances have.
To hear them talk, Ben discovered both sliced bread, the true Ark and by virtue of his status as real honest-to-goodness hero, he has the creds to talk with authority on any issue at all. Being smart means you can be an expert on everything.
But alas, our Ben is but what used to be referred to as an idiot savant–supremely gifted in one area (brain surgery) while he is at best equivalent to a seven-year-old on most any other subject.
This is a man who, given all his education part of that being in BIOLOGY FOR GOD’S SAKE, insists that evolution is false. This is a man who equates health care for the poor to being “next to slavery, the worst thing that has happened to the Black community.” This is a man who today attacks the AP standards in American History suggesting that they more likely train the next generation of ISIS fighters.
Proving that he has not read the material at all, he falsely claimed that there were two paragraphs about George Washington and none about Martin Luther King. What really incensed him is that the material devoted time discussing the behavior of Americans toward Native Peoples, the internment of the Japanese during WWII and the vileness of Jim Crow. I mean seriously folks, teaching truth is so wrong when you are trying to build a nation of sheep who will OBEY their betters.
The fact that Carson has learned so well to obey his, is apparently his proof that everyone should be like him, so that, should some poor person have a certain gift, they too can aspire to be the puppet paraded around the circus ring to “prove” the Good Old Party of white indeed is an equal opportunity exploiter.
All of this matters naught to the empty-headed faux patriots out there who say they are just itching to vote for Carson for President. He tells them what they want to hear after all, and that’s always much better than the truth. One can only hope that one dies the sweet death of delusion before the house comes crashing down.
Of course, Ben, like all the others who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, forgets all that guv’mint help they got along the way, as they dance the NO SOUP FOR YOU tap for the pleasure of their white betters who coo at them like the house pets they are.
Ben won’t be going far, though he is part of the dream ticket, I’m told. With Cruz as President and he as VEEP, the GOP can probably get away with at least 60-1000 years of never having another candidate of color in their midst. Sarah had her chance, so that’s one bird down and two to go.
The kids at Jefferson County Colorado who are trying to prevent their school from dumbing down and patriotizing up their curriculum have no idea just how wonderful they are. They shame millions of adults who should know better.
Existential Ennui 