Love to Learn, Learn to Love.

The Juice on Ben Carson

The man’s definitely in trouble. Ben Carson’s virtual admission that he lied about receiving a full scholarship to West Point and this in the aftermath of other questions being posed regarding the veracity of some autobiographical details as these have been both written and discussed by Carson himself,   well let’s just put it this way: is that the sound of a nail being hammered into Carson’s coffin, I hear?

In a recent comment on Facebook, I said  something to the effect that the more I got to know about Carson, the less I liked him. To that statement I would add, after having given his record a quick perusal at www.bbc.com., that I have absolutely NO respect for Ben Carson in either domain: on the one hand his reactionary, Christ-oriented message is not what 21st century Americans need right now. They need (and so do we, Canadians) a progressive political leader who will approach the challenges of high office in a way which will lighten the economic and social burdens which are driving many of us to desperation. Say, yeah. Yeah.

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**But instead, we get this: according to the above-mentioned website, Ben Carson has compared gun control, political correctness, life in the US under Obama and the progressive movement in general to life under Nazi bootstraps. (I think “rule” is the word used, not “bootstraps”.)

Carson has apparently said that the fact that prison sex occurs supports his view that homosexuality is a choice. Say what?!

 

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He has also stated that Muslims should be ruled out as far as their eligibility to run for the office of President is concerned, believe it or not, and is a bible-thumper which is a shame because what follows is gonna make Dr. Carson look pretty bad.

Not only is the man living in the Dark Ages ideologically (see above), but he has also shown us that he’s a liar, a stunning demonstration that Carson is a dishonest hypocrite who should quit the race. Now. Today. Right now. Don’t mean tomorrow. He’s supposed to be a Christian, even has a painting hanging on a wall of his house showing Carson, seated, and Jesus standing to his left, with the latter’s arm around a beaming Ben. I saw it on the television. A little pretentious. Yeah? Yeah.

He says he doesn’t believe that any religion is superior to another, yet he has said, in virtually the same breath, – out of the other side of his hypocritical face – that there’s only one way to get to God, and that’s through a belief and faith in Jesus which pretty much leaves most of the world’s population, the non-Christians among us, out in the cold, does it not?

I was surprised to find that a good friend of mine, a person who says that she is a Christian, holds the same belief as Carson so I won’t slam this “one path to God” idea more than to say this: Religious ideology of this nature causes division between Christians and everyone else – Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews, for example. Religious challenges are birthed when one group believes that its way is the best or the only way. Say yeah. This is one reason why I, a non-observant Jew, personally refuse to characterize the Jews, or any other religious group for that matter as the “chosen people”.

Now, back to Carson – Smokey has these words of wisdom for Ben: “Only you can prevent the raging inferno which your Presidential campaign is about to turn into. Get away. Now. Before your campaign spontaneously combusts from all the crap it has spouted”.

**Before continuing, if you are interested in more meat, I got the above info directly from the bbc site. I know the BBC has had its detractors over the years (as has its younger sister Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC) but it’s still widely respected as a news gathering and distribution maven. See www.bbc.com.

Now for the other side of Carson’s coin – the non-political side, the character issues recently  raised about Carson’s recall of events from a past stretching back fifty years, during Carson’s adolescence, when he claims to have gone after one of his peers with a hammer and to have tried to stab another of his so-called friends.

When confronted by a CNN person about the fact that no one has so far been able to vet these stories, he argued that he had changed the names of the people involved. “Was there any sort of disclaimer to that effect in his recently-published memoir/autobiography,” asks the CNN person.

“No,” answers Carson. Huh?

Carson, himself, brought these stories up in this book, no one else except him has put these tales out there, foolishly, as it looks at the time of this writing.

Two days ago, the big one dropped when people associated with the Carson campaign publicly admitted that Carson’s story about his having received a full scholarship to West Point is false. The fact of the matter is that this simply never happened.

Pathological liar for President, anyone? Or perhaps you’d prefer the most politically and militarily powerful country in our world to have as it’s leader a reactionary nut job?  🇺🇸

Or both of the above all rolled into one package, and a fairly off-putting one at that.

We need peace.

We need truth.

Many of us are in desperate straights which is why contemporary western youth (and not only western, but the young in the so-called Third, Fourth and Fifth Worlds too) – why do you think that contemporary youth is proving itself to be a fertile ground from which ISIS and other terrorist organizations have been able to radicalize and recruit girls, boys, men and women and to get these kids to commit acts of terror in the name of the Islamic state?

Yes, it’s because a goodly number of youthful members of society have become desperate. They feel completely hopeless and pretty much alone. They are looking for an identity divorced from western cultural and social values such as those associated with getting a good education to start and then moving on in attempts to make it in the world, with family, friends, a car and a house.

We, Hippies that we were and some of us still are, reject these values as well but we do it in a reasonable and much more moderate way. I only gloat about my car and my bike to bug people; these things do not define me. I hope not anyway. Don’t get me wrong; I am not dissatisfied with the things I own. I do not need them however. I don’t have to drive a Cadillac or a Harley. I drive them because I enjoy nice things.

What we don’t need is Ben Carson or anyone else who even comes close to thinking like him. Our needs require direction from a totally different person who occupies a place on the political continuum as divorced as possible from Carson in particular, and from the Republicans, in general. I know that the American people are not yet desperate enough to throw their electoral support to Carson or someone like him, but that day may soon be upon us at which time I’d have purchased and learnt to use a weapon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Comments

  • Peter Marmorek says:

    Your rational explanation of Carson’s inappropriateness for president is argued against by the fact that he has now moved past Trump into the leadership position among GOP candidates. Sadly, the fact that he’s irrational does not mean he’s unelectable. Or to add a touch of humour, http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/monday-november-9th-donald-trump-on-snl

    • Jerry Cohen says:

      Perhaps the fact that he has passed Trump according to some of the polls, just goes to show how irrational – if that’s the correct word – the GOP and Republicans in general, are. I would use words like ignorant, uncool, and just plain stupid.

  • Thanks. Agree with you on some things, not just on Carson, but for the most part the sorry list of candidates the Republicans are running. The last Republican candidate that impressed me in any way was Jon Huntsman, who seemed intelligent and measured in his responses every time I saw him interviewed. Plus, he actually bothered to learn Mandarin when he was appointed ambassador to China. What “Amurrican” bothers to learn a foreign language?!

    But I am as equally concerned about Hillary getting in there, with her history of lies and corruption. For me, it’s more about the culture of Washington, the graft, the duplicity, than any one party. Is it any less dangerous for the One World Order to be bankrolled by Soros, rather than Adelson? What’s so progressive about that?

    Anyway, you’ve always been more politicized than me. I got into serious leftist politics during my undergrad days at McGill, but got turned off the sanctimoniousness and bogus humanism of many in the movement fairly quickly. As one of my daughters says, I am anti-social(ist) !

    I don’t know about your take on why kids are becoming radicalized. I think it’s more complex than you suggest, but I only have a couple of ideas to add, and haven’t really researched it. Didn’t John Candy say something like, “If you ask me, what do I know?”

    Only thing I would strenuously disagree with is what I assume to be your understanding of what it means to be a member of the “chosen people.” If I were a betting man, I would put my money on your definition being entirely at odds with what the Torah and Jewish tradition understand it to be (of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all Jews conversant with that tradition understand it correctly either; 2000 years’ experience of the kind the Jews went through inevitably caused that understanding to morph over time into something quite different, at times). But I have never met yet a secular Jew, unacquainted with the tradition, who had a correct understanding of the term. Noli cedere cognoscere !

    https://ajuicylessonperday.net/the-juice-on-ben-carson/

  • Jerry Cohen says:

    From a reader whose name has been withheld by request.
    Thanks. Agree with you on some things, not just on Carson, but for the most part the sorry list of candidates the Republicans are running. The last Republican candidate that impressed me in any way was Jon Huntsman, who seemed intelligent and measured in his responses every time I saw him interviewed. Plus, he actually bothered to learn Mandarin when he was appointed ambassador to China. What “Amurrican” bothers to learn a foreign language?!

    But I am as equally concerned about Hillary getting in there, with her history of lies and corruption. For me, it’s more about the culture of Washington, the graft, the duplicity, than any one party. Is it any less dangerous for the One World Order to be bankrolled by Soros, rather than Adelson? What’s so progressive about that?

    Anyway, you’ve always been more politicized than me. I got into serious leftist politics during my undergrad days at McGill, but got turned off the sanctimoniousness and bogus humanism of many in the movement fairly quickly. As one of my daughters says, I am anti-social(ist) !

    I don’t know about your take on why kids are becoming radicalized. I think it’s more complex than you suggest, but I only have a couple of ideas to add, and haven’t really researched it. Didn’t John Candy say something like, “If you ask me, what do I know?”

    Only thing I would strenuously disagree with is what I assume to be your understanding of what it means to be a member of the “chosen people.” If I were a betting man, I would put my money on your definition being entirely at odds with what the Torah and Jewish tradition understand it to be (of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all Jews conversant with that tradition understand it correctly either; 2000 years’ experience of the kind the Jews went through inevitably caused that understanding to morph over time into something quite different, at times). But I have never met yet a secular Jew, unacquainted with the tradition, who had a correct understanding of the term. Noli cedere cognoscere !

    https://ajuicylessonperday.net/the-juice-on-ben-carson/

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