There is an ongoing campaign to destroy Ben Carson’s character by parsing through the details of his autobiography. It’s practically impossible to verify his childhood claims, but it was easily verifiable to know that he was never accepted into West Point. You can’t tell me that the billionaires who float the Republican Party didn’t vet his accomplishments prior to him becoming the front-runner in the current presidential primary race.
I think, rather, that Ben Carson fit the storyline that justified slavery and persists to this day as an excuse to call our president a Kenyan, Muslim non-citizen “liar.” It’s a storyline that makes it possible to run two presidential campaigns with the center theme of “taking our country back.” It’s the same storyline that a group of white men use to masquerade as non-racists as they continue to flex the muscle of the racist Southern Strategy.
This storyline, as old as our country, is the fable of the savage African beast who must be rescued by the white man’s ways. Slavery was better than living in Africa! Mike Brown and Tamir Rice had it coming sooner or later! Manifest destiny!
Only in the case of Dr. Carson, much like Herman Cain before him, the self-righteous white parable allows the Black man to go only so far before he is brought down by the innate flaws that bwanna’s religion cannot cure. Recall that Herman Cain was brought down by allegations of womanizing, ala Justice Clarence Thomas.
Dr. Carson was useful to the billionaires for a while, moving up from “savage” poverty and a violent temperament to becoming a brilliant neurosurgeon. Gaining approval by parroting NRA gibberish about Jewish people being able to prevent the holocaust and beat the Nazi army if they only had private weapons. Positioned to be the front-runner, for a short period of time — after the Trump campaign of “he said what we’re all thinking” burned out amidst mewing declarations of “I really, really love Mexicans.”
Now it’s Dr. Carson’s turn in the barrel to be humiliated and castigated in front of a national audience. He tried his best to become what bigots in my childhood days used to say, “a credit to your race.”
Here’s the essential lesson: You cannot petition the favor of people who “want to take our country back.”
