By: Shiloh Whatley
As Ben Carson’s star in the 2016 Republican Presidential Race rises, it seems about time that the Presidential hopeful sits down and has a frank conversation with himself…
Rational Ben Carson: Thanks for meeting with me Ben, and for agreeing to do this.
Crazy Ben Carson: No thank you, Ben. Now go easy on me or I might have to stab you. You aren’t wearing a large belt buckle are you?
Rational Ben Carson: Wha….er?
Crazy Ben Carson: I’m joking, Ben. Seriously. These gifted hands no longer touch knife or scalpel for it is the the pen and the pulpit that I now wield, and the pen is mightier than the sword. I think it was Albert Einstein who said that. Please, continue…
Rational Ben Carson: Thanks, but actually I believe it was the English author and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton who coined that phrase. But that’s besides the point. I want to talk to you today about “us” Ben Carson. About some of the more controversial statements you’ve made in the past. And currently, as you advance your Presidential run, about how your views have made you come off in the papers and the press.
Now, as neurosurgeon, I like to think that I know a thing or two about what makes the mind tick. About what is true, and real, and about what is hyperbole, exaggeration, falsity or just flat out lies. I’ve had my hands inside enough people minds over the years, literally I might add, that I’ve gained a unique perspective on the world, one that would be well suited to the position of President of the United States. And a lot of what’s been coming out of your mouth lately Dr. Carson, well…I just can’t plain stomach it.
Crazy Ben Carson: I’m glad that you bring up the fact that you are a neurosurgeon Ben, because I too am a neurosurgeon. And a Christian let me add. I spent numerous years in practice at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. And as a Doctor, I spent many a night pulling bullets out of bodies with these gifted hands. But I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away. Serious people seek serious solutions.
Rational Ben Carson: Well, I’m not quite sure how a traumatic brain injury caused by a bullet to the head is less severe than the right to bear arms. Are you suggesting that the value of a human life is worth less than protecting the Second Amendment? Because that just sounds mad. All life is precious.
Crazy Ben Carson: But is a life lived without a gun really a life lived at all? I mean, consider the Holocaust. I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed. There’s a reason these dictatorial people take the guns first. I don’t really like to comment until I’ve had a chance to study the issue from both sides. And after studying this issue, and my own personal theory, if you stop and think about it, is that Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery.
Rational Ben Carson: You’re jumping around a lot here, Ben. You need to stay for focused and think things out if you really want to win the Republican vote. Now, equating Obamacare to Slavery – I think that’s a bit of a stretch, even for you. But I’m curious about your fascination with comparing societal issues to slavery. Didn’t you also go on NBC’s Meet the Press this October and compare women who get abortions to slaveholders, insinuating that a woman terminating an unwanted pregnancy is like a slave owner who thought that they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave? What’s with this whole slavery comparison thing Ben? Can’t you think of a more appealing, and less controversial analogy? Or do you just plan to go around comparing everything to slavery?
Crazy Ben Carson: I don’t really care about political correctness. I care about Ben Carson-ectness. Many Americans are stupid. I mean, overall they are. And they need gifted, spiritual, yet scientific leaders like myself to help make these difficult decisions for them. A leader like me, an outsider, who hasn’t spent his life in the political spotlight. Do you know that President Bush gave me the Presidential Medal of Freedom? That has the word “President” already in it. Think about that Ben. Everyone should have equal rights, not extra rights, that’s why I suggested we give transgender people their own bathroom. It’s not fair for them to make everyone else uncomfortable. Think of me as the Great Equalizer Ben. That’s what I’ll bring to the table as President: equality.
Rational Ben Carson: Your brand of equality seems terribly insensitive and illogical. Downright offensive at times actually. I hear these words come out of your mouth, our mouth Ben, and I want to just pound my head against the table. These are the kind of statements that we need to work on. I’m telling you in all honesty, they’re not going to win you a majority of votes. Your suggestion of segregating restrooms into Men, Women and Transgender bathrooms just seems, let’s see, how do I put this? Ridiculous. A step backward. Like a slide into our ugly past, one that we should as a nation never revisit again. Should these people have their own water fountains and busses too? Maybe their own schools or their own prisons?
Crazy Ben Carson: Being gay is a choice, because people turn gay in prison.
Rational Ben Carson: Just because someone identifies as transgender, it doesn’t mean they’re gay, you know that right?
Crazy Ben Carson: All I know is that sexual orientation is chosen, not genetic. If you want proof just look at all the people who go to prison straight and come out gay. There’s your proof. Ben Carson’s world and his views are ones made from observing the observable world with his own observable eyes, which by the way were made by God not by evolution. And then comparing all of that to what the Bible teaches us about the world. My own personal theory, if you stop and think about it, is that some people believe in the Bible, like I do, and don’t find that to be silly at all and believe that God created the Earth and don’t find that to be silly at all.
Rational Ben Carson: Christian scholars who have studied the Bible estimate that the Earth is only six thousand years old. So does that mean that you believe that too? You, a doctor, a man of science? A, dare I say it…scientist.
Crazy Ben Carson: People like to say to me: “How can you be a scientist, how can you be a surgeon if you don’t believe in certain things?” Well I say “Maybe those things aren’t scientific. Maybe it’s just propaganda.”
Rational Ben Carson: So your view is that the fossil record is propaganda? That the carbon dating of the oldest rocks here on Earth that place their age in the billions of years is all a farce? An overwhelming amount of research points to the Earth and our Solar System forming four to five billion years ago, not to mention the very real and observable fossil records of animals and insects and plants that support these theories, not to mention the evolution of species. If it’s all propaganda, then who’s its serving? And who’s running the show? The Democrats? The Illuminati? Satan? Was Charles Darwin just a tool used by the Devil to promote his pro-Evolution agenda? I fail to see the purpose of all of that. Next thing you’re going to tell me the Egyptian Pyramids at Giza were nothing but giant storage buildings for wheat and grain.
Crazy Ben Carson: In my well-learned and well-studied scientific opinion evolution is a myth. I don’t believe in evolution…I simply don’t have enough faith to believe that something as complex as our ability to rationalize, think, and plan, and have a moral sense of what’s right and wrong, just appeared. There’s never been one species that’s turned into another species, that can be proved. No one has the knowledge to determine the age of the Earth, because carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time.
And in terms of the Egyptian Pyramids at Giza, yes, I do believe they were engineered to store grain for the Egyptians. Built by Joseph, the Biblical son of Jacob, they were meant to store grain in preparation for the great famine depicted in the Book of Genesis.
It makes a lot of sense to me. Look, a person’s religious beliefs are the things that make them who they are, gives them a direction in their life. My beliefs envision a world that’s only a few thousand years old, has a God who created man and animals and fish and birds and whales on a whim, when needed, and who provides answers to life’s most difficult questions through prayer and turning your house into a museum to yourself. If that makes me a scientist, then so be it. But I’m a scientist of God first and the World, with all its physical laws and constants like gravity and time and thermodynamics, second.
Rational Ben Carson: You know, sometimes I wonder why you choose to open your mouth and speak on any of these topics. Your job, our job Ben, for many years was to cut people’s heads open and make them work again. Discussing evolution or global warming with you, I’m finding, is as meaningful as discussing quantum physics with my auto mechanic when I bring my car in for repairs. It’s just not something he needs to know anything about to fix my car. So why do you, a Presidential candidate, feel the need to talk to the American people, and the press, about any of this? Deciding which science works for you and which science is propaganda, a la cart style, just to make your faith easier to integrate with your scientific viewpoints and your political persona isn’t the way to go. I mean you’ve quite sanely said that every child should be immunized. That’s science that makes sense Ben. But then you turn around and exclaim that maybe it’s all the unvaccinated illegal immigrants crossing the border that’s causing the uptick in these diseases, saying, “We have to account for the fact that we now have people coming into the country, sometimes undocumented people, who perhaps have diseases that we had under control.” It’s like you are sane when it comes to medical matters but delusional elsewhere. And every time you speak, you alienate yourself a little bit more from your supporters.
Crazy Ben Carson: Speaking of aliens, numerous scientists believe that the pyramids were built by an ancient race of aliens. Think about that Ben.
Rational Ben Carson: I’d rather not, Ben, as it’s just nonsense. Wild speculation. So many of your beliefs seem to be based on conjecture without any firm evidence. That it troubles me. But I’d like to move on because there’s no point continuing down this avenue when we have so many more topics to cover. Let’s talk about some of the recent challenges to our biological narrative. Some of the things you’ve been saying about us Ben, well they don’t quite add up. I certainly don’t remember them going down the way you describe them, especially in our autobiography Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. There’s a serious amount of discrepancies to your portrayal of our youth.
Crazy Ben Carson: What you call discrepancies, I call a witch hunt.
Rational Ben Carson: You’ve stated that you grew up in an impoverished neighborhood in Detroit. That violent acts including punching a classmate in the face with your hand wrapped around a lock that left a three-inch gash in the boy’s forehead, attempting to attack our own mother with a hammer following an argument over clothes, hurling a large rock at a boy, which broke his glasses and smashed his nose and, finally, thrusting a knife at the belly of your friend with such force that the blade snapped when it luckily struck a belt buckle covered by his clothes, were all the staus quo for you. That you had an uncontrollable, pathological temper. The problem is Ben, I don’t remember being such a violent kid. And a lot of our old friends, nine so far who have been interviewed by CNN, have no memory of the anger and violence that you describe. What gives Ben, where are these victims that we created with our violence?
Crazy Ben Carson: It’s just that I had a very bad temper so unless you were the victim of that temper why would you know? I don’t want to expose people without their knowledge, but remember, when I was fourteen, when the knifing episode occurred, that’s when I changed, that’s when most of the people I talked to began to know who I was, they didn’t know me before then. I was generally a nice person.
Rational Ben Carson: The nice person, I definitely remember. Being a quiet and shy kid, I remember. Even our good friend Timothy E. McDaniel, who we’ve known since junior high school and who we still remain in touch with, remembers us that way, never seeing any evidence of anger or violence. Tim even went so far as to say he was surprised by the violent narrative you portray for yourself in a recent interview with CNN. And Steve and Marie Choice, remember them? They were our neighbors when we were a teenager? Those polite years where we joined the ROTC and eventually became a commander of our unit? Well, they were similarly bewildered by your accounts of your simmering anger and violent outbursts. All this just seems truly out of character to us Ben. I mean, it’s a nice narrative, and I can from a political angle see how it could be appealing to many voters, the whole fairytale rags-to-riches play, but once you start down that road, Ben, you have to stick to your stories. Remember, the Internet never forgets. The truth isn’t something that you can mold to suit your needs. Its immutable, like that rock you hurtled at that boy. Or that lock you supposedly smashed into some poor kid’s face.
Crazy Ben Carson: I was slow to anger. But once I reached that tipping point, I lost all rational control. I had what I only can label a pathological temper – a disease – and this sickness controlled me, making me totally irrational. But after my very last act of childhood violence, where I tried to kill one of our friends over what music to listen to, I had an epiphany. I was sitting in the bathroom crying and praying to God to save me from losing my dream of becoming a doctor. And upon opening the Bible to the Book of Proverbs I found my answer, my cure for my disease, in a passage about the importance of controlling your anger. It was then that I spoke to God, saying, “Lord, despite what all the experts tell me. You can change me. You can free me forever from this destructive personality trait.” And when I left the bathroom, I was a different person.
Rational Ben Carson: Wow. Usually, when I leave the bathroom I’m a different person too. Just not in that way. Maybe a few pounds lighter but that’s about it. But you found all that terrible, terrible violence, just like that, gone? Flushed down the toilet and whisked away and with it your future, and your dreams birthed anew? It sounds so simple a remedy for such an ingrained “pathological” condition. A little too convenient if you ask me. The greatest thing I ever remember occurring in the bathroom for us was that time we were at the White House and George Clooney was at the next stall peeing. Remember that? The way we just looked at each other for that one second and nodded. It was like I could live in that second forever. I mean, those eyes of his. Sorry, I got distracted there for a second Ben. I guess what I’m driving at here is your thorny relationship with the truth. It doesn’t make us look Presidential Ben.
Crazy Ben Carson: Honesty is more important than political experience. I’m a teller of truths Ben. When I talk to young people, I urge them, “Tell the truth. If you tell the truth all the time you don’t have to worry three months down the line about what you said three months earlier. Truth is always the truth. You won’t have to complicate your life by trying to cover up.” Listen, I’m not a politician, which is why I’m an ideal candidate for President. We’ve been told that only politicians can fix our problems, but I believe that traditional “political experience” is much less important than faith, honesty, courage, and an unshakable belief in the principles that made America the greatest nation in the world.
Rational Ben Carson: So you’re of the opinion that strength of character and moral fortitude are more important in a Presidential candidate that political know-how? I can get behind some of that bold thinking Ben, as our political system is clearly broken and badly in need of change. But you do realize that the discrepancies in your rags-to-neurosurgeon narrative mixed with your extreme views on science, religion, immigration, gun control and well, just about anything are making voters begin to question your character? I mean, it’s getting to the point where our core supporters are beginning to see the chinks in our armour. And what were you thinking when you said you had received an offer of a full scholarship to West Point? You know we never actually applied there and were never been granted admission right? Because I would certainly remember something like that.
Crazy Ben Carson: Maybe everyone else is wrong, Ben, and I’ve been telling the truth the entire time. Have you ever considered that? And did you know that every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience? Or that nine out of ten nonprofits fail? Or that my tax plan won’t leave the Federal Government with a $1.1 trillion dollar hole? Or that German citizens were disarmed by their government in the late 1930s, which allowed the Nazis to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance? And birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger believed that people like me should be eliminated? Or that there are more young black males involved in the criminal justice system than there are in higher education? Think about all those facts Ben and then tell me I’m not the best candidate for President.
Rational Ben Carson: Ok great, so now you’re just listing off random “facts?” Every single one of those statements made by you have been shown to be false by PolitiFact, a fact checking website that’s also been a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. None of what you just said is true and it’s becoming a big problem for you Ben, and thus for me. I used to think that you’d make a good President. That we’d make a good President. That we’d bring a lot to the office, restore a balance to politics that made room for faith and science and facts, not conjecture or speculation, to coexist. But now I’m just wondering if Ben Carson the Corporation, hasn’t become more important to you than Ben Carson the Presidential Candidate. You’ve got gifted hands that’s for sure, but you’ve also got a gifted imagination Ben. One of the best.
Crazy Ben Carson: Vote Ben Carson for President. Heal. Inspire. Revive. And if you have any questions, Ben has the answers. Seriously, hashtag askben. But don’t ask me too many questions about my past or ask me to explain my unique views because all that anger that I spoke of never really went away. And I’d hate to have to stab a fool.
Author’s note: For the most part, all the Crazy Ben Carson parts are actual quotes sourced from Ben Carson’s autobiography, Gifted Hands: the Ben Carson Story or from interviews, newspaper articles, and speeches, etc. given by Ben Carson. I couldn’t do a better job if I tried making this stuff up so I figured it be a lot better if I just let Ben Carson speak for himself.
