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Dr. Ben Carson: The Most Dangerous Man in Politics
By
Steve Nelson
Dr. Ben Carson is the most
dangerous man in politics. I'm not alluding to the facets of Carson's campaign that seem most alarming.
And there are many such
facets.
Carson is a climate change denier. He is an anti-evolution
religious zealot. He has absolutely no political experience. He has compared
Obamacare and abortion to slavery. He believes the great pyramids were grain
silos. He thinks a Muslim should not be allowed to be president. He believes
that prison makes people gay.
His campaign is based almost
entirely on his apparently embellished rags-to-riches tale. He
has the distinctive sociopathic characteristic of lying without a hint of
self-consciousness. [emphasis
added] On last Sunday morning's Face The Nation news program Carson
appeared on a split screen - one side showing a prior interview during which he
stated that he was offered a full scholarship to attend West Point. On the live
screen he claimed that he never said he was offered a full scholarship to
attend West Point. He didn't even blink.
He is surely the only presidential
candidate in history to boast of having attacked his mother with a hammer. When the story was
questioned, he angrily denounced the "liberal media" for doubting
that he attempted matricide.
As I scan back over this very
partial summary of Carson's
presidential "qualifications" I shudder to think that 25-30% of
Republican primary voters believe he is the best candidate. But those things
may not be what make him most dangerous.
The greatest danger is that Carson is a black man
conservatives can love. An MSNBC analyst suggested that Carson, if nominated, might
win as much as 25% of the black vote. Barack Obama received 95% of the
black vote in 2008 and 93% in 2012. Al Gore and John Kerry received 90% and 88%
respectively in 2000 and 2004. These statistics reveal the real challenge Carson might represent to
the Democratic nominee.
Carson's popularity among white and black conservatives is a
dire threat to racial and social justice. Like Clarence Thomas and other black
conservatives, Carson
advances the myth that we live in a post-racist society. Aside from
embellishments, his genuine rise from poverty to prestige is precisely the kind
of narrative that keeps the foot of oppression on the necks of black men and
women. His "up by the bootstraps" story is the very rare exception
that allows conservatives to deny the rule. If he made it, anyone can. Carson is like a
shipwreck's lone survivor who is used to argue that the shoals of injustice
don't exist.
This presents a complex
dilemma for the political opposition. Donald Trump trots out "political
correctness" whenever diversity or racism is mentioned, but at least we
can identify the source: a rich, white, clueless boor who insults everyone.
When Carson
calls anti-racist work "political correctness," how might one
challenge him? Who knows the black experience better than a black man raised in
poverty? When smug white intellectuals argue that affirmative action is reverse
racism, we can challenge them to consider how their own white privilege might
have stunted their capacity for empathy. When Carson says black folks are playing the
"victim card," what can be said?
To some extent, Carson's presence in the
GOP campaign inoculates the entire party against accusations of ignoring racial
and social injustice. It is the political equivalent of "some of my best
friends are black" played out on a grand scale.
I suspect that much flows
from his title and resume: Dr. Ben Carson, celebrated neurosurgeon. Unlike
Barack Obama, who was roundly dismissed as a "community organizer"
and has been subjected to vile explicit and implicit racist taunts, Carson is beyond reproach
because physicians are de facto smart. This stature has skewed his sense of the
world around him. Even in the down and dirty world of politics, commentators
are careful to introduce him as "Dr. Carson." He is granted a degree
of automatic deference.
If Carson were neither black nor a physician,
his candidacy would be a joke. Even among the pandering, far right, buffoonish
collection of GOP candidates, his inexperience and irrationality would be
glaring disqualifications.
In 1963, shortly after Martin
Luther King, Jr. wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, the more radical
Malcolm X warned about black men whose stature within the white community afforded
a level of privilege, a phenomenon going all the way back to slavery. Such a
man, he said, "doesn't identify himself with your plight whatsoever,"
and slows progress toward racial justice.
52 years later, "such a
man" may stand at the threshold of the White House.
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