Parsin' Carson
- Thread starter Legion Troll
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Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
His most recent burst of blather was over gun control in the wake of the Oregon massacre.
As recently as Sunday, on "Face the Nation," Carson was defending his assertion that the Holocaust would have been "greatly diminished" if Jews had been able to keep firearms in their homes.
"Gun control laws" enacted by the Nazi regime, he contends, were a prelude to genocide.
To say that experts disagree is an understatement.
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in The Huffington Post: "It is mind-bending to suggest that personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany's Jews (about 214,000 remaining in Germany in 1938) could have stopped the totalitarian onslaught of Nazi Germany when the armies of Poland, France, Belgium and numerous other countries were overwhelmed by the Third Reich."
Greenblatt added that it is "wholly inappropriate and offensive" to "manipulate the history of the Holocaust and use it to score political points."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/10/13/dr_ben_carson_crackpot_128391.html
As recently as Sunday, on "Face the Nation," Carson was defending his assertion that the Holocaust would have been "greatly diminished" if Jews had been able to keep firearms in their homes.
"Gun control laws" enacted by the Nazi regime, he contends, were a prelude to genocide.
To say that experts disagree is an understatement.
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in The Huffington Post: "It is mind-bending to suggest that personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany's Jews (about 214,000 remaining in Germany in 1938) could have stopped the totalitarian onslaught of Nazi Germany when the armies of Poland, France, Belgium and numerous other countries were overwhelmed by the Third Reich."
Greenblatt added that it is "wholly inappropriate and offensive" to "manipulate the history of the Holocaust and use it to score political points."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/10/13/dr_ben_carson_crackpot_128391.html
Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
Carson's story of a personal encounter with firearms is just weird.
"I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeyes," he told an interviewer, referring to the fried chicken chain. "Guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs. I just said, 'I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.'"
It is unclear what happened next. And it is unclear to me, frankly, that this really happened, though Carson swears it did.
For one thing, Carson is a vegetarian; his campaign says he went to Popeyes for French fries.
I wonder if he also goes to KFC to get coleslaw.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/10/13/dr_ben_carson_crackpot_128391.html
"I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeyes," he told an interviewer, referring to the fried chicken chain. "Guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs. I just said, 'I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.'"
It is unclear what happened next. And it is unclear to me, frankly, that this really happened, though Carson swears it did.
For one thing, Carson is a vegetarian; his campaign says he went to Popeyes for French fries.
I wonder if he also goes to KFC to get coleslaw.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/10/13/dr_ben_carson_crackpot_128391.html
Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
Ben Carson is a great example of someone who placed himself in a bizarre situation through storytelling.
He recounted in his memoir, Gifted Hands, a story about trying to stab a classmate, but now reporters cannot locate classmates who recall such a notable occurrence, nor the person who was stabbed, or anything of the sort. As a consequence Carson is in the weird position of being a politician fervently pleading that yes, he really did indeed try to stab someone.
It’s blatantly obvious that the story never happened, or if anything like it did, it never happened the way that Carson is describing. But why would someone claim to have attempted to stab someone, and assault other people, and want people to believe him?
It goes to mythmaking – long before Carson was running for president, he was crafting an identity. He has said in interviews that he had a violent temper, and recounts: “With a temper like that, my options were three: reform school, jail or the grave.” What Carson paints for us is the portrait of a man who overcame the violence contained in his upbringing and made himself into the man he is today.
I don’t doubt that inside Carson a battle played out – that he felt an immense rage and knew if he acted on those impulses what would happen to him was grim. The anecdote of acting out, of striking other students, may have been something Carson thought about over and over again ... and then, when crafting stories later in life, told first as a vague list of bad behaviors and then as a concrete anecdote in a memoir. The process of rendering something into text has a tendency to seal a story in amber, leaving it fixed in place.
Long before Carson was running for president, he used this story to build the mythology that he is a self-made man. He was even willing to introduce behaviors that aren’t flattering, such as beating other children, in order to make the point that he had changed himself.
Knowing that illuminates that he’s a liar.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/14/ben-carsons-lies-reveal-a-fundamental-truth-about-candidates-tall-tales
He recounted in his memoir, Gifted Hands, a story about trying to stab a classmate, but now reporters cannot locate classmates who recall such a notable occurrence, nor the person who was stabbed, or anything of the sort. As a consequence Carson is in the weird position of being a politician fervently pleading that yes, he really did indeed try to stab someone.
It’s blatantly obvious that the story never happened, or if anything like it did, it never happened the way that Carson is describing. But why would someone claim to have attempted to stab someone, and assault other people, and want people to believe him?
It goes to mythmaking – long before Carson was running for president, he was crafting an identity. He has said in interviews that he had a violent temper, and recounts: “With a temper like that, my options were three: reform school, jail or the grave.” What Carson paints for us is the portrait of a man who overcame the violence contained in his upbringing and made himself into the man he is today.
I don’t doubt that inside Carson a battle played out – that he felt an immense rage and knew if he acted on those impulses what would happen to him was grim. The anecdote of acting out, of striking other students, may have been something Carson thought about over and over again ... and then, when crafting stories later in life, told first as a vague list of bad behaviors and then as a concrete anecdote in a memoir. The process of rendering something into text has a tendency to seal a story in amber, leaving it fixed in place.
Long before Carson was running for president, he used this story to build the mythology that he is a self-made man. He was even willing to introduce behaviors that aren’t flattering, such as beating other children, in order to make the point that he had changed himself.
Knowing that illuminates that he’s a liar.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/14/ben-carsons-lies-reveal-a-fundamental-truth-about-candidates-tall-tales