I say that it’s aptly titled because it’s hard not to notice that the brain surgeon is a complete idiot. I know what you’re thinking;
"Come on Bitchy, the man is a brain surgeon so your political bias is clearly clouding your judgment in assessing his intelligence."[His first question] "In the United States, we have Republicans, Democrats, and independents. What do you have?"
The woman answered Carson’s question about political parties, telling him that there were Labor and Likud and a host of other factions in the Knesset. "And what is the role of the Knesset?" he interjected.
This prompted a tutorial on Israel’s legislature….. As he tried to concentrate on his Hebrew Schoolhouse Rock primer, he seemed even more fatigued. "It sounds complex," he finally said. "Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?"’
So this is the first time Ben Carson has been exposed to the mechanics of a parliamentary system, which is far more common in the first world than our one-of-a-kind representative democracy? This goes beyond stupid and ignorant. This demonstrates the same disinterest in the world that George W Bush demonstrated when he was a primary candidate. Republicans didn’t think that level of ignorance was going to be a problem. Turns out that not knowing what "Sunni" and "Shia" are was a giant problem.
"….. to discuss the nearby Syrian civil war. He [the IDF member] claimed that most of the Islamist fighters weren’t Syrian but came from Morocco and Europe. "It’s just like the troublemakers in Ferguson," Carson said, betraying a habit of wedging the unfamiliar into a context he understands.
Even among Carson’s political team, though, there’s some recognition that he could benefit from a little more polish. The day of the president’s State of the Union, Carson had spent five hours getting briefed on domestic and foreign policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank; the next morning, he would travel to Texas for two days of media training. But on the night of Obama’s speech, the task of getting Carson ready for the White House fell to Williams alone. He’d arranged for Carson to appear on cable news to offer some post-speech commentary and was busily prepping the doctor.
The ‘Williams’ referenced there, is Armstrong Williams. Another know-nothing radio talk show host that Barack Obama annihilated in his campaign to win the Illinois senate seat he held before he became president.
As Sam Seder (majority.fm) put it, Ben Carson will forever change the implication of the statement, "well, he’s no brain surgeon".
