Ben Carson, Baltimore, and Representation

I’d briefly forgotten that Ben Carson, the Trump Administration’s HUD Secretary, was the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Johns Hopkins is located in Baltimore.

Carson gives the Trump-Cummings dust-up some perspective.

Amid the backdrop of the ongoing feud between President Trump and Rep. Elijah Cummings over the deplorable conditions in his Maryland district, Carson backed up the president’s criticisms of the “rat and rodent infested mess” in the city of Baltimore which has been under Democrat control for decades.

“As a pediatric neurosurgeon, I spent many hours, sometimes operating all night long, trying to give the children of Baltimore and other places around the world a second chance at life, and usually we were successful,” Carson said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Monday.

“But a few days later, I was in a horrible dilemma, because some of those kids had to go back into homes in East Baltimore that were infested with rats, and roaches, and ticks, and mold, and lead, and violence. And I didn’t want to send them back. Sometimes I would even consider extra tests so they could stay in the hospital an extra day or two,” the longtime Baltimore resident admitted.

He noted that he was able to work with Cummings during his time at the hospital.

Side note: in re-familiarizing myself with Secretary Carson’s background, I discovered that he was held up at gunpoint in Baltimore not long after he completed his residency, which has to have been more than four decades ago. These days, I hear that Johns Hopkins employees are advised to not go walking outside the confines of the hospital grounds.

Daytime conditions are, no doubt, this dire somewhere here in my native Los Angeles but I haven’t seen it personally. And I’ve lived in South Central most of the time.

Switching gears, I’ve said before that most members of the legislative branch of our government – especially non-white Democrat members of the House – are picked by the money brokers of the parties before they even go on the ballot.

Essential requirements: not overly smart nor overly principled. My contention is that they are selected in high school, since college is probably too late to indoctrinate. And if they got into college on their own, they've already demonstrated one disqualification for the position: too many IQ points. Smart people are difficult to control.

The task of the chosen is to “represent” and by that, I’m not talking about representing the interests of their constituents.  The aim is to be seen and, thereby, get paid as much as can be gotten away with.

And here's why it has been possible.

Black and brown Americans have long highly rated seeing someone who looks like them in the halls of power and the House members and their backers know this. This is how these members stay in office for so long.

And since much of the legislative branch is corrupt, almost all the members get rich – often by voting government monies into their districts and siphoning from that pile. Meanwhile, their districts go to Hell.

Whose fault is this? The constituents. These voters care more about seeing themselves mirrored by the faces of their representatives that they care about the deterioration of their neighborhoods. And this phenomenon isn't just in Baltimore.

At some point, they (we) stopped paying attention to what, say, Elijah Cummings was doing or not doing to render actual representation in the halls of Congress. I wonder how many in his district knew that the area received $16 billion in federal funding last year. Of those who did know, I’m sure that someone asked where the money was going and was promptly ignored or told to shut up if they knew what was good for them.

That’s why it was necessary for the President of the United States to bring it up.

In fairness, the previous president spoke harshly about Baltimore, as well – to nearly no backlash from his fellow Democrats or from Big Media.

This one, however, is willing to take a lot of heat on this topic and willing to fire back -- with more deadly ammo. We’ve seen this before.

I’m willing to bet that this gravy train and many others will be stopped in their tracks.

That's reason for the screeching. More later on the content of the screeches.

ADDENDUM: For a more detailed plunge into the corruption abyss, check out this Twitter thread by Brian Cates.

It's been [checks card] NINE ENTIRE HOURS since Trump tweeted about Baltimore.

You know its coming soon.....

— Brian Cates (@drawandstrike) July 30, 2019

Every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Literacy is Power.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum

When you hit the Tip Jar, it helps pays for: A Roof Over My Head, Food, Gasoline, Car Insurance, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility.

Become a Patron!

Symptom: the Coconut Treatment

From time to time, I use the term Coconut Treament. It's a personal coinage which I defined some years back, but it hasn't taken hold, so I still get askance comments when I use it. Here's the metaphor again.

Take a coconut, slice it in half, scoop out the meat from both halves and toss the meat—the substance--into the garbage disposal. Then take a pile of dog manure that Fido deposited into your yard, fill both halves of the coconut shells with it and glue the halves back together. What do you have now?

 A "coconut."

Take the meaning of a word or term, "scoop" it out (disregard it), and insert a meaning of one's choosing therein. That's the Treatment.

On his Twitter feed, Glenn Reynolds shares a perfect example of the Coconut Treatment, as noted by a guy named Chet Cannon.

This week in leftist rhetoric:

-@benshapiro (Jewish) labeled a Nazi
-@chelseahandler calls Ben Carson a 'black white supremacist'

Okay.

— Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) September 17, 2017

Cannon shouldn't be surprised at this tactic; we see people do this everyday, so much so that it has become normal. Ask me how many times I've been call a racist for, say, defending conservative principles or for my long-term side-eye at Islam.

This type of thinking is merely a symptom of the rampant epidemic known by its fancier name --postmodernism. As with any other disease, attacking the symptoms eases the patient temporarily, but he still has not been cured. I think that this is the cure, but it's a voluntary one.

In the meantime, we should all be wary of this type of thinking, especially within our individual selves.

When you hit the Tip Jar, it helps pays for: A Roof Over My Head, Food, Gasoline, Insurance, the writing of My Next Book(s), and Utilities--especially Internet and COFFEE! Yes, coffee is a utility. 

The Two Trumps Get an Endorsement (UPDATE)

Today, Dr. Ben Carson has endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, in the wake of cancelling his own campaign.

In an interview with Fox News Radio Thursday Carson said there were two different Trumps and he was considering supporting the "thinking" version.

“There’s two Donald Trumps. There’s the Donald Trump that you see on television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there’s the Donald Trump behind the scenes,” he said. “They’re not the same person. One’s very much an entertainer, and one is actually a thinking individual.”

My snark, stolen from Steve Graham:

"There are two different Donald Trumps" --Ben Carson planning separation surgery? | Ben Carson Endorses Donald Trump https://t.co/6ZTT0gbRzv

— Juliette A. Ochieng (@JulietteAkinyi) March 11, 2016

Many who were supporters/admirers of Dr. Carson are disappointed in his choice and I--an admirer-- am among this number. But most of us will take our disappointment and disillusion about this person and keep on moving—because we know that human beings are flawed, politicians especially so. Dr. Carson is far from the first politician to act in a manner inconsistent with his professed values and consistent with possible personal gain.

It would be nice, however, if his statement about it weren’t so laughable. But I digress from my point.

It’s the point which I’ve been mulling over for a few months and talking about since I came back from Kenya: when someone wishes to get your vote/admiration/support and claims to believe in the principles which you believe, but behaves in a manner contrary to those beliefs, you withdraw your vote/admiration/support from that person.

You don’t discard the principle(s). Not unless you are FoS, too.

If I ever need brain surgery, I’ll ask Dr. Carson for a recommendation. (He’s too old to do it himself.) But his incoherent political philosophy—perhaps willfully incoherent--is noted and I’m done with him in that area.

BY THE WAY: Remember when Trump compared Carson to a child-molester and suggested that he be killed or castrated? Warning: contempt for Christianity on display in this video.

Don't forget: every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Tuesday's post: Principles, Linear Existence, and Deep Space Nine.

Please contribute to Juliette’s Projects: A Roof Over My Head, my books, this blog, and my Internet--to keep them going and to the COFFEE fund to keep me going!