I can fully accept that at some point some white guy with silver hair and dark eyebrows said he’d be a shoo-in for the Point. Perfectly believable. And maybe it was Westmoreland. Weirder things have happened. And the Millerites I’ve known, though pleasant people, have tended so far toward the Utterly Naive side of the spectrum that not only misunderstanding it then but also now is not out of the question.
My problem is with somebody age 39 who had been in school until what? ten years before? having enough chutzpah to write an autobiography. What life experience had he to inspire us? What wisdom had he accrued that was worth sharing? Very little, since most of his life was spent with his nose in a textbook or a corpse or someone’s brain. Thus the need for padding. Inspirational padding. It was in a book hardly anybody, in raw numbers, would read (it’s not like he was going to run for president!), and those that did would be used to inspirational stories where the point was not the literal truth of the story but the meaning of the story, like the parables of Jesus. Except some people are so simple and naive that even parables must be true*, and their own altar call stories are repeated so many times that they become true in their heads.
“The Good Samaritan’s name? I dunno–let’s call him Seth. Of course I’m making that up. He wasn’t real. It’s just a story to show how even people you think are bad can have some good qualities, and how you can’t allow your prejudices to become your reality. He could’ve been a Roman or an Egyptian; I just saw some Jews messing with a Samaritan for no reason and it struck me as a good basis for a parable. What was the traveler’s name? What would you like it to be? Y’see, it doesn’t matter because IT’S JUST A STORY! God, crucifixion would be better than question time with you idiots!”**
** - It’s like when we showed Billy Elliot at church. A number of the old dears were convinced it was based on a true story, when in fact it was based on The Jazz Singer, just like 25% of all movies that came out of Hollywood since 1927. :rolleyes:
I’m all for Puerto Rican statehood, but, is PR an asset to the USA? Serious question. My understanding was that it’s a drain economically. (Like many red states.)
Oh I recognized it was exactly that. I grew up in a fundie household and have seen this type of crazy all my life. My point is the Westmoreland story isn’t as easily shown to be ridiculous and a pile of BS, even though it clearly is. This psych class story is one that can be easily shown to be made up. I doubt his hardcore fans will care much but I would think some of his fanboys and girls, like the one in this thread, would have a more difficult time handwaving this story away.
Yep, that is mentioned in the WSJ article I linked to in my post.
Maybe. This post rounds up the quotes and asks whether Carson is delusional, a grifter, or a delusional grifter. I get the sense that he’s been racking up speaking fees based on his life story for years now, so this doesn’t look like mere corner cutting. A commenter in the above link has another reasonable take: [INDENT]He’s a bullshit artist. Everyone’s met someone like him in high school. When he talks what’s important is not the truth or falsity of his statements, but whether they reflect well on him and fuel his self-regard. [/INDENT] I say grifters gotta grift. What blows my mind is his audience: to me Carson doesn’t appear all that good at this. We’ve seen more persuasive trolls on this message board.
I’m a big believer in ecumenicism. Set the pin dancing wrangling aside, roll up your sleeves, and do God’s work. But some of this stuff is just toxic, and it seems that the suckers may have attained some sort of critical mass. I can only shake my head.
Consider the amount of bad advice embedded in Carson’s homilies. Wait for $10 bills to rain on you. Don’t trust those folks at Yale: 149 out of 150 are dishonest. I find that offensive and frankly off the mark: of the two top colleges in the nation, Harvard is known for pumping out businessfolk, while Yale’s alumni are successful but not necessarily in a monetary way. Oh jeez, I’m just getting sucked into it now: the story was ludicrous in any setting. My point is that there’s a special place in hell for conceited dispensers of bad advice.
Well that was a drag…
…so let’s talk about Puerto Rico! I think it’s an asset to the US, to the extent that it is a bridge to Latin America, a multi-continent with huge growth opportunities.
Yeah, but that’s just natural selection in action! We’re a tougher crowd than the sort of people (evangelical Christians) who’ve been Ben Carson’s target audience all these years.
Regarding West Point, I’ll give Carson the benefit of the doubt and say it’s possible that he met Westmoreland, but was incorrect about the year and/or date. Maybe he bumped into him sometime. Maybe Westmoreland told him “with your grades, you’d be a shoo-in to get into West Point”. I can see that happening. But as a professional autobiographer, Carson should have gotten his facts straight. And he should know that being told you should apply is different from having an offer in your hand.
Carson’s self-pity is indeed pitiful. He thinks he’s been subject to more scrutiny than anyone in history. Perhaps he missed the birther movement. What’s up with his claims about Obama’s academic record being sealed? Are presidents supposed to release transcripts? Has any other president done so?
In case anyone’s wondering whether general election polling showing Carson leading Clinton is worth anything this early: it’s not. At least, according to Nate Silver’s team.
Ignore general election polling, this early, entirely.
Interestingly for those who think 2012 started a new trend, 2012 had the second most stable polling a year out. The outcome only changed by 1 point. Looks like minds were made up pretty much around this time or even earlier.
A few points about that list:
a)The polling errors do seem to have reduced in more recent elections. 1992 was a huge miss but the five since then do seem to have smaller errors, an average error of around 6 compared to 11 for the full sample.
b) While the absolute numbers are off, the polls do appear to have some predictive power as far as the winner is concerned, 11/14 which seems better than random. In particular the last five winners were correctly predicted.
c) The really big errors are when one candidate had a massive lead at this time. Clearly that isn’t the case this year. Among elections where the difference is under 5 the errors are relatively small.
Overall I would place a smallish weight on the polls right now but ignoring them altogether would be going too far.
And something occurred to me this morning: I’d heard this story before about a class where the exam wasn’t what people expected, and so everyone slunk out except for one student. The original source for the story I read (this isn’t where I read it!) was apparently the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Volume 43, Issue 1 (1940), and the incident it recounted supposedly occurred considerably earlier.
This variant of the story concerns a religion class, with a professor who, year after year, always asked the same final exam question: “Who, in chronological order, were the kings of Israel?” The students could coast through the semester, memorize the list the night before, write it down in the exam room the next day, and get an easy A.
But of course, someone tips off the professor to the fact that none of his students are studying anything except that list, so one year he changes the question to “Who were the major prophets and who were the minor prophets?” Everyone slinks out of the room except one student who scribbles furiously away, and hands in his paper with a smile.
The student wrote: “Far be it from me to distinguish between these reverend gentlemen, but it occurred to me that you might like a chronological list of the kings of Israel.”
He’s trying to protect his product, said product being Ben Carson. This product has made money for him for a long time, and continues to do so in the guise of a presidential run, which initially was just an ad campaign to sell himself. When that product is threatened by accusations of lies, he is suddenly able to shake off the lethargy he’s shown so far and become fiercely defensive and animated. The man is a huckster of the first order.
No doubt about it. But being a successful huckster and being a total fruit loop aren’t mutually exclusive, especially if you’ve got to absorb the fruitloopiness of your marks to fully understand how to best hook them.
Right, and that pretty much was the context and reading we got from Carson (and of course that we’re beautiful warm people with fine values of faith, the usual line we get from the Pubbie candidates).
