Hey Ben Carson, screw you.
I’d like to think I have my eloquent moments as a writer, my nuanced instincts as a journalist, my wits about me as a reporter. And whenever I’ve had to cover the latest idiotic statement by Ben Carson, I’ve tried to take into account the fact that he’s clearly mentally compromised, and he may honestly not know any better. But when it comes to his latest remarks today, all I can come up with is this: screw you.
Here’s the thing about Ben Carson: he grew up poor. He’s not poor anymore. In fact he he’s rich. Good for him. He earned it. He brought a unique skillset to brain surgery, he saved lives, and he changed medicine forever. But that’s the whole point: almost no one has the talent and skillset required to grow up and become a brain surgeon. Carson made it out of poverty because he was the exception, not the rule.
Most people who grow up in poverty are condemned to it forever. They have insufficient access to nutrition and medicine. They attend underfunded schools, which in turn makes it difficult for them to attend or succeed in college, which in turn traps them in low paying jobs for life. The deck is stacked against them from day one. A child who grows up in poverty can be smart, work hard, have loving parents, and still, the odds are good that child will end up in poverty in adulthood – because that’s how our largely uncaring capitalist system works.
Ben Carson was born with the kind of one-in-a-million skills that allowed him to escape poverty by default. But it almost literally takes a brain surgeon to pull that off. And it shouldn’t take a brain surgeon to understand that most people who grow in poverty are never given an opportunity to get out of it. It’s disgustingly arrogant of him to assert that the only reason he escaped poverty, and most others don’t, is because he wanted it more. There are countless people who worked even harder than he did to escape poverty, and never had a chance.
If you want to give people an opportunity to get out of poverty, you have to provide the kind of social programs that give them a fighting chance to move up a rung on the economic ladder. HUD helps provide that opportunity, and if it were properly funded – which it never has been since its inception – it could make more of a difference. Ben Carson is the last person on earth who should be in charge of HUD. And after his comments today, he needs to resign. If you’re a regular reader, feel free to support Palmer Report
