Ben Carson: Once you have God on speed dial, well, it’s hard not to press that button.
Washington Post book reviewer waded through five autobiographical volumes of magical thinking and delusions of grandeur by Ben Carson. Here’s his summary:
From Sunday's front page at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/11/05/ben-carson-the-humblebragging-instrument-of-god/
“At one point, Carson requests God’s help to find his stolen passport; it is retrieved. On the eve of a safari in South Africa, Carson asks God to “bless us with the opportunity to observe a wide variety of wildlife.” No surprise: His party witnesses such an astonishing range of animals that the guide can remember nothing like it. (“I never dreamed just how literally my prayers would be answered,” he writes.) And in a particularly unnerving intercession, Carson asks God for help in dismissing his incompetent, alcoholic secretary without hurting her feelings. (“I’m softhearted,” the doctor assures, “and it is especially hard for me to fire somebody.”) Two weeks later, the secretary doesn’t show up for work. “We never did find out what happened to her,” Carson writes. “She simply disappeared.” He regrets not being able to help her, but nevertheless, he is “thankful that this problem was resolved without any unpleasantness on my part.” Prayers answered and unpleasantness avoided, at least for the softhearted surgeon.
Carson frequently cites a poem, “Yourself to Blame,” that his mother taught him as a kid. “If things go bad for you/ And make you a bit ashamed/ Often you will find out that/ You have yourself to blame” are the opening lines. The sentiment fits his philosophy of self-help and self-reliance, which in turn informs his views on poverty and race.
Yet he rarely casts blame in his own direction. He repeatedly plagiarizes in college, but when he is finally caught, he minimizes the transgression as ignorance rather than malice. “Frankly, I had never even heard of the term plagiarism,” he writes. “Fortunately for me, the professor was very compassionate, realized that I was naive, and gave me a chance to rewrite the paper.”
And when things go wrong for him in the operating room, when a patient dies, Carson concludes that the surgery was impossible from the start and, prophet-like, chastises God for wasting his talents. “Why did you let me spend so much valuable time and energy in something that could not possibly work out?” Carson asks God. “Why would you provide an opportunity like this only to allow us to fail? Why?”
It’s easier to lecture God when you’re convinced of your own virtue. Carson seems particularly pleased with his humility, as the prideful tend to be. “I am uncomfortable with praise,” he says. “It is embarrassing to be the subject of a string of complimentary remarks.” But he is eager to detail accolades. He mentions multiple times that the medical internship he won at Johns Hopkins accepts only two students from an average of 125 applicants each year and that he became chief of pediatric neurosurgery at the tender age of 33. “God has given me not only the natural gifts of a surgeon but also the sensitivity to feel the hurt of my patients,” he writes. “This, however, does not give me the right to boast — I am only using the gifts that were given to me.”
If gratitude for one’s greatness is a sign of humility, then Carson is quite good at being humble. … If Carson wins the nomination, even the presidency, I suspect that in some future book he will deem the victory divinely ordained. If he doesn’t prevail, I’m sure the doctor’s postmortem will find someone to blame.
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