But unlike the eccentric clarity of Monk's genius, the radiance of Carson's "genius glow" is somewhat disturbingly off hue. It's certainly not of the enlightened brilliance of that which emanates from the likes of musicians like Monk or scientists like the Neil deGrasse Tyson, recipient of the National Academy of Science's Public Welfare Medal, or writers like National Book Award recipient Ta-Nehisi Coates. Nor is it of that quaint, comparatively harmless spaciness of the late comic Professor Irwin Corey or fictitious savants like Tom Hanks' Forest Gump character and the Chauncey Gardiner character in the film Being There . In that 1970s-era movie, Gardiner, played by Peter Sellers, managed to achieve worldwide acclaim as an insightful visionary despite the fact that virtually everything he knew about life was derived similar to the way Donald Trump says he gets his military advice -- from watching television.
Carson's spacey, though quite similar to Gardiner's seems to emanate from a darker, maybe even malevolent realm occupied by the likes of Khadafy. Others that come to mind include religious cult-leader Jim Jones , head of the "People's Temple ," who in 1978, induced 800 members of his flock to commit mass suicide, and Marshall Applewhite -- leader of the Texas-based UFO cult known as Heaven's Gate -- who nearly 20 years after Jonestown, convinced his followers to kill themselves.
Regardless of from where it comes, its effect -- in tandem with Trump's own obsessive-compulsive promulgation of outer-worldly narcissism and xenophobic demagoguery -- have become nightmarish challenges to the GOP's dreams of re-taking the White House. It's as if " Operation Chaos," a plot devised by Rush Limbaugh to divide and conquer the Democratic base in 2008, is today well underway within the GOP. Limbaugh's plan in 2008 was to foment "chaos" within the Democratic base by directing Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in that year's open primaries as a means of prolonging the battle to decide Democratic nominee.
Whether by design or simply by fluke, a new form of chaos has clearly erupted. But this time it's occurring within the GOP. It's been created not by a GOP-like cross-party voting scheme hatched by Democrats, but by a possible cross-party scheme involving a Democrat running for President as a Republican. Some within the GOP -- including Jeb Bush -- have suggested that Trump, who has had a close past relationship with the Clintons, is seeking the GOP nomination on behalf of the Democrats to pave the way for Hillary's election and grease the skids for the Republican Party's descent toward political fratricide.
I find this theory highly doubtful primarily because the Republican Party has repeatedly proven quite capable of shooting itself in the foot without any help from Democrats.
But whether true or false, the utter chaos that Trump has brought to the GOP nomination process and its negative effect on the Republican brand as a whole seems inarguable. But Trump's has plenty of help from Carson. Both serve as distinct metaphors representing the oddity of today's conservative Republican politics: Trump as political sarcasm; and Carson as political satire. Together they've created the perfect passive-aggressive political sh*t-storm for the GOP.
Hence, when Hillary Clinton delivers a comprehensive ass-whooping at the polls next year to whomever the Republican nominee turns out to be, Trump, who will not be the nominee can justifiably tell Ben Carson what George W. Bush, without justification, told Americans on May 1, 2003 about the status of the Iraq war:
"Mission accomplished."
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