The doctor is out"... of his mind? Or so it seems sometimes anyway. Looks like the jig is just about up for Dr. Ben Carson. As a physician, Carson's magnificent; a masterpiece at his craft. But as a politician, he's a bit of a charlatan.

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Lost in Space: Carson's abundant brilliance seems overridden by a rather disturbing lack of unbiased insight.

"Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy." -- Thelonious Monk

I've taken to calling him "Brother Visions."

Of course, my description of Ben Carson has quite a lot to do with the solidly faith-based nature of what comes off as the working model of Carson's vision -- revealed through a series of one-off and doubled-down observations he's made that once consolidated, form a world view that seems far more apparitional than evidence-based.

But his "hocus-pocus" world view surely is not the only reason.

Let's face it, Ben Carson, who happens to be a Seventh Day Adventist, is probably the spaciest space shot to hit the political landscape since Jerry Brown's "Governor Moonbeam" era of the late 1970's in California. Although he doesn't quite project that completely "spaced out" kind of vibe associated with excessive cannabis intake or hard drug use, Carson's overall affectation of hazy, doped-up bliss often reminds me of some of the heroin addicts I've known. Many of them -- during their dope-fueled transition from stunted lucidity to "nodded-out" stupor -- ramble off much of the same kind of kooky, semi-coherent, philosophical rhetoric about the nature of the world in which both we and they live.

And they'd deliver that nonsense projecting the same wispy, cosmic demeanor we see in Carson. But don't get me wrong, I no more believe that Carson's addicted to smack or weed than I do his claim that until he finally found God (while in the bathroom for three hours), he ran the streets of Detroit as a stabby, hot-tempered ghetto thug.

Nope. "Gentle" Ben Carson is no dope fiend.

But he is seemingly dopey. To wit: he's a medical scientist who is as well a science-denier; he believes that the Great Pyramids were just a bunch of fabulously gussied-up grain silos; he believes that it was man who systematically hunted dinosaurs into extinction; his position on sexual preference is uniquely "pro-choice" (people" choose to be gay"); and, based on his response to media probing into claims he's made about a violent background and a scholarship offer from West Point, he believes that real journalism happens when reporters consign themselves to the role of stenographers. Finally, Carson diminishes the importance of at least some political experience in a presidential candidate by rationalizing that "amateurs built the Ark and it was the professionals that built the Titanic."

Yep. "Brother Visions" is clearly no rocket scientist, but he does appear to be a full-blown space cadet.

Truth be told, I don't know if Carson's space cadet demeanor is simply a manifestation of intense spiritual enrapture; detached thoughtfulness; scatter-brained bliss; or, maybe indeed just a matter of one "toke" too many. But whatever it is and from wherever it stems, Ben Carson's "Colonel Khadafy-esque " aura of head-in-the-clouds spaciness is overwhelming. It's at the point of rendering him too damn weird to be President of the United States. Meanwhile, it appears, based on Carson's steadily-declining poll numbers of the past couple of weeks, many of his supporters are starting to feel the same way.

A "bird-brained" genius?

For me, the genealogical roots of Ben Carson's spacey are kind of tough to definitively pin down. Who knows from whence it originated or which of the many strains of utter lunacy serves as its empowerment. Is it that post-rational spacey of the type rolled out by Sharron Angle in 2008 and later popularized by Sarah Palin? Is it a variable of the Michele Bachmann bat-sh*t strain? Does it exhibit a tinge of South Carolina Congressman Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford's lovelorn spacey? Does it contain seeds of the most perverted elements of former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner's spacey? Perhaps it's a type of Kevin Spacey of "American Beauty " spacey. Maybe William F. Macy's spacey in "Mystery Men ."

Or, perhaps it's not really that complicated at all. It's quite possible that the undeniably brilliant neurosurgeon is one of a not-all-that-rare species of human being -- the bird-brained genius. His seemingly off-kilter vision may be the result of an extremely brilliant mind handicapped by a deficiency in unbiased insight. As a physician, he is magnificent; a master at his craft. But as a politician, he's a bit of a charlatan whose ruminations on political matters come forth as a laid-back stream of intellectual non-sequiturs. As earlier noted, he insists that he cannot see any evidence of global warming (perhaps he should look here) thus placing him at odds with the 97 percent of scientists who see otherwise. He's adamant that there is no such thing as a war crime; likens abortion to slavery; rationalizes that Obamacare is worse than slavery; peddled the myth that the Jewish Star of David is printed on the back of U.S. one dollar bills; and advocates banning "liberal political speech" on college campuses.

Recent reports of frustration among Carson's advisors in their efforts to "make him smart" on matters unrelated to the medical field may indicate that that the Yale-trained neurosurgeon operates from a savant-like stratum of single-category mastery. If so, this places him within a fairly tight group of successful genius/eccentrics across many genres. Someone like jazz pianist Thelonious Monk comes to mind. Monk, a one-of-a-kind innovator, has been dead since 1982, yet his music, much of it composed over 50 years ago, is still considered by many to be far ahead of its time.

Photo: All Jazz Radio

Thelonious Sphere Monk

Monk was "spacey" too. During performances, the be-bop phenom would often rise from his piano in mid-set to perform strange, concentric dance moves. He often wore bizarre headgear. He was known to stare off into space while performing and even wander away from the piano right out of the jazz club. Monk's overt eccentricity however, was interpreted by some as "manic" behavior which landed him, for a time, in a New York psychiatric hospital.

Mad Scientist

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."

Authors Bio:

Anthony Barnes, of Boston, Massachusetts, is a left-handed leftist.

"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world." - Unknown Monk (1100 AD)