I can’t. I just can’t anymore. Ben Carson Knows Everything.
My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,Carson said.Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.
There are Americans right now who hear that, and think, “Well, that’s a mighty sensible theory, I think I’ll elect that man to be President of this here United States!”, and I just don’t think I can bear the widespread stupidity any more.
I think I’ll just close my eyes and pretend he doesn’t exist. But if I open them a year from January and discover that this flaming nincompoop has actually been elected, I’ll have to spontaneously combust.
I think I remember that diagram from the Egypt Unit in History in the 3rd grade.
1960 something.
Jesus fuck, I made the mistake of actually listening to the video of his speech at that link. It’s terrible, even just as a speech: incoherent babble. He can’t finish a thought. He gets “thermal dynamics” wrong. He jumps from that stupid Joseph story to denying evolution, and then starts an anecdote about how “the meaning of each one of those letters means something special” — what letters? What word? — and tells us the “T” is for “talent”…and then goes off on another tangent. Then several minutes later he tells us the “H” is for honesty, which leads him to tell another story about how abortion is bad, and how brave he was to refuse to run a commercial about abortion. Next it’s all about how god loves us, and the video ends.
The word was apparently “th”.
Goddamn this man is stupid.
Yes, it’s an extremely elaborate structure for a tomb, and we all know that tombs are never elaborate. On the other hand, wheat silos have a well known history of being grandiose structures with interiors containing extremely little space.
Oh, and sarcophagi. Well known grain silo feature, that.
Well…. he got one part of that concept, partially rational. It is hard to reconcile the pyramids being a grand burial tomb.
Needless to say (but I will anyway), to assign it to David (who may be no more than fictional), to store grain, is just… [words fail]
regardless. Carson seems ever more to be a publicity hound to promote his upcoming book.
It’s too bad one can’t get him to look up one simple term: mastaba. If you look at the progression of Egyptian royal tombs, you go from the simple mastaba, to 4 of them stacked on top of each other, to smoothing the surface to make…a pyramid. Apparently he is also unaware of the great lengths the Egyptians went to in an effort to thwart tomb robbers looking for all those valuable grave goods.
Now…my favorite idea of why the internal structure is what it is comes from L. Sprague deCamp…perhaps Khufu was a claustrophobe and the thought of that much rock over his final resting place was too much for him to bear.
The people who want this wankstain in power – I’m convinced they’re simply trolls who want to see the world burn. They don’t care how much of a lunatic he is, or about his complete disregard for evidence-based thinking. They WANT a crazy, irresponsible person in charge, for their own entertainment’s sake.
It’s a schtick, a long con, a grifter grooming his suckers to be milked after he exits the race.
He doesn’t believe any of it.
WRONG, Carson. Everyone knows that the Pyramids don’t store grain – they give you a Free Granary in every city.
Wait, Joseph? Wait, grain?! But… it’s mostly stones. That would be such a stupid design for a grain silo. What I don’t get is the motivation behind a stupid comment like that. Is there some controversy about pyramids on the right wing fringe? Some attempt to discredit ancient Egyptian pharaohs? Is that, like, a thing?
What I mean by “it’s mostly stones” is that there are relatively few empty spaces that could even be filled with grain, not that a grain silo made out of stone would necessarily be stupid. Why am I clarifying? This stupidity doesn’t warrant clarification.
Not only does he think that the Pyramids were ancient granaries instead of tombs, he thinks that scientists think that they were built by aliens?
Augh! The Stupid! It burns!!!1!
The ancient Egyptian pyramids are not grain stores, they are stone stores. You see, the annual Nile flood not only brought silt, water, and idle time, but also lots of rocks. Big rocks. The Egyptians had to clear them out of the fields each year, which left the problem of where to put them. They eventually hit on the idea of piling the previous year’s collection up into ever-increasingly complex pyramids during flood season.
(I’m sure I’ve heard the doofus’s “Joseph built the pyramids as grain silos” nonsense before, as a child, many yonks ago in a pervious millennium. That is, he is probably regurgitating something he’s heard before.)
He was trying to spell “me”. So credit for getting the number of letters correct…
A huge pile of stones with a sealed entrance and three relatively tiny rooms within all stuffed with treasure and dead people.
Wouldn’t want it to be a bad crop year would you?
Well, I guess that makes the mummy inside the janitor of the granary. Grain storage was an important job, so the keepers would be honoured among the people, perhaps even revered. Once a keeper died that granary would be retired and a new one built. Upon their death, the janitorial staff would be laid to rest in the place they had maintained and protected diligently over the course of their lives. Precious items were only included as a token gesture to show the gratitude of the people they had served. After all, you can’t eat gold.
It all makes perfect sense now. Quick, someone with a twitter account start the hashtag #carsonnobel! (or something)
And then watch it take off.
And despair.
P.S.: Insulation is serious business. Hence to poor ratio of stone to storage space. Would you want to spent eternity in a drafty, damp pyramid? Thought not…
Also, because of the importance of the granary they left a giant cat-man thing outside to fend off locusts.
I mean would you tangle with a sphinx if you were a locust?
The pyramid people say that you can sharpen a razor blade by putting it in a pyramid. Maybe we can sharpen Carson’s razor mind by putting him in a pyramid.
Couldn’t hurt.
Carson’s ‘own personal theory’ dates back to the 19th century, the golden age of pyramidiocy, when some religious crackpots believed that the Biblical Joseph was the same person as the architect Imhotep.
More and more it appears that no, the GOP don’t really want Carson anywhere near the White House; what they want is (yet another) rodeo clown to distract their lumbering, snorting base from that orange cowboy. “Yeah, we know Trump is a bellowing moron, but have you seen Carson? He makes me wish Dole was running again.”
Plus I don’t think the GOP has quite figured out how to market a black Republican president to their evermore racist base. Maybe give it a few more generations.
So, if the pyramids were built for storing grain, what was the Taj Mahal built for (and by whom)?
Does that even parse? *what* would have to be something awfully big? If I stop and think about what? And *what* wouldn’t just disappear over the course of time? Did something disappear?
what the fuck is this guy trying to say. I don’t care if he is stupid. But he is freaking incoherent.
What @Hank_Says (says?)
Also, token POC.
I can’t make grammatical sense of Carson’s paragraph.
You lot obviously don’t understand. That is why they had to build so many pyramids. Because each one couldn’t hold much grain.
Andrew
Especially the tombs of imperial royalty. Those guys are always so modest.
Surely Ben Carson is taking the piss. No one could be that insane and not need constant adult supervision. He’s putting two fingers up at the Republican establishment and the loons who support them, isn’t he?
He’s right. It’s common knowledge that’s where they kept the farro.
Carson is presumably buying into the very antiquated idea that ancient Egypt is a mysterious place, rather than one of the best studied, documented, and well-understood ancient civilisations.
I seem to remember that contemporary documents exist even for the building of the Great Pyramid.
So if the pyramids were really granaries, what were the buildings which most people think were granaries actually used for?
“I seem to remember that contemporary documents exist even for the building of the Great Pyramid.” – as in, documenting some of the mundane details of the builders.
Giliel @ 20: The architecture clearly shows that the Taj Mahal was built as a cigarette factory, cf. this German counterpart
Rosa Rubicondior @ 25
That would be plausible if the comments were more recent. However, this speech is from 1998.
@Saad #26
That post wins this thread.
dunc@28: “So if the pyramids were really granaries, what were the buildings which most people think were granaries actually used for?”
Mummy wheat.
Seconded!
But I think Honourable mention should go to @kevinalexander:
But speaking of the 1970’s, all this speculation is equally wrong; everybody knows that Ancient Astronauts built the Great Pyramid as an astronomical observatory….
In context, the words he’s very slowly trying to spell appear to be “thinking big” (or possibly “thinking God”).
phft. fools. everyone knows Trump built the Taj Mahal for gambling. I’ve been there.
Note to Ben Carson: Stargate: SG1 is a fictional television series. Daniel Jackson is not an actual archeologist, but an actor playing an archeologist. Ask an Egyptologist what they thinks of the idea that aliens built the pyramids and they’ll probably laugh at you, or go on an angry rant they’ve gone on many times before about how the idea is bullshit.
Cue the whining about “gotcha journalism” in 3…2…
I mean, really. How dare you make him look ridiculous by showing him saying ridiculous things?
And people let this man near their brains with a scalpel?
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness Thread.
Ben Carson may not really be running for president. He may be running to make money in other ventures.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/ben-carson-running-for-president.html#
Yeah, hence the book tour.
Bernie Sanders spends bout 4% of the funds he raises on more fundraising. Ben Carson spends 69% of the funds he raises on raising more funds.
Why do right-wingers love Ben Carson? An interview with white conservative voters from South Carolina may provide some answers:
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/6/9262795/ben-carson-polls
Uh huh. That’s what I thought.
Ben Carson complains about the “welfare state” all the time. And he repeats the “personal responsibility” line that conservatives love. The “personal responsibility” line is a dog whistle telling conservatives that he agrees with them that dependence on help from government programs stifles the initiative of poor people. And, oh yeah, what a great excuse for cutting funding to so-called “entitlement” programs. Carson’s own background tells a different story:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/opinion/article24747304.html
Here’s an account of an interview in which Ben Carson is terrifyingly incompetent.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/faced-commander-chief-test-ben-carson-flunks
Carson seems to think that even Middle Eastern governments that kicked Osama Bin Laden out their country were loyal to Bin Laden, and that they would have turned the al Qaeda leader over to the USA if the the USA has threatened the middle east with petroleum independence.
And then Carson went on to talk about Iraq, and invading Iraq while seeming to confuse Afghanistan and Iraq. It was all gibberish.
Ben Carson has often hinted that God backs him for president.
Link
Oh, Ben Carson, must you be so obnoxious so many times per day? Rhetorical question.
Carson’s latest foray into stupid land:
Uh, wait. This is the same Carson that made such a big deal out of not bowing to “political correctness” pressure when he talks in public, right?
Yes, Carson said, “It’s time for people to stand up and proclaim for what they believe and stop being bullied.”
Why is Ben Carson leading in Iowa? The answer is so depressing. Iowans who vote in the primary agree with Ben Carson. They really do. They agree most when Carson says something really stupid and/or anti-Muslim. They agree most when Carson reveals himself to be worse than Donald Trump.
Slate link
My wife tells me its too scary to laugh at these guys, but…really? It’s just so funny. I should be scared but I am having trouble keeping a straight face.
Ben Carson does not write all of his own stupid stuff, though he claims to. No, he plagiarizes some of it.
And here’s an example of some of the text Carson plagiarized:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/ben-carson-book#.huZ2VR1EJv
Cross-posted from the “Ben Carson is simply a horrible person” thread.
Ben Carson is currently on a book tour. He is using his status as a presidential candidate to sell books.
The All-In show, hosted by Chris Hayes, had a brilliant idea: hire someone else to read books written by candidates and then produce a review of the book. They started with Ben Carson’s new book, A More Perfect Union. Jeb Lund, columnist for the Guardian and Rolling Stone, is the reviewer.
Dry humor. I liked it.
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/all-ins-first-ever-candidate-book-report-550868035954
Ben Carson said some stupid stuff, more stupid stuff. He clearly does not understand how the federal government works. He has the same problem that a plaques a lot of Republican candidates, he does not know the difference between the deficit and the budget.
See http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/republican-debt-limit-votes-struggling
In the USA, we have a multi-billion dollar deficit. At the end of Ben Carson’s first fantasy year as President, that deficit will not be $0. The deficit has shrunk during Obama’s administration, but it is not gone.
Carson made the same mistake a couple of weeks ago. He hasn’t learned anything since. He wants to be president, but he doesn’t know what the debt ceiling is. He made more comments, about school funding this time, that showed he does not know how public education is funded in the USA.
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/258211-carson-i-wont-raise-the-debt-ceiling-as-president
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ben-carson-defends-call-redistribute-school-funds-nationally
Regarding Carson’s rags to riches via his own bootstraps story, as well as his abrupt turn away from violence once he accepted the Lord, take a look at this recent article from CNN. Looking into Carson’s history, reporters are having a hard time finding corroborating evidence. Obviously, this is just a smear campaign from the liberal media.
A tale of two Ben Carsons
And the nutter has said, this week, he still “thinks” what he said then is correct, Ben Carson: Egyptian pyramids were grain stores, not pharaohs’ tombs:
It’s not entirely clear from The Grauniad’s article whether the extraterrestrial babbling is something new, or something he said back then (and if so, whether or not the fruitcake still claims that).
And then there are his views on the 2nd Amendment and Stand Your Ground laws:
(bolding mine)
Ben Carson’s words seem just to alienate thinking voters. But what if his aims are just so?
May be an answer could come form C. Herley ( http://www.cognitionandculture.net/home/blog/55-radu-umbres-blog/2525-scammers ).
Why should anyone who wants to rob someone on the web still appeal to “Nigerian scam”? He should know that many people on the web know about it, so he should better find another way to scam people.
But if he intends to aim just at the more gullible people, he should pose as the web-famous Nigerian Prince/Attorney/Heir and go on phishing his phools.
blf@52: His allegations that ‘scientists’ believe that aliens built, or taught us to build, the pyramids was part of the speech in the OP. So it’s not a new claim, at the very least. Whether he still holds to that part as well as the “pyramids were for grain”, as you note, is a bit less clear.
BTW, a few folks have stumbled over this bit:
Fortunately (?) I am fluent in Advanced Moron. He’s talking about the Biblical story of Joseph and the silos he supposedly told Pharaoh to build to warehouse seven years’ worth of surplus grain, so that Egypt would prosper over seven years of famine that were to follow (Pharaoh was troubled by some freaky dreams about cannibal cows after a night of heavy carousing on ancient beer and greasy crocodile sausages). He’s saying that such silos would need to be enormous, far larger than the ones we have found in archeological digs. Now, someone who doesn’t have their head so far up their own rectum that they can lick their own tonsils might consider this evidence of… error, in the text, yes? But not Our Ben. He just assumes that since there are no discoveries of silos capable of housing enough grain to feed an entire nation for seven years, some other structure must be the grain storage. Because inerrancy.
Ben Carson said some more stupid stuff on Facebook.
No, Mr. Carson, that is not even close to being true. That’s not spin. That’s lying and/or total ignorance. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were elected officials with political experience.
Carson also said stupid stuff in an interview. Carson was in Miami recently, where the Miami Herald staff interviewed him.
Link
Regarding that claim that Medicare and Medicaid fraud is “half a trillion dollars,” no, that is not factual. Total spending, that’s TOTAL spending, on Medicare and Medicaid last year was $980 billion. Carson just said that more than half of that spending is fraud. Weirdness.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports that improper payments for Medicare equal about $29 billion (not $500 billion); and that Medicaid improper payments equal about $19 billion (not $500 billion). The total of improper payments is between $50 and $60 billion (not $500 billion). Of the Medicare improper payments, government officials recovered about $4.3 billion in 2013 (I couldn’t find a more recent figure). And the figures for “improper payments” include examples of incorrect coding in payment requests (mistakes, not fraud). Yes, fraud is a big problem. Yes, it being addressed.
300-plus million fucking people in this country, and THIS is the best they can do for possible candidates for the highest office????
At any rate, will we be seeing a response from the American Archaeological Society?? Please? I would just love a very public “what the fuck is wrong with you, ben?” response.
*double face-palm with clusterfuck*
–
WTF are you on about? You’re usually a rational commenter, IIRC. We know the pyramids are “grand burial tombs”, from abundant archeological and documentary evidence. The whole society was obsessed with death and how to ensure entry into and a high position in the afterlife.
All this “Oh he doesn’t really belief it” and “He’s not really running for President” and “He couldn’t possibly be elected” really gets my goat.
1) Of course he bloody well believes it. He has a completely consistent history of batshit beliefs, many of which are common among the religious right.
2) And while he will certainly be using the campaign to sell his fuckwitted books, he’s not going to pull out while it looks as if he has a real chance of gaining the nomination.
3) The breathtaking stupidity and ignorance of the American electorate, together with the chance of either his Democratic opponent dying or having to pull out, and the very real possibility of a new financial crash before next November, makes it impossible to be confident anyone, even Carson, could not be elected if he gains the nomination.
Nick @60:
Reading slithey tove’s comment generously, I think they meant that even though some people know why the pyramids were built, it can be hard for them to reconcile that knowledge when they look at them and say “those ginormous things are burial tombs”?
Matthias Neeracher
That’s really cool, I didn’t know about this building. Too bad Dresden is currently un-visit-ionable (yes I made that up).
When Donald Trump considers your comments to be “strange”, that is a sign that you’ve surged past rock bottom and are now penetrating the mantle of stupidity.
We have neighbors who have Ben Carson stickers on their vehicles. He’s a neurologist and she’s a dentist.
I’m truly nervous about the intelligence of the people in the healthcare industry on whom I might need to depend for my medical needs.
re @61:
Thanks for the generosity. You mostly correctly interpreted my comment. To clarify, a little, it’s not that there is any controversy about their purpose. Just continuing puzzlement at many of the details of the pyramids being inconsistent with burial tomb, plus the inconsistencies with the major burial ground.
But really, I was just playin along, not taking a serious position in my off the cuff comment, above.
If it was 40 years ago my father would have said the surgeon had been huffing too much anesthetic.
The Ben Carson campaign made a rap. It’s as gloriously awful as you would expect it to be.
Tony@61, slithey tove@65,
Sorry, I was ungenerous in my reading. But having been round the Egyptian museum in Turin (reputedly second only to that in Cairo), I am confident there is absolutely nothing too weird or OTT to be part of ancient Egyptian funerary practices! Initially, the afterlife was only for the Pharoah, then it spread down the social scale first to the nobility, then to the hoi polloi – but whoever you were, your corpse had to remain well-preserved. Coffins had eyes painted on the outside, so the corpse could see out. You could be liable for compulsory agricultural labour in the afterlife just as in this one – so people were buried with lots of little wooden figurines, who would take their place in the fields. And so on.
slithey tove@4 — “It is hard to reconcile the pyramids being a grand burial tomb.” Yes, it’s difficult to reconcile that with our modern perspective and assuming we’re thinking of burying a mere human. Of course, the pharaohs were gods incarnate on an all expenses paid trip to the afterlife. In addition, not all the pyramids are as grand as those at Giza or Dahshur, so perhaps not so different in scale than Grant’s Tomb, the Taj Mahal, the Lenin Mausoleum, and similar relatively modern structures.
Nick Gotts — “The whole society was obsessed with death…” I suspect that’s a myth. Much of what we have in writing from ancient Egypt are texts from tombs which perhaps skews our perspective. Also, not much attention is given to the writings that are not liturgical, There’s quite a lot of everyday business stuff where death doesn’t even enter the picture. Also, I have a wonderful book of Egyptian love poems that I found quite life affirming.
robro@69,
A reasonable point. But it’s a difficult impression to dismiss when you’ve seen the bizarre lengths they went to to preserve corpses and provide them with what they would “need” in the afterlife. Mummification and grave-goods practices began in the pre-dynastic era (4th millennium BCE or earlier) and got more or less continuously more widespread and elaborate right through to the New Kingdom (late 2nd to mid 1st millennium). I’d like to see an estimate of the proportion of labour and raw materials that went into this activity, in comparison to other societies of the time. My hunch is that Egypt would come out at the top.
Ben Carson has been caught lying … again. This time, it looks like he fabricated a story about being admitted to West Point. Is he just recounting for us his dreams?
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-west-point-215598#ixzz3qjJvclwe