Call A Doctor

At last check, there were more than seventy-five candidates for the Republican Presidential Nomination. This was after forty-two of them had dropped out of the race because they couldn't raise the billion dollars required to stay in, or they ran out of red ties, or just couldn't get the cameraman to pan far enough to the left or right to catch them on the edge of that overloaded debate stage. Or maybe they were just afraid of being bullied by Donald Trump. 

This is hyperbole, of course, since there are only a dozen or so "serious" candidates, all waiting for that opportunity to get their chance to stand on the same stage and be bullied by Donald Trump. Up until quite recently, one of the safe choices was brain surgeon Doctor Ben Carson. That hissing sound you hear is the air being let out of his presidential aspirations. I blame the Hippocratic Oath. 

In much the same way that Donald Trump can puff up his chest and say that he is a billionaire, Doctor Carson shows up with his ticket to the convention bearing that title: Doctor. What better certification would one need to show up to a political arena than as a healer? Repairing the rifts that have causes so much suffering in the is great land of ours? Mend the wounds we have all experienced over the past twenty years? Somebody get me a doctor.

But probably not one who laughs nervously when asked to defend his assertion that charging a gunman would be the best chance any of us would have in the event of a mass shooting. The same guy who said, when asked to explain his theory that Jews in Europe might have survived the Holocaust if not for laws prohibiting guns,  “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed. I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first.” Couple this with his assessment of the recent murders in Oregon, “There is no doubt that this senseless violence is breathtaking,but I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away," and you might expect to see one less podium on that stage at the end of this month.

Then again, if the measure of front-runners in the GOP is how outrageous one can be without actually frothing at the mouth, then this may be the move the good doctor needed to make in order to overtake the ugly flurry that is the Trump campaign. 

And never mind the Hippocratic Oath. It was written a long time ago by people who don't understand today's reality. Yeah. I get it.