We want to welcome our newest contributing writer, Karl Merritt, to our community newspaper. His conservative and inspirational insights adds another enjoyable and intriguing dimension to our community newspaper. In the weeks to come you will see even more changes in the Up & Coming Weekly as we strive to stay relevant and influential in a dynamic community struggling to take ownership of its own identity. As electronic social media conveniently connects us to the world the unintended consequence is that it strips away a community’s personality, uniqueness and charm while masking its local amenities.  Thank you for allowing us to fill this void. Enjoy.

Bill Bowman

Dr. Ben Carson, How Dare you Escape

the Plantation?

There is surely a large group of Americans wondering how it can be that Dr. Ben Carson escaped the 21st century plantation. This is not supposed to happen.

For many years I have held that there is an ongoing effort to perpetuate among black Americans a condition similar to that experienced by slaves on the plantations of this country. That condition is one where people do not think for themselves and are so dependent on their masters that they dare not free themselves from the plantation. The following statement in an article on the Public Broadcasting Service website under The Slave Experience: Education, Arts, & Culture regarding preventing slaves from learning to read and write speaks to this process of controlling slaves:

“Fearing that black literacy would prove a threat to the slave system — which relied on slaves’ dependence on masters — whites in many colonies instituted laws forbidding slaves to learn to read or write and making it a crime for others to teach them.”

Although the tactics have changed, efforts to control black Americans with regard to thinking for ourselves and being free of exploitation continue without serious opposition. The tactics have shifted from beatings and lynching to suppressive entitlement programs, condoning violence by black Americans when in response to alleged discrimination, promising government sponsored “goodies” while doing little or nothing to provide real opportunity for individual responsibility and allowing tremendous black-on-black crime to go unchecked and barely noticed. The listing seems endless. The tactic that is proving extremely effective is for the controllers to, through character assassination, destroy anybody who threatens to disrupt this winning strategy. In our time, the aim has nothing to do with keeping crops profitable. It is all about controlling the black vote. All that is described above explains the overwhelming, and otherwise inexplicable, faithfulness of so many black Americans to the Democrat Party.

The sad fact of life is that black citizens who recognize this control strategy and leave the plantation, refusing to be controlled, do so at great cost. It is not simply a matter of safely and without opposition starting to think for one’s self and expounding positions that threaten the plantation arrangement. No, leaving the plantation requires escape with all the attendant threats, pain and other unbridled costs.

So, it is against this backdrop, in this context, that Carson chose to escape the plantation. He did not recently escape. Carson figured the current plantation system out a long time ago. His whole life reflects early escape. Second child of a mother who could not read, he grew up in poverty without a father in the home, but went on to become a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon. Not until his 2013 National Prayer Breakfast speech in which he spoke clearly and powerfully opposing several policies of President Barack Obama did his escape from the plantation show itself on the world-stage. He followed that event by choosing to seek the presidency of the United States of America. His total escape from the plantation is reflected in Carson running as a Republican who stands unflinching by conservative values.

In his presidential campaign, Carson is demonstrating that he stands a strong chance of winning. Consider that in national polling he is on the heels of Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and ahead of Hillary Clinton for the general election. In the latest reporting period, Carson raised $20 million,  which was highest among all Republican candidates. His level of trust among Americans is in the 80 percent range, which is much higher than all other candidates, Republican or Democrat. Add to this Carson’s non-politician approach which shows through in his answering questions honestly and directly. This is a man who threatens the 21st century American plantation strategy and is now in the fire that comes with that status.

To see that fire, one only has to look at what mainstream media is throwing at Carson. From twisting and misrepresenting his statements on opposing a Muslim president faithful to Sharia Law to if Jews owned guns the Holocaust would have been different to how he would respond if confronted by a mass shooter, mainstream media is obviously committed to discrediting Carson and driving him from the race. They are even pointing to the seven malpractice suits filed against him over the course of a 35-year career. This is a man who performed over 15,000 surgeries. He averaged some 400 surgeries per year until near retirement. He took on many cases that were extremely complex. In each of the two lengthy articles I read regarding the malpractice matter, both admitted Carson’s malpractice suit situation is not out of the ordinary. This from an article titled “Uh-Oh: Presidential Hopeful Ben Carson Accused of Medical Malpractice” by Royce Christyn. I wonder how many people will look at the headline and read to this statement:

“That is a high caseload for neurosurgeons, experts say, but the seven known malpractice claims against Carson in Maryland – an average of one every five years throughout his 35-year career at Johns Hopkins — are consistent with a 2011 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which found roughly 20 percent of neurosurgeons face a malpractice claim annually.”

My research shows that every charge against Carson by media is rebutted by reason and the facts. Consequently, we are watching yet another case of a plantation escapee being put through the flames intended to totally discredit him and scare potential escapees into continued submission.