Retired neurosurgeon and proudly humble man of God Ben Carson came down with a bad case of Simple Chronic Hot-take-itosis Tuesday morning when he joined Fox and Friends to opine about the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon last week. After predictably slamming President Obama for his planned trip to the region, co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck asked Carson to explain his preening “I am a Christian” Facebook photo, which I am guessing had a lot to do with the humility that Carson brags about having more of than Donald Trump. According to Carson, it has something to do with “political correctness” and solidarity with the victim’s families, who must be “hurting so badly.” Carson also once again quoted Proverbs (Chapter 29, Verse 18), as he did when he was criticizing Donald Trump.
Then, in a further act of generous and humble comforting for those families, Carson explained how he would never go out like a punk the way those victims did:
“I’m glad you asked that question. Because not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me but he can’t get us all.'”
Under any circumstances, this would be a despicable thing to say, like when a Republican state legislator said something similar about the victims of the Charleston shooting in June. It’s particularly disgusting in this case because we know for a fact that at least one victim did try to fight back, and so little is still known about the other victims’ and survivors’ experiences.
Those who were killed can’t tell us what was going through their minds as the gunman shot them down, but unless you’ve ever been in that situation, you don’t really have a goddamned thing to say about it. They may have been hoping for a chance at the killer when he stopped to reload, or thought better of rushing him because it might accelerate the killing, and instead hoped that they could keep him talking until help arrived. With six semiautomatic weapons and a steel-plated vest, he actually could “get them all,” and rushing the guy could have gotten more people killed.
Or maybe they were all human beings who were terrified, and reacted in the only way they could to a coward who herded them into the center of the room to cut them down. If there’s a God, maybe He gave them the peace and courage to face their fate. Maybe he told them “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,” or to “fear no evil, for thou art with me.”
One of the victims, Sarena Dawn Moore, was a devoted Seventh-Day Adventist like Ben Carson, yet Carson smears all of them as cowards, with nothing to back it up but his own grandiose self-delusion. I wasn’t there, either, but I know for a fact that the only coward in that room was Chris Harper Mercer.
This shooting has really brought out the stupid in people, whether it be the morons who think the best way to fight mass shooters is not to change any of our laws, but simply to refuse to say their names, to the idiots who keep insisting that “gun free zones” are the problem, even though there were students at the school who were legally carrying handguns at the time of the shooting, or that, you know, stuff happens! There isn’t a tall or cool enough can of STFU for them all, but the first sip should go straight to Ben Carson.
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