tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2276638054486960095.post4967211540595291169..comments2023-10-30T09:08:40.925-07:00Comments on Burdens of a Bachelor: The Ben Carson BoomUnknownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12803238253689954199noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2276638054486960095.post-47464172114934401302015-10-26T18:55:02.127-07:002015-10-26T18:55:02.127-07:00Carson's problem is similar to Sanders'. H...Carson's problem is similar to Sanders'. How to project power after Iowa and New Hampshire? In South Carolina Trump is walloping Carson, something I'm sure is replicated in the other Southern Super Tuesday states. The Carson boom is largely a media concoction. <br /><br />The media serves the power elite. The power elites wants Trump gone. Trump is not going and appears unbeatable. The idea behind the Carson boom is a reprise of the initial mainstream reaction to Trump: His popularity is merely linked to his celebrity and it will fade. If you can convince the people out in TV Land that it is actually Carson who is popular, then maybe the rubes will migrate to Carson and Trump will deflate. It is not going to happen. But it illuminates the lengths the power elite will go. <br /><br />The media manufactured Biden non-event and Hillary "turnaround" show great sophistication and a high level of coordination, which is of course what one would expect when you consider the huge stakes involved. Speaking of the Lakota, I think 2016 is shaping up to be a Ghost Dance kind of year. Or possibly that is just wishful thinking on my part. Eighteen-ninety, the year of the Ghost Dance, was the year 1890 census was done for the first time on a electronic tabulating machine; it was also the census that declared the end of the U.S. frontier. Frederick Jackson Turner argued that what made American democracy unique was its Western frontier. It is no coincidence that the birth of Big Data coincides with the end of U.S. continental expansion. Empire soon followed with the acquisition of the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico. But if another Ghost Dance is coming next year what quantum leap would it augur? Maybe the overdue discarding of the fiction of American democracy.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12803238253689954199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2276638054486960095.post-79706769095763156092015-10-26T15:30:00.357-07:002015-10-26T15:30:00.357-07:00Except that Red Cloud was in no way fooled -- he w...Except that Red Cloud was in no way fooled -- he was simply given unique access to very good data. He was toured around New York City and shown the awesome and utterly overwhelming superiority of numbers and materiel available to his adversary. His subsequent efforts to get his people to stop fighting and negotiate -- even though they had been winning their war -- stemmed from his better understanding of reality.<br /><br />I agree though, Carson cannot possibly last, and I can't see him doing that much damage to Trump. But then, I've accurately predicted next to nothing about this election cycle.Erik Ryberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00947825393284168643noreply@blogger.com