The Special "Carson is a Fucking Lunatic" Thread

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I'd like to see that quote sourced. Not that I'd put it past him, it just looks too ridiculous to be real.

The West Point thing is such a bullshit issue. As an academy grad (USNA) and someone who was recruited to a service academy, this sounds plausible. I met with Commanders and even a retired Rear Admiral who promised me admission. They all, to a man, pumped up the idea that I wouldn't have to pay a dime for college. Once I accepted I told everyone at school that I got a full ride scholarship to the Naval Academy. I had no clue why that statement made no sense until I actually got there.

It makes sense that he thought he was being promised a scholarship to USMA. He was in ROTC, a top performer, smart (on some topics), and would have been in contact with military officers regularly.

Steel, it's still too much of a stretch. I also met first with Air Force and Naval officers (I was also considering Annapolis), and had long conversations/interviews about my aspirations to service, and they too explained that it was all expenses paid ("full ride scholarship" was the term one used), but as you know all too well, that's only a fraction of the process. For a teenager who was actively recruited, I suppose it could be possible to not know the difference until arriving less than a year after the process began... but this guy actively used the Academies as a part of his "personal story" narrative in order to promote his political career. He should know better; not knowing the difference at this point, while continuing to use the story for years, demonstrates that he either knows no one from the Academies and/or deliberately ignored or stretched the truth. I commanded my AF JROTC unit and graduated near the top of my class, with the 2nd highest (tied) ACT score in my high school, and had made my intent to attend an Academy known since junior high school, so I too spoke with a lot of higher-level officers and related "muckety-mucks". If he had no idea what he was talking about, he should not have spoken about it in self-promotion; if he felt it was relevant and needed to know, that's what editors and fact checkers are hired to do.

While I would rather see political fights decided by who has the best ideas, I'm afraid it just doesn't work that way in reality; people vote on emotion at least as often as they vote on principle or analysis. If this jackass is knocked out because (all but his most die-hard) potential voters see the sort of character this implies, then I will not complain too much.