Robert Azzi: Carson’s pyramid scheme foretells ‘dark days of ignorance, bias and prejudice’
Egyptologists note Ben Carson’s belief that the pyramids of ancient Egypt were built by the biblical Joseph to store grain is easily disproven.
Written accounts from the time describe the massive structures, not as granaries, but as the burial places of Egypt’s kings. 19th century excavations confirmed the structures are mostly solid stone containing only small chambers for the pharaoh’s sarcophagus and necessities for the afterlife.
Robert Azzi, an Exeter-based writer and photographer who spent most of his professional life as a photojournalist in the Middle East, has photographed Cairo from atop the 4,500-year-old structures. Writing in the Portsmouth Herald, he warns that Carson’s story is a cautionary tale about the fundamental nature of the upcoming presidential election:
[H]is story affirmed for me all that I believed about Carson, all I believed about many of the Republican candidates and much of what I believed much of the GOP white, right-wing evangelical base: That they are not only anti-establishment and anti-Washington; they are arrogantly anti-intellectual and anti-science – and that that is a dangerous combustible, ideological mixture. […]
Dr. Ben Carson’s rise, and perhaps fall, should be cautionary, particularly to GOP candidates. They should recognize that education and intelligence matters. That ignorance is neither excuse nor crutch, that context is important and that complex problems require complex policy solutions – not pandering to the lowest common denominator – and that solutions should be debated in a secular Public Square without regard to privilege and bias.
The election, Azzi concludes, will determine “whether America wants to again embrace dark days of ignorance, bias and prejudice – about whether Americans want to endure the continued marginalization of the have-nots by the haves.”