Today, the last day of 2015, the absurdest political year I've ever witnessed, Ben Carson, one of several ridiculous presidential candidates, lost two top aides, his campaign manager and communications director, to resignation.  I don't like to look at situations in a singular manner, but this development says one thing to me: Ben Carson will not win the Republican nomination.  Americans and the billions of the world don't have to fret about Carson becoming president.  The prominence of those two positions in a campaign shouldn't be underestimated.  They concern organization, and dissemination of a candidate's message.  Carson's men lacked confidence in the cause, so they stepped off a train rolling to a dead end.
     Last August, Donald Trump lost his campaign manager, Roger Stone, because the latter thought the former's "food fight" with Megyn Kelly blanketed important issues (another way of saying, "Trump is petty.")  Stone nevertheless insisted he felt no rancor for Trump.  Carson's fed-up men also wish the best of luck for the neurosurgeon they've invested so much time and patience in.  They don't have to deal with him anymore, so they wish him well (my cynical take).
     Just recently, Carson did well against Trump, poll-wise.  He released a book.  His unwavering ability to not respond negatively to Trump's typical nastiness, but to demonstrate turning "the other cheek," in imitation of Jesus's instructions on how to deal with aggression, should've been practiced more by other candidates vulnerable to the front-running shit-throwing orangutan billionaire, since bullies require reactions.  Carson seemed unflappable, even when he fucked up.  Video was dug up revealing Carson's belief that the Giza Pyramids were grain storage buildings, a statement that makes most people think, "You're fucking crazy," but he doubled down on the conviction when confronted about it by journalists.
     Carson, rivaling Trump in vagueness, told the Republican Jewish Coalition, "The world is complicated; the Middle East is even more complicated."
     Yes, the world needs leaders who think like this.  It's as if he said, "I like bread, but I don't like stale bread."
     Maybe I'm wrong, though.  Carson, perhaps, will find a miracle-working campaign manager and a solid pro communications director and overtake Trump and the others.  We'll forget about his lack of knowledge of foreign policy, his bizarre nearly prehistoric ideas about the past.  Americans have embraced mediocrity in past elections (Coolidge, Reagan--yes, I wrote it--George W. Bush) so why not embrace irrationality?  The choices before us on the Republican side talk like what used to be regarded as lunatic fringe political thinkers, all of whom had little or no chance of gaining power because of the extremity of their views.  Now, extremity is embraced in a world increasingly used to its attention-getting depredations.  Carson's "complicated" Middle East has Islamic fundamentalist extremists saying insane shit, while America has political high office seekers saying insane shit.  It's a poker game with two players refusing to say, "Call," and neither has a winning hand.

                                                                              Vic Neptune