IN my crawls at the back of British taxis in London a fortnight ago,   the radio stations never seemed tired wailing about United States (US) Republican presidential front runner, Donald Trump. In his latest verbal diarrhea, he had advocated a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US.

This was his reaction to a couple in California, Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook killing 14 persons and injuring 21 at a holiday party.

For his thoughtlessness, the British were livid. They stripped Trump of his robe as business ambassador and collated over 450,000 signatures to bar him from entering Britain.

One hundred thousand signatories is the minimum required to force a debate on the issue in the British Parliament. It also raised the possibility of electing an American president who is a persona non grata in Britain. Also, the Robert Gordon University (RGU) Scotland revoked a honorary doctorate it had bestowed on Trump in 2010.

A mouthy Trump responded by chiding the British for allegedly masking a Muslim problem and being ungrateful for his investments in that country especially in Scotland where his mother came from. Trump did not seem to bother that his suggested ban will apply to some 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide nor did he say what should be done to the over 5million Muslims in the US; ask them to wear leg brace? It does not appear that Trump can be more comical.

But Dr. Ben Carson, the famous neurosurgeon and fellow Republican presidential aspirant, in an article on Page 26 of the December 11, 2015 edition of THE DAILY TELEGRAPH diagnosed Trump as having a lizard brain. He wrote that the Limbic cortex, or lizard brain “controls the instinct to fight or flee in the face of threats” and that such a brain “tends to make snap judgments that produce autonomic responses to environmental threats” Carson argued that since human beings are not beasts, “we have to sit back with our deliberative brains and sort out the real risk and opportunities before us”

I respectfully disagree with Dr. Carson; what Trump has is not lizard, but fish brain, the man with the lizard brain is actually Carson himself. A fish brain is somebody who is really smart but lacks wisdom; a fish that thinks it knows it all.

Trump with his harebrained ideas is obviously a smart but unwise man, which puts him squarely amongst fish brains. Being a fish brain, how do we characterise Trump’s followers in the US?

Carson, author of GIFTED HANDS, is famous for successfully carrying out difficult surgeries such as the separation of Siamese twins. He also impacts on communities with his Carson Scholars scheme. But his foray into politics has exposed a different side of him. A scientist who does not think much of climate change and a man who sits pretty well in the midst of racial injustice and pretends it does not exist.

A supposed non-violent man, who for political correctness, is against gun control. He argues: “I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed. There’s a reason these dictatorial people take the guns first.” This is illogical, who told Brother Carson, that an armed German populace would have stopped Hitler when in fact they massively voted and supported him.

Slavery is one or the worse things that can happen to a human being; to be owned like a cow by another human being. It is one of the greatest crimes ever perpetuated in human history. But for him to be accepted by the conservative American society, Carson is willing to make ridiculous allusions to this human tragedy.

In his attempts to denigrate President Barack Obama, especially on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise called Obamacare, Carson said: “You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care.

It was about control.” Apart from the illogicality of comparing Obamacare with the 400 years enslavement of the Black people, it is known that Obamacare enhances and expands access to care in the United States. It is therefore baffling for a medical doctor to claim that slavery and Obamacare are one and the same.

In his article, Carson wrote further on lizard brain as being a state “in which the fear of loss overwhelms any rational analysis of the potential for gain. Over-fearing cuts us off from opportunities which may lead to immense personal and societal benefits”.

Yet, he exhibits all the symptoms of a lizard brain. For example in September, 2015 when he appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, on the possibility of a Muslim running for the White House, Carson said categorically “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.

I absolutely would not agree with that” Yet, some of the greatest and most famous Americans like Malcolm X and Mohammed Ali were or are Muslims.

Rejecting the constitutional right of an American to be voted for just because he is a Muslim, would be typical of a lizard brain snap reaction. A reaction that masks the morbid fear that a person from a different religion would call the shots in the White House.

A person like Carson who claims that his “Judeo-Christian values” is the best culture on earth and gives the impression that his religion is superior to all other religions, cannot but be a lizard brain who is prone to making “snap judgments”.

Using the analytical tools of Malcolm X, Brother Carson has all the characteristics of a House Negro; a black man who thinks, sees, speaks, dresses, eats and worships exactly like the conservative American establishment would want him to. Neither the fish brain, nor the lizard brain is good for America or the world.