NYT Racist Op-Ed

The op-ed by Pankaj Mishra, "The Religion of Whiteness Becomes a Suicide Cult," is just an erudite-sounding rant against white people.  It's arguable that much of Mishra's erudition is due to the British colonial empire which brought India into the modern world, despite whatever racial prejudices the British may have held.  

While his article portrays a deep-seated hatred of all Anglo white men, he ignores what has happened in his native India.  The existence of Pakistan and Bangladesh testify to the racism of India's Hindus, who mistreated Muslims to such an extent that they left India and formed their own countries.  Does Mishra really believe that Indians are morally superior to Anglos? 

Who does Mishra find morally superior to Anglos?  The Chinese, who have recently been found to be creating camps for the mass detention of their Uiger minority?  The Russians or the Japanese, who have maintained ethnically homogeneous populations?  Latin Americans, who have brown populations of varying colors, but who also have violent societies?  Would he want to live in El Salvador, Guatemala or Venezuela?   Would he want to live in Israel, which as declared itself a Jewish state and built walls to divide itself from non-Jewish neighbors?  Would he want to go to Africa, where despite a fairly uniform skin color there is and has been frequent genocide in the Congo and Rwanda, for example? 

Anglos are the objects of such hatred because it has been effective in the past, because Anglos are generally moderate and caring about all kinds of people and thus are more susceptible to accusations of bias.  Anglos are among the most enlightened people when it comes to acceptance of other races.  While blacks in America may still experience discrimination, they are better off than blacks in almost every other country on earth.  Most African-Americans would choose to stay in America, rather than move to Africa, because their life is much better here.   

Unfortunately, Mishra is smart to vilify Anglos, because they are more likely to respond than any other race.  He would be wasting his time criticizing his fellow Indians, who are much more racist than Anglos. 

I see this article as part of a racist attack by the Jews at the New York Times on American whites.  Trump may be a racist, but so is Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the half-Jewish publisher of the New York Times, who published this article.  Sulzberger's other ancestral half is apparently Episcopalian, and thus he also represents the Anglo Biblical tradition of acceptance of other races.  I don't know which side predominates in the decision to publish such an inflammatory article.  

Paper Ballots

There is a relatively easy solution to concerns about Russian hacking of American elections: just use paper ballots.  Some states are probably completely dependent on electronic voting now, but they can have paper ballots printed up quickly.  If the Secretary of State for a given state thinks his computerized voting is reliable, he can use it, but require him to have paper backups.  If there is no dispute after the election, the electronic voting can stand.  If there are questions, then they would have to look at the paper ballots.  If the totals don't match, courts and experts will have to decide which system is the most accurate and reliable.  In an ideal world there would be a serial number linking a paper ballot to an electronic ballot, but it may be too late to set up such a system. 

This would not be a problem for Colorado, since most voting is done by mail on paper ballots.  There is concern that computers totaling election returns might be hacked.  If there is any indication of such hacking, the ballots would have to be counted by hand.  Paper ballots and hand counting worked for centuries; it can still work. 

 All the hype about Russian interference in actual voting seems to be overblown.  I think that Russian and Iranian interference in elections through the use of posts on social media is also overblown.  Americans should be able to think for themselves.  The US broadcast political information into the old Soviet bloc for decades through the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, as well as through some more secret CIA interference.  It's not a new things, just the way of doing it through social media is new.  If a foreign country can change the results of an election by broadcasting false information, then the American educational system and political system are as much to blame as the foreigners.  

George Marshall vs. John Brennan

The media is going crazy about the fact that Donald Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA chief John Brennan.  Trump has been criticized by a number of senior former intelligence and military professionals.  The media has particularly emphasized the letter by retired Adm. William McRaven, who was the Navy Seal commander.  I particularly look up to former CIA chiefs Robert Gates and William Webster, who wrote to support Brennan. 

More than them, however, I look up to World War II General George Marshall, who went on to be Secretary of State and namesake of the Marshall Plan.  As General Petraeus said in this interview with the Armed Forces Journal, General Marshall did not vote, because he felt that even the slightest degree of political participation would compromise his professional independence and judgment.  In this article, General Petraeus said he had not voted since he was a major general. 

Of course, none of the people signing these letters was an active duty officer.  Nevertheless, the non-political position taken by Marshall and other conscientious officers illustrates the importance of nonpartisanship among the military and other public servants.  If these officers feel so strongly about an issue that they cannot continue to serve, then they have to leave the service.  This is what happened to the State Department's Foreign Service during the first year of the Trump administration under Secretary of State Tillerson.  The Foreign Service lost many of its senior officers. 

The US has had a number of military presidents, starting with George Washington, but by and large they have retired and gone through the traditional political process.  One exception to this military deference to the political system may be General Douglas MacArthur.  MacArthur appeared to defy President Truman's orders during the Korean War.  When he tried to appeal to Congress and the people over Truman's head.  The firing led to a Constitutional crisis; Truman's popularity fell to 22 percent, but he prevailed and MacArthur faded away.

Compared to George Marshall's non-partisanship and MacArthur's firing, the removal of John Brennan's security clearance is nothing.  Brennan appeared to be a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party while he was still head of the CIA.  His partisanship, combined with the accusations of Russian interference in the US election placed a huge cloud over the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community from President Trump's perspective.  He thought that the Democrats were trying to invalidate his election and that the CIA was helping them.  Pompeo's terms as head of the CIA seems to have helped close the rift between Trump and the CIA, but tensions remain because of the continuing Mueller investigation.  Brennan, who has accused Trump of treason, clearly wants to see Trump removed from office.  We'll see whether that happens.  Trump certainly has no obligation to help Brennan remove him from office.  

John Oliver on Trade

I just watched John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight" show on trade and I was disappointed.  Usually his main topic is well done, but tonight's was not.  He said there is no such thing as a trade deficit, when clearly there is.  Just Google "trade deficit." Investopedia says:

A trade deficit is an economic measure of international trade in which a country's imports exceeds its exports. A trade deficit represents an outflow of domestic currency to foreign markets. It is also referred to as a negative balance of trade (BOT).
From <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/trade_deficit.asp>

Oliver seems to be saying, as many anti-Trump people do, that there is no trade deficit because you get something for the money you send to another country.  We may pay China much more for goods than China pays us, but we get lots of T-shirts in return for the extra money.  This is like saying that you can charge all you want on your credit card, because you get lots of stuff for the money you charge.  At some point, you have to pay the bill.  That is true in trade, too. 

He also criticized the amounts cited by the administration as "trade deficits."  He probably has a point but only regarding the definitions.  The huge numbers cited as "trade deficits" were probably numbers for a "balance of trade over an extended period."  The Census Bureau says the monthly US trade deficit in goods with China for 2018 averaged around $35 billion.  The New York Times, hardly a conservative mouthpiece, said the annual 2017 "trade deficit" with China reached a record $375.2 billion.  The US finances its trade deficit with China by giving China IOUs, selling bonds to China that the US will have to pay off or roll over one day.  Bloomberg reported that China last year held $1.18 trillion of US debt, up $126.5 billion from the previous year. 

Oliver also said that a tariff is stupid because it is a tax on ourselves, which is to some extent true, but he ignores the fact that there are various purposes for taxes.  The point of a tariff is not at this time to raise money, but to penalize what appears to be bad conduct.  It's true that raising prices of aluminum and steel will raise the price of goods made from aluminum and steel in the US in the short term.  But if China subsidizes its steel exports to the US to make Chinese steel so cheap that no one in the US will buy American steel, then American steel companies will go bankrupt.  Then, when there are no American steel producers, China can raise the price of its steel to whatever it wants, and American end users will find themselves paying much higher prices for steel and having to raise prices for US consumers, or go out of business. 

Oliver said trade is a complicated issue, but then he tried to oversimplify it, doing a disservice to his viewers. 

Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, is not a conventional economist and is probably leading our trade discussions (or war) in the wrong direction.  But Oliver made Navarro look good by failing to present an accurate picture of the US trade situation.