Disastrous consequences of snake-oil salesmen's domination in US politics

[reedak]

1. Dr George Koo had retired from a global advisory services firm where he advised clients on their China strategies and business operations. Educated at MIT, Stevens Institute and Santa Clara University, he is the founder and former managing director of International Strategic Alliances. He is currently a board member of Freschfield's, a novel green building platform.

The following are excerpts from Dr George Koo's article headlined "Navarro’s snake oil will sicken the world".

(Begin excerpts)
Why would a Harvard PhD economist and tenured university professor make ridiculous assertions about China that no self-respecting economist would claim ownership of?

This question is hanging over prominent China-basher and director of the White House National Trade Council, Peter Navarro....

When it comes to China, Navarro is not driven by facts and has no desire to write with authenticity and scholarship. To my knowledge, none of his papers on China have been published in peer-reviewed, prestigious academic or professional journals.

During the 2016 presidential election, he co-authored with Wilbur Ross an economic plan for the upcoming administration of Donald Trump. A public letter from 370 economists, including 19 Nobel laureates, labeled the plan an unmitigated disaster.

Despite such condemnation, Navarro now stands as the key economic whisperer to President Trump....

When Navarro was first announced as joining the Trump administration, The San Diego Union Tribune published a pointedly hostile review of his past association with the city. The headline read, “How many San Diego elections did Trump trade adviser Navarro lose?”

Charlie Cook, a nationally recognized political analyst, met Navarro once and vividly remembers him as one of the most obnoxious political candidates he has ever met. In one election post-mortem, Navarro admitted, “I don’t have any concerns at all about making stuff up about my opponent that isn’t exactly true.”....

The news media are in part responsible for enabling a five-time political loser to join the inner sanctum of Trump’s White House. When Navarro spouts nonsense, it’s the responsibility of the media to challenge his assertions rather than giving him a free pass.

Now Navarro is part of the team steering US economic policy....If Trump really listens to him, only the Almighty can save us.... (End excerpts)

Source Link: https://asiatimes.com/2018/03/trumps-buying-navarros-snake-oil-will-make-world-sick/

2. Poster's Comment:

(a) Unfortunately for America and the rest of the world, Navarro has found a more roguish snake-oil salesman, and "both birds of a feather" succeeded to flock together into the White House. Instead of "Making America Great Again" (MAGA), Navarro's snake oil has made America the "Sick Man of the West" besides sickening the world.

Billionaire Elon Musk blasted Navarro as "truly a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks" in a growing rift over the US tariff policy that has rocked the world. On the other hand, Poor Little Rich Boy Marco (now US State Secretary) called out Mr Nice Guy as a con artist who is taking advantage of working people in America.

Navarro avoids debating his pseudo-economic ideology publicly with other academics. He keeps a low profile but once in a while emerges out of hiding like a parasite in the background to utter some rubbish such as his notorious threat to Justin Trudeau: "There’s a special place in hell for you!"

His influence on Mr Nice Guy's anti-China tariff obsession is so great that he could be considered as America's Rasputin. Both men's controversial ideologies (one on racist immigration curbs and the other on pseudo-economics anti-China trade policy) are reminiscent of another notorious snake-oil salesman (Madison Grant in the 1920s) whose life and scientific racism are summarized as below.

 

[reedak]

(b) Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known for his work as a conservationist, eugenicist, and advocate of scientific racism. Grant is noted for his pseudoscientific advocacy of Nordicism, a form of racism which views the "Nordic race" as superior.

Grant was a friend of several US presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. He advocated restricted immigration to the United States through limiting immigration from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, as well as the complete end of immigration from East Asia. He also advocated efforts to purify the American population through selective breeding. He served as the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League from 1922 to his death. Acting as an expert on world racial data, Grant also provided statistics for the Immigration Act of 1924 to set the quotas on immigrants from certain European countries. Even after passing the statute, Grant continued to be irked that even a smattering of non-Nordics were allowed to immigrate to the country each year. His support for anti-miscegenation laws was quoted in arguments for the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 in Virginia.

As a white supremacist eugenicist, Grant was the author of the once much-read book "The Passing of the Great Race (1916)", an elaborate work of racial hygiene attempting to explain the racial history of Europe. The most significant of Grant's concerns was with the changing "stock" of American immigration of the early 20th century (characterized by increased numbers of immigrants from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, as opposed to Western Europe and Northern Europe). "The Passing of the Great Race" was a "racial" interpretation of contemporary anthropology and history, stating race as the basic motor of civilization.

The basic thesis of Grant's racist book, still popular among American white supremacists today, is that miscegenation and immigration were destroying America’s superior “Nordic” race. In their time, Grant’s beliefs were popular, even meriting a mention in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby".

Presaging Hitler’s infamous words, Grant called Nordics “the Master Race.” To protect that race, Grant was quite clear that restrictions curtailing Jewish and Southern European immigration were necessary. Eugenics, too, were required. He wrote that the effort should begin by sterilizing the “criminals,” the “insane” and the “diseased,” followed by the “weaklings” and, ultimately, all “worthless race types.”

Grant’s ideas had momentous consequences, becoming commonplace among the American elite and resulting in concrete political change. From behind the scenes, Grant nearly single-handedly orchestrated passage of the racist 1924 Immigration Act. That bill, which remained in place until 1965, drastically cut immigration levels, excluded Asians, and largely restricted entry to Northern Europeans.

Through eugenics organizations he funded and founded, Grant influenced many states to pass coercive sterilization statutes under which tens of thousands of Americans deemed subpar were sterilized from the 1930s to the 1970s. Grant’s ideas became the accepted law of the land in 1927, when the Supreme Court upheld sterilization laws and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes endorsed them, writing that “it is better for all the world if, instead of … let[ting] them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

He wrote, "A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit — in other words social failures — would solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types."

His notorious racist book is considered one of the most influential and vociferous works of scientific racism and eugenics to come out of the United States. It was embraced by proponents of the Nazi movement in Germany and was the first non-German book ordered to be reprinted by the Nazis when they took power. Adolf Hitler wrote to Grant, "The book is my Bible."

Grant's works of scientific racism have been cited to demonstrate that many of the genocidal and eugenic ideas associated with the Third Reich did not arise specifically in Germany, and in fact that many of them had origins in other countries, including the United States. As such, because of Grant's well-connected and influential friends, he is often used to illustrate the strain of race-based eugenic thinking in the United States, which had some influence until the Second World War. Because of the use made of Grant's eugenics work by the policy-makers of Nazi Germany, his work as a conservationist has been somewhat ignored and obscured, as many organizations with which he was once associated (such as the Sierra Club) wanted to minimize their association with him. His racial theories, which were popularized in the 1920s, are today seen as discredited.

P.S. One probable reason why Mr Nice Guy is cracking down on US universities is because his close confidant and beloved teacher has been criticized by a well-known graduate from MIT, Stevens Institute and Santa Clara University.

Additional Reference:

Scientific racism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Authors Probe Roots of U.S. Far Right

Two books look at early 20th century architects of the American radical right and their views of race, eugenics and fascism

www.splcenter.org

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler

Musk brands Trump aide 'dumber than a sack of bricks' in tariff spat

Billionaire Elon Musk blasted President Donald Trump's senior trade advisor Peter Navarro as "truly a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks" on Tuesday in a growing rift over the US tariff policy…

www.france24.com

Rubio Campaign Press Release - Marco Rubio Calls Out Donald Trump for the 'Con Artist' He Is | The American Presidency Project

www.presidency.ucsb.edu

Grigori Rasputin | Biography, Facts, & Death | Britannica

Grigori Rasputin, Siberian peasant and mystic whose ability to improve the condition of Aleksey Nikolayevich, the hemophiliac heir to the Russian throne, made him a favorite at the court of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. Rasputin reached the pinnacle of his power at the Russian court...

www.britannica.com

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/10/politics/peter-navarro-justin-trudeau

 

[petros]

Jibberish

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Jibberish

Spelled "gibberish" by people who are educated in the English language.

 

[petros]

Spelled "gibberish" by people who are educated in the English language.

Yes. And someone on meth is a jib rat.

 

[reedak]

Spelled "gibberish" by people who are educated in the English language.

Well said.

 

[reedak]

Yes. And someone on meth is a jib rat.

You'd better return to your kindergarten to brush up your English, otherwise you can end up as another snake-oil salesman like the White House incumbent or Peter Navarro or Madison Grant.

 

[petros]

You'd better return to your kindergarten to brush up your English, otherwise you can end up as another snake-oil salesman like the White House incumbent or Peter Navarro or Madison Grant.

On the streets of Winnipeg, crystal meth is most commonly known as 'jib.' It sells for an average price of $10 and the drug is often injected. (Liam Maloney/CBC)



Get well soon.