Normal Ghosh: an Exceedingly Pleasant Man

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” — Noam Chomsky 

Today, English-speaking journalists—mainstream and non-mainstream—receive exposure because of they won’t say or write. They might stick their neck out and mention white supremacism, but they won’t attack its historical source: mainstream American Christianity, the Catholic Church, and an untaxed real estate empire built with African (and therefore many Muslim) chattel slaves. 

A competent historian knows Catholics and Communists are like proverbial cats and dogs—constant fighting and irreconcilable differences. Few academics understand why. The history of the Church revolves around political takeovers, expulsions, reformations, then counter-reformations. From Rome to Gaul and Constantinople, Germany to America, England to America, and France to America, millions of Catholic refugees suffered because they followed an institution that cared more about its property than people.1

SE Asia-based Nirmal Ghosh doesn’t fully understand American history, and to his credit, admitted as such. Yet, a basic understanding is required when an author deigns to explain American politics to outsiders, and it’s really not that hard. America’s founding fathers, all Protestants excepting two cousins, sought to create a nation—a republic—that could withstand Catholic political influence. Yet, failure after failure in Europe meant Catholicism’s remnants eventually washed ashore in America, and democratic institutions being numerically-based, could not withstand the onslaught of Europe’s refugee crises. Prior to having numbers on their side, the Church operated in secret or in private—hence, the term, privatization. Cut off from formal government functions which the Protestants reserved for themselves, the Catholics created private alternatives which they later convinced the government to fund once their numbers increased. In contrast, Communists, wanting social services in the hands of direct government hires and not Catholic-run “charities,” created the more effective political system if the goals of America’s Protestant founders are given precedence. 

What are the consequences of subverting the founders’ republican form of government? When the privatized tentacles of the Church latch onto governments, public debt flows to their coffers or to the protection of their private property while misinformation ensures the rest of us blame everyone but the kindly Pope. A strong, competent government and a Catholic-infused political system being incompatible, the Church views Communism and Islam as its greatest threats, which explains American foreign policy and debt loads post-1950. As the Church overextends itself—see Vietnam and now, Ukraine—Protestants and thinking Catholics clap back, and a re-set occurs. Donald Trump is the latest re-set.

Unfortunately, Ghosh doesn’t mention any of the above when purporting to explain America’s politics to SE Asians and doesn’t realize he was chosen to speak because he’s been trained not to point the finger in certain directions.

“Of the prominent American founders of the Revolution there were only two practicing Catholics, Charles Carroll of Carrollton and his cousin John “Jacky” Carroll… John Sullivan, who would play one of the most important roles in the Continental Army, feared that the Quebec Act ‘Most dangerous to American Liberties among the whole train.’ Should the Catholics gain power, he lamented ‘no God may as well exist in the universe.’ … Passed on October 21, 1774, the resolution claimed that the Quebec Act was to designed to put ‘in the hands of power, to reduce the ancient, free Protestant colonies to . . . slavery. . . Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion [Catholicism] that has deluged your island with blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.’” — Bradley J. Blizer, July 3, 2023

Ghosh is certainly pleasant, intelligent, and says all the right things. Yet, you don’t need to read his latest book because you can ascertain 99% of the content from its title. Also, around July 2024, in a post now inaccessible, he apparently published the following: “A very short note on why Kamala Harris is going to win.” However, according to the Straits-Times in February 22, 2025, “Nirmal Ghosh has the dubious distinction of having called the United States presidential election accurately for Mr Donald Trump twice.”

Apart from his mixed racial background, the aforementioned contradiction might be the most interesting thing about Ghosh. Say what you want about the United States, but Donald Trump is, at his core, interesting, and so is his no-holds barred political team. Assuming one needs to be at least mildly interesting in person or on paper to be worthy of a listen, Ghosh can be stacked in the same soon-to-be-forgotten corner as every other journalist boosted by pre-Trump government agencies or algorithms.

Oddly enough, in 2016, Ghosh unintentionally summarized America’s near-term future: “Thailand’s political future is, I believe, an old norm of politics and elections and probably weak civilian governments within red lines defined by the military.” Military spending increases worldwide bring the inevitable result of anti-equilibrium: war and consolidation of power in the hands of those who can promise the next bigger gun. Even Germany—yes, that Deutschland—has stumbled onto the zeitgeist. According to Bloomberg News, this month, “German lawmakers passed a landmark spending package, taking a major step toward unlocking hundreds of billions of euros in debt financing for defense and infrastructure and heralding the end of decades of budget austerity.” Ach, du.

Ghosh’s talk began after a mini-interview with recently laid-off Voice of America correspondent Steven L. Herman. Herman indicated foreign service officers (FSOs) can be terminated if deemed insufficiently loyal to American foreign policy, but he couldn’t think of a specific incident that might have angered President Trump. He lamented overall cuts, saying FSOs are sometimes the only reliable source of information from overseas. Prior to the event, I’d never heard of Herman and have yet to listen to VOA, and I’ve been traveling extensively in SE Asia for the last three years. I looked up their content, and it was mid-level—nothing special, nothing terrible. In short, nothing interesting.

Having failed American history, Herman and Ghosh have rendered themselves intellectual dilettantes—precisely the sort of harmless blokes tolerated by media corporations and tax-evading real estate tycoons. Their inefficacy is why they’re given a spotlight, and your willingness to take their platitudes seriously is why they survive. And survive, they will—but on some billionaire’s payroll, not your taxpayer dollars.

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (March 2025) 

“The wh*re and gambler, by the state Licens’d, build that nation’s fate.” — William Blake

1. My statement is not meant to be controversial. Anyone familiar with 1933’s Reichskonkordat knows the Church protected its property at everyone else’s expense. From the EU text: “The Secret Supplement does not appear in Church-approved translations, as it won't admit to knowing that [Adolf] H*tler was about to start a war.”