A Constellation Of Alarm Lights

As we approach more closely the conclusion of election season in the United States, I thought it would be good to list four ways in which the presidency of Donald Trump has impacted the people who live in the United States in 2020.  There are, of course, many more ways in which Trump has impacted us, but I don't have time to list them all.  Here are the four that I do have time to list:

COVID-19

As of today, 29 October 2020, there have been around 9 million documented infections in the U.S., resulting in around 233,000 deaths.  The situation is constantly changing; thus I can't give exact numbers.  (Note that according to the linked source, five of the top ten nations impacted by COVID-19 are all led by men who are associated either with white supremacy or the global Far Right.)  The death rate in the United States is 2.5 percent of the total infection rate, which means that slightly more than one out of every fifty people who become infected will die.  We now know that many survivors of the initial infection must battle its long-term effects.  One of the widespread effects is cognitive damage.  Another widespread long-term effect is medical bankruptcy, due to the high cost of treatment in a nation whose ruling party does not believe in universal health care.  Note that the U.S. is still the world leader in COVID-19 infections and deaths, far exceeding most of the nations on the African continent.   And at the rate at which new infections are increasing, we may see within the next few months a situation in which one out of every ten people in the U.S. has been infected.  This will make staying free from infection very interesting for the rest of us.  Truly, Trump has made America great!

SHORTAGES

The stupid trade wars and mismanagement of the coronavirus threat by the Trump administration have led the U.S. into an era of widespread shortages.  A partial list includes the following:

• Medical supplies, including prescription medications
• Aluminum
• Coins
• Light trucks

This is in addition to the widespread shortages of grocery items we saw this past spring.

DEFLATION

Deflation can be viewed as the consequence of a sudden collapse in demand for goods in an economy.  For those who have cash, deflation can seem like a good thing, but it is actually a sign of a national economy that is going into shock as businesses can't earn enough revenue to keep their doors open.  Deflation thus frequently leads to sudden inflation or even hyperinflation once the amount of goods formerly provided by formerly operational businesses decreases beyond a certain level.  We are in a deflationary period right now, as documented here and here.

CURRENCY DECLINE

Trump's trade wars, unpredictability and belligerence have turned off many nations, and the resulting decline in America's soft power has thus weakened the U.S. dollar.  There are voices now predicting a serious decline in the U.S. dollar perhaps amounting to a crash.  (See this and this for instance.)  If that happens, the United States will no longer need to worry about cheap foreign goods displacing American products.  For those foreign goods will no longer be cheap, and the people of the United States will have to get by with learning to reuse and salvage things.  It should be quite an education.

Words of Light In Dark Times: An Interview with Dr. Soong-Chan Rah

I have a special treat for readers this week.  I am privileged to be able to present to you an audio interview which I conducted with Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, a Christian, theologian, and seminary professor who has applied systems thinking to the issues facing America and other First World societies, and to the response of the Christian Church to these present challenges. 

To access the interview, click here.  Then click on the speaker icon.

I have mentioned Dr. Rah in several previous posts.  Dr. Rah is the author of four published books: The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing The Church from Western Cultural Captivity, Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice In Troubled Times., and Return to Justice: Six Movements That Reignited Our Contemporary Evangelical Conscience.  He also has an additional book which is about to go to press, which he mentions toward the end of the interview.

In the interview we briefly cover the reality of the hard ecological and economic limits now being faced by the industrialized world.  Then we begin to ask how the United States and the Global North in general have responded to these limits, focusing particularly on the response of the mainstream American church to an age of limits.  We discuss the pathology that arises in people who have enjoyed unjust privileges for a long time, and how that pathology is triggered when those privileges begin to run out.  I also ask Dr. Rah what Scripture passages he has been referring to in order to understand these days.

From there we discuss how real Christians should pray in these days, and how to avoid being sidetracked by searching for easy, yet false answers in our prayers.

Lastly, we ask what real Christians should do in these days.  And we briefly discuss the role of nonviolent struggle in our response.

About the audio: you will also get to witness (or more accurately, hear) my rather thumb-fingered approach to audio technology.  So you will hear that the audio actually begins in the middle of my introduction to Dr. Rah, and the presentation of my first question to him.  I tried fixing this by recording a new introduction, then I tried downloading some free and open source audio editing software to splice the new intro onto the main body of the interview.  After a rather long bit of frustration, I became convinced that I did well to avoid a career in TV or radio!  However, I can type (most of the time).  So I will give you the text of my first question, so that you may have a more complete picture of the interview.  Here is the text:

"These days are a time of confusion and distress for many people who had hoped that by the end of 2016, the people running things in our world might have moved in a more equitable direction than that which they have taken.  Many of us might be struggling to correctly understand these days, and may need help in our understanding, so that we can plot a right course of action.  In order to help us in our understanding, I am interviewing Dr. Rah, and will be asking him several questions under three general categories:

• How to Look At These Days
• How to Pray In These Days
• What To Do In These Days

"My first question is as follows: on an economic and ecological level, the industrialized world has begun to run into hard limits, as the resources needed to expand or even to maintain the global industrial economy have begun to dry up.  Individuals and societies can respond to this reality in many ways and on many levels.  How would you characterize the response of the United States so far?"