The media is buzzing this week over the resignation of President Trump's National Security Adviser who had pre-inauguration contacts with the Russian ambassador concerning the U.S. response to Russian tapering with the U.S. election.  An article appeared in Foreign Policy trying to ascertain thinking in Moscow.  A lot is being written about U.S.-Russian relations.  This column causes one to ponder. - GNH

The Kremlin Is Starting to Worry About Trump from Foreign Policy by by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes

Vladimir Putin's entourage cheered the outcome of the U.S. election – until they saw exactly what they were dealing with.

In 2016, a senior Russian official explained to a group of visiting foreigners why the government had decided not to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Yes, it was a turning point in Russian history, he argued, and, yes, President Vladimir Putin sees today’s Russia as a successor to both the tsars and the Bolsheviks. But celebrating a revolution would send the wrong message to society. The Kremlin today is staunchly opposed to “regime change,” the visitors were told, and thus skittish about eulogizing 1917. It plans to use the centenary, instead, to draw attention to the catastrophic consequences of resorting to revolution to solve social and political problems.

The last thing the Russian government expected was that 2017 would bring it face to face not with a revolution of the past but with a revolution of the present — the radical regime change taking place in the United States as a result of the electoral victory of Donald Trump. It is Trump’s electoral revolution that has captured the imagination, and fanned the fears, of Russian elites today.

The search for a key to Trump’s mind-boggling and miscellaneous gusher of policy directives has tended to focus on his disturbingly erratic, vindictive, simplistic, narcissistic, insecure, and occasionally delusional personality, due exception being made for those conspiracy theorists who treat him as a kind of Manchurian candidate or sock puppet of the Kremlin. What most observers have been late to recognize is the extent to which, behind his mask as a showman, Trump views himself as a revolutionary insurgent with a mission to dismantle America’s “old regime.”

Trump’s tactics certainly belong to the classic revolutionary playbook. His shock-and-awe style of executive action is designed to rattle Congress, catch his opponents unprepared, and incite his base to wage war on the establishment. The extreme polarization he deliberately foments allows him to fend off an opportunistic alliance of the Republican elite with the Democratic Party in defense of the constitutional system, ensuring that protests will be largely impotent. 

In the words of White House strategist-in-chief Stephen Bannon, Trump is positioning himself as the global leader of an anti-global movement that is anti-elite, anti-establishment, anti-liberal, and nationalistic. “What we are witnessing now,” Bannon told the Washington Post, “is the birth of a new political order, and the more frantic a handful of media elites become, the more powerful that new political order becomes itself.”

Russian policymakers, obsessed as they are with the fear of “color revolutions,” may understand better than Americans and Europeans the radical nature of the political change that has descended on Washington. Indeed, when it comes to the ongoing Trump revolution, Russian policymakers are in much the same position as the German General Staff one century ago. In 1917, the German government concluded that the best hope for a German victory in World War I was for a revolution to erupt in Russia. It thus allowed some of the leaders of the Bolshevik party, Lenin among them, to pass through Germany and make their way back to Russia. The hope was that a revolution in Russia would pull the country out of the war — and the plan worked. But by the beginning of 1918, the German government started to fear that the virus of revolution that it had surreptitiously help spread to Russia might circle back calamitously to Germany itself.

Our conversations with Russian policymakers and experts indicate they are starting to have similar fears and doubts today.

There is no way of knowing if Russian interference contributed decisively to Trump’s upset victory. But it’s fair to say that the Kremlin viewed the outcome as a divine gift. Since at least 2011-2012, when Russia witnessed widespread popular protests, and particularly after the Ukrainian Maidan uprising — events that elicited heartfelt praise and encouragement from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — Russia’s leadership had been convinced that her election would spell disaster for Russia and that it might even lead to war. So Russians did what they could to prevent Clinton from getting into the White House. But while they welcomed her defeat, they were wholly unprepared for the ensuing regime change in Washington.

Now that Trump is in power, political elites in Moscow have stopped cheering.

They recognize that Russia’s position has become abruptly and agonizingly complex.

It’s true that Trump’s accession opens up the possibility of “normalizing” Russia’s relations with the West, beginning with a reduction or even elimination of sanctions. It also validates many of Russia’s ideological criticisms of the liberal order and may perhaps foreshadow policy reversals that Moscow has long hoped for: from Washington’s disengagement from the Ukraine crisis to its dissolution of the Cold War Western alliance. Russians also celebrate Trump’s unfiltered stream-of-consciousness diatribes as signaling a welcome end to America’s hypocrisy and condescension.

But Trump’s revolution is also ushering in a period of turmoil and uncertainty, including the likelihood of self-defeating trade wars. Still traumatized by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia’s present leadership has no appetite for global instability.

With Trump in the White House, moreover, Putin has lost his monopoly over geopolitical unpredictability. The Kremlin’s ability to shock the world by taking the initiative and trashing ordinary international rules and customs has allowed Russia to play an oversized international role and to punch above its weight. Putin now has to share the capacity to keep the world off balance with a new American president vastly more powerful than himself. More world leaders are watching anxiously to discover what Trump will do next than are worrying about what Putin will do next. Meanwhile, using anti-Americanism as an ideological crutch has become much more dubious now that the American electorate has chosen as their president a man publicly derided as “Putin’s puppet.”

What the Kremlin fears most today is that Trump may be ousted or even killed. His ouster, Kremlin insiders argue, is bound to unleash a virulent and bipartisan anti-Russian campaign in Washington. Oddly, therefore, Putin has become a hostage to Trump’s survival and success. This has seriously restricted Russia’s geopolitical options. The Kremlin is perfectly aware that Democrats want to use Russia to discredit and possibly impeach Trump while Republican elites want to use Russia to deflate and discipline Trump. The Russian government fears not only Trump’s downfall, of course, but also the possibility that he could opportunistically switch to a tough anti-Moscow line in order to make peace with hawkish Republican leaders in Congress.

It is emblematic that, in their first telephone call, Putin refused to press Trump on lifting the sanctions or on America’s discontinuing support for Kiev. Moscow has also chosen to ignore some harsh anti-Russian statements issued by certain members of the new administration. The renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine might seem like a counterexample, but the Kremlin swears that the Petro Poroshenko government in Kiev is the guilty party, aiming at getting the attention of anti-Russian U.S. Congress members and thereby providing a potent argument against Trump’s appeasement of Putin. 

In any case, Russia has been trying to find ways to accommodate the U.S. president, including, for example, echoing the White House’s denials that Ambassador Sergei Kislyak discussed sanctions with Michael Flynn before Trump’s inauguration as well as announcing plans to reconsider Trump’s demand to set up safe zones inside Syria—a proposal that was initially rejected by the Russians.

Trump’s presidency has also complicated Moscow’s relations with China and Iran.

What is especially dangerous from the Kremlin’s perspective is that certain nationalistic circles in Russia are falling in love with Trump’s insurrectionary approach. In January, for the first time since Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, Putin was not the most frequently cited name in the Russian media; Trump was. And although most of Trump’s Russian admirers, such as Alexander Dugin, are loyal to Putin personally, they also dream of purging the globalist elites who occupy the rooms adjoining their president’s.

Anyone who spends any time in Moscow will quickly discover that ordinary Russians, in contrast with a majority of Europeans, feel surprisingly positive about Trump. One reason is that they are exhausted at Russia’s confrontation with the West. Another is that they share Trump’s cynical, borderline apocalyptic view of international politics. Like Trump, they never believed in win-win politics in the first place.

Most interesting of all, they readily compare Trump to an early Boris Yeltsin — impulsive, charismatic, trusting only his family, and ready to bomb the parliament if that works to cement his hold on power. The problem for the Kremlin is that Yeltsin was a revolutionary leader and Putin has decided to make 2017 a year for deploring, not celebrating, revolutions.

Comments?

Terry Field

Now sojourning in Florida and swimming every day, Englishman Terry Field once again dazzles the mind with a coherent and well-thought out essay on economics - yesterday, today and perhaps tomorrow.  Good reading that challenges the mind.  This is MBA course quality, at least a chapter's worth. - Glenn N. Holliman

A Little History of Economics, and, Unfortunately, Why the Past is the Best Guide to the Future – Terrence Field, Businessman, Economist and Thinker  

Most people who hear the words ‘economy’ or ‘economics’ instinctively recoil, out of an inner alienation, and a distaste at having to apply a fleeting regard something they know matters, but which, at bottom, the simply do not really understand.

Below, Terry explains to Barbara Holliman

that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is also 
present in the brewery industry. 2016

For those of us cursed with minds attuned to consider the nature and implications of economics and of capitalism in particular, understanding the past economics of our societies can lead to the understanding of not just the future of economies, but also the social and cultural consequences of how economic life will change.

The early history of the development of economic thinking has taken place in countries where the very nature and condition of economic activity have changed radically in size, geographical reach and complexity over the past two centuries.  Today social, cultural and political influences force economists to reconsider the controllability and stability of economic conditions and structures once taken as self-sustaining.

The Classical Economists

The early view of the ‘classical’ economists such as the famed Scotsman, Adam Smith, reflected the elegant architecture of the period. The late Georgian period produced architecture concerned with symmetry, balance, proportion and the ‘golden ratio’ of classical elegance.  In like manner classical economics looked to an economic engine that tended to natural stability, balance, rational decision making coming from enormous numbers of players who together formed a supra-human ‘hidden hand’.  The ‘hidden hand’ guided the progress of the economy, of human activity, and by implication, the optimization of order, activity, output and human happiness.

Then came the great perturbation of the 1930s. The system failed to do what it was expected to do. As an example, the fall in wages did not produce a rise in the demand for labour, but rather a loss of confidence that accelerated the collapse of demand, output, employment and – to understate it - contentment.

Which leads us to ask, and leave hanging in the air until later in this little note, what, if any ‘purpose’ can be imposed on economic activity. More of that later.

Keynsian State Intervention.                                                                            

As a response to the horror of the Great Depression, a consensus formed that government-led economic activity would be required in the depths of depression in order to ‘stimulate’ the moribund economy into output and employment recovery. This is understood by all to fall under the umbrella of ‘Keynsian’ economics named after Englishman John Maynard Keynes. From this developed the ideas of greater state intervention, the application of politics at the level of the State – socialist intervention. This intervention would not only cause the general economy to recover, but also give government the opportunity to so ‘manage’ the economy in order to protect some social groups against the assumed excess power of other social groups.

In those times, those developed economies who applied these concepts operated in an environment of control of the supply, cost and use of resources, from raw materials right through to final production and consumption. Britain had a comprehensive economic and political empire. The United States was a largely self-contained ‘closed loop’ economy, with equally total control from raw material extraction through to final market supply.

In other words, social, political and economic order coincided geographically. The potential for control seemed total.

IN the context of large-scale, or ‘macro’ economics – western developed economies, where capital, resources, labour, distribution, markets, and social order were all susceptible to governmental influence, and where economic thinking in the great universities focused on how the state could control economic life to the advantage of the   citizenry, all seemed possible.

From the late 1940s through to the collapse of Soviet communism, as ‘macroeconomic’ (large-scale) management of the economy became accepted orthodoxy, the ‘levers of control’ – monetary policy, fiscal policy, together with forms of state-directed activity – were aggressively and confidently applied by chancelleries throughout Europe and Great Britain.

Private activity would be vital, but managed. The future would be predictable.

The difference in how the Soviet Union and most nations in Western Europe applied state control to economic life was really a matter of degree.  In the United States, whilst there was less appetite for far-reaching state intervention in the public mind, yet in reality the role of the state was considerable.

The immense ‘military industrial complex’ was used as an engine of demand management by US governments.

A significant element of the aura that attaches to the Reagan period is the massive increase in military demand from government, the resultant manufacturing activity feeding through to add to the buoyant level of overall demand and of output.

So what happened then?

Busting the controllable ‘end to end’ economy wide open.

Firstly Japan opened its post war economy and a new, vigorous centre of output appeared to challenge the western nations. No longer could western governments operate on a world of end-to-end control. They faced another economy that had its own resource supplies, its own social order, belief systems, attitude to work, skill sets and attributes.

This was the first external attack on the productive capacity and market demand for the goods habitually churned out by the old western economies. To add to the western economic pain, Japanese banks operated differently, in close integrated harmony with their manufacturers, making the competitive threat to the ‘west’ the more potent.

This supply of increasingly superb goods into western markets resulted in the withering of uncompetitive western businesses, increased unemployment, and state support spending, accompanied by reduced tax revenue and increased government borrowing was applied to protect the local victims of superior external competition.

Southeast Asia awakes - Myanmar 2016 

In all this the interesting thing to ponder is the essential untruthfulness of both monetarist and non-monetarist claims that each could be capable of optimizing the performance of the western economies.

Why did the proposition of effective economic control in the west become more and more of a sham? 

The controllable end-to-end western economies were being ripped to pieces.  Where did this collapse of self-contained western control come from? It arose from Deng Xiaoping and the acceptance by China of open economic development, co-ordinated by Chinese Communist Party five-year plans.

The scale of the growth of the Chinese economy now dwarfs that of Japan, with gigantic manufacturing capacity and a cost base that, whilst increasing year by year, still exerts a mortal threat to the manufacturing base of the west - all of the west.

This new world of globalising resource extraction, manufacture and supply now means no national or regional economy can be managed comprehensively at the local level.

 As the old ideas of the rational market, the classical economic model, the Keynsian model, the monetarist model all exhibited a common characteristic.  That is they were unable to allow the provision of effective, universal control and correction to the afflictions suffered across those old economies.  Crises of confidence in the existing social and political structures rose to unprecedented levels.

At the same time, the directed Chinese state appears to offer performance not any longer available to the western states.

This is not entirely unprecedented.

The Soviet leader, Kruschev, suggested that the soviet system would ‘bury’ the west with its superior economic performance. At the time the growth of the soviet economy was robust, whilst that of the west was quite modest.

The centrally directed construction of the ‘skeleton’ of the soviet economy - its basic industry, its transport system, its new cities, its directed education system, and of course its immense military, gave an external observer concern that it may well be the future.

So what happened? The next phase of development to a responsive, sophisticated economic engine required to meet the detailed needs of the variety of the soviet citizenry was entirely beyond the capacity of the soviet state planning system.

To this failure must be added the gigantic misallocation of resources in the process of building soviet cities, industries, agricultural and military; thus the system collapsed into total failure and social trauma, where for a time the lifespan of soviet citizens fell to the mid forties.

So what is different about China?

China is another example of fast structural development, with a remodeling of the economic and physical landscape that is unprecedented in speed. To date, the country has flooded the world with goods, polluted its rivers, poisoned its air, dammed its principal watercourses, added huge city scapes, developed a potent regional military capability, massively increased hydrocarbon usage yet managed to give the impression of un-phased long term control and stable social order.

What it has not done, however, is offer a pluralistic democracy, an open society, clear data and information, nor has it focused on working harmoniously with its near neighbors to establish a co-operative political landscape in south east Asia.

China is a work in progress.

The pressure to employ a gigantic population has caused China to over-extend the period of development of the capital infrastructure of the economy rather than to move to a retail consumer economy at a fast pace.

Right, Terry reads about the economic history of a Pennsylvania river town. 2016

This could be because the social and political structures are not up to the job of facilitating a sophisticated and free private sector economy capable of offering the panoply of goods and services a maturing society of consumers requires. This need for a totally free, sophisticated economy is a primary challenge to the value and usefulness of the centrally directed political structure.

Whilst this may be no rerun of the Soviet Union, it may or may not prove to be a model of economy that matches or exceeds the performance of the western democracies.

The example of the Chinese economy has suggested to many that the state has a valuable role to play as a directing hand – the creator of the structure in which private activity can operate. But we have tried this before, in Europe, in Russia, even in Britain. The result has been a massive waste of resources - the construction of industries in the wrong places, making the wrong goods, consuming vast resources, and polluting the environment and blighting people’s lives.

It is certainly true that the western economies have been guilty of the waste of resources on a massive scale; in telecoms for example, many hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent of cable connections across the world that will never be illuminated with traffic. New industries, new technologies cause people simply to guess about the future, with waste to match the exuberance.

Should we expect that future economic management will take place in a world of uncertainty, disorder and the danger of impoverishing waste?

Of course.

Is unmanageable disorder the certain and unalterable future for economies?

That is the life we must live for a very long time to come, but maybe not for ever, since the development of competing new regions of the globe that causes these immense dislocations will itself stabilise.

The economic blocks will mature.

 Since the present economy of the world is politically and socially fragmented, each component element of this developing global economy cannot be adequately managed by the local political authority - certainly current political offerings   suggesting state actions can control the economy to the extent that it can improve broad swathes of workers lives in any one location is transparently un-provable, and very probably untrue.

Open economies now are subject to ungovernable and often unanticipated external pressures. Politicians are now reacting by ‘hardening’ the external barriers.

In modern open economies global corporations can and do act to remove the power of governments to raise revenue. Those newly developing regions of the world house corporations experiencing very fast growth, which are asset rich, free of debt, with buoyant revenues; the governments of those developing regions have no interest in co-operating with the revenue-starved governments of the ‘old’ western economies. Thus the corporation commands capital, controls its labour costs, pays taxes almost as it wishes, is disconnected from any local authority.

How will the developed economies respond to the new integrating world?

What then can we in the old west expect of our economy? What can we reasonably ask of our political representatives, and what model of capitalism will develop in the near and intermediate future?

That should take us back to the question hanging in the air – can overall social objectives be the driver of economic management. Is this a luxury no longer relevant to modern economies?

Since the classical assumption of the self-correcting structure producing the optimal result is now irrelevant, can the economy be optimized in terms of human happiness, economic security and stability?

In the fragmentation of the global economy, the present answer has to be no.

Certainly there are competing ideas about how the new model of capitalism can be developed to produce a recovery in activity and wealth creation, but nobody is close to being able to suggest a ‘model’ that can reliably produce control and predictability at the level of functional political interest.

If the west does develop a capitalist model that blends a version of state activity that moves towards the Chinese model, because it is the present fashion, and which also maintains the market economy as the vehicle for resource allocation in an attempt to achieve greater predictability, it is clear that such a capitalist model will suffer periodic instability, social dislocation, surprising local successes or the periodic collapse of significant components. 

Open ended economies, and disrupting technologies lay waste to the old. They build new worlds and now social conditions. No economic model theory or management can neither stop nor adequately manage this.

Does any strategy act to reduce the potential for disruption? Well, there are conditions that lend to greater stability.

Size matters. A very large economy such as the United States commands a reserve currency, and resources that allow for a greater degree of economic control. A very small economy, such as Switzerland, replete with very high educational standards and technical competence, industries with wide competition ‘moats’ and conservative management of currency stability also lend themselves to effective economic management.

Left, Viet Nam open air market of food stuffs in another hybrid system of free enterprise and state control of the economy. 2015

By contrast countries with intermediate scale, poor resources, low productivity, low levels of educational attainment and de-capitalised industries face a formidable task to control events where the world conspires to outcompete them. There, attempts at control via state direction will not protect the population against impoverishment. Such economies will continue to see key sectors destroyed by overwhelming competition from great powers.

Economic management of socially dysfunctional states cannot be successful. Old and irrelevant social models preclude the progress to relevant economic management. For a potent example of this condition, France is instructive. That country wished to challenge the United States by creating a new monetary and political economy in Europe. The directed economy and the political currency (the Euro) has produced major crises and now the exit of the second largest European economy, the UK,  from the political structure.

Old, failed economic ideas die slowly.

The political class tends to tinker with their failings to extend their damaging effects.

At present it seems the old world has no reliable model that ‘works’ to deliver wealth and adequate output. At the same time the Chinese model is half-formed and untested.

Since the economic future is more opaque than at any time in the last two centuries, populist political statements of certainty are plainly unsupportable.

In all this the suggestion that Britain will either do better or worse as a free-floating economic island cannot be supported. Certainly in the near future the economic management of each and every region of the world economy will be more unstable, more volatile, less predictable than in the prior periods of ‘closed-loop’ economies.

That applies with force to the economic management of smaller economic states, whatever the nuanced form of capitalism is applied.

IN addition, it can be asserted with some confidence that, as the period of globalization changes over some decades to a period of mature stable power blocks, with currencies, energy supply, resources, populations, socio-political structures, industrial outputs contained in defined borders, then small states that operate outside such structures will have to have – relatively - better educated workers, better managed economic activity, greater capitalization, be more creative, more productive, more resilient, more market responsive and more sophisticated that those great blocks they compete with in order to survive, let alone thrive.  

Who seriously believes the history of the UK since 1945 makes such a scenario a probable outcome?

The distortion of economics by social preconceptions.

The present economic prejudice required global relocation of activity according to perceptions of what should or should not be done in particular places – thus engineering in Germany, agriculture in France, financial services in the USA and the UK, and high technology, movies and software in the USA.

NO matter that this made little sense in terms of the historical competences of the populations, rather it was a mechanism for financial control via banking houses to direct the activity of the globe, and to vastly enrich themselves in the process.

The result is completely inappropriate and unnecessary wealth accruing to banking ‘taipans’, poverty and misery visited on huge population groups previously profitable employed in gainful activity in the ‘old’ economies, immense concentrations of new wealth founded in the east, huge numbers of Asians newly prosperous, and trillions in surpluses accruing to remote peoples who find themselves sitting on land full of oil and gas.

It would therefore appear highly desirable that a new form of capitalism develops to modify these tendencies, with a larger directing role to be played by the state.

Are new survival strategies now a vital required component part of economic management?

Of even greater significance than developing newly effective general economic tools, however, is the requirement to modify the – until now – market-determined price mechanism to cause hydrocarbon consumption to be radically reduced, and in the process stimulating the direction of significant resources to research and development of new non-carbon energy resources. Without this the future of any economic system is likely to be bleak, as climate change rips through the life of the global populations, resulting in unlivable environments, unviable societies and economic collapse.

The requirement to modify the energy price mechanisms requires long term global co-ordination of the great power blocks. That is, at the best of times, a tall order. Now, with the emergence of the old forces of nationalism, both in Great Britain, Europe and most particularly in the United States, such co-ordinated price management is temporarily – perhaps permanently – off the agenda.

In order to argue for national activity, to include protectionism, aggressive assertions of cultural shibboleths such as military assertiveness, and to support the proposition of hydrocarbon extractions becoming once again a core element of local (US) prosperity, it is a primary requirement to argue that there is no anthropomorphic global warming, climate change and resultant risks.

If that proposition cannot be supported, there can be no rational or safe assertion of the rest of the new nationalism and its beliefs.

To deal with climate change, global governmental intervention to consistently, progressively and universally modify the price and thus usage of hydrocarbon extractions is an unavoidable requirement. This would cause United States hydrocarbon usage to radically reduce, materially offset the growth of such usage in the developing economies of China and India, and propel development of carbon-free energy systems to allow for an energy rich world, with the hydrocarbons left in the ground.

That the Russian state, together with the hydrocarbon producers of the United States wish to defer the reduction in the value of their corporate stock capitalisation and dividend potential is plain.

Russia and the tombs of the Romanovs in St. Petersburg, 2015.  A hybrid economy and government.

The present conversation concerning the possible involvement of Russia in supporting the victory of a man who is on record as denying the truth of AGW is consistent with the seminal crisis of our age – our economy is hydrocarbon, and our demise will come from it if it is not stopped.

And quite soon.

The idea of changing our capitalist model to include the value of ‘externalites’ such as hydrocarbon pollution ( as well as the rest of non-human life could also be so included, but that seems beyond our wit, as well as our moral compass) is radically a new departure for economics.

It suggests that we deliberately develop new energy technology, displacing immense numbers of hydrocarbon workers, ruining the investment value of hydrocarbon corporations, removing significance and potential wealth from Saudi Arabia, and much of the Middle East, whilst cutting the economic legs from the Russian energy industry – not because the present price mechanism requires it, but because our grandchildren will die in a boiling cauldron of misery if we do not.

Do contemporary electoral changes impact the potential for economic and social success?

The election of Mr Trump would- at first glance – suggest that democratic processes, and universal suffrage are an impediment, not an aid, to achieve this change.

Mr Lovelock, the British ‘Gaia’ theorist and scientist – one of the first who identified the climate change danger – has suggested that democratic life may need to be suspended in order to achieve the desired radical re-engineering of the global energy economy.

It is a central problem to imagine how the present global capitalist system, likely now to be even more grotesquely misdirected as a result of monumental greed and ignorance, can be modified to direct the world to a new energy and environmental support future in the context of democratic control.

Until now, even with the immense growth of human economic prosperity the carbon economy has not precluded vast numbers of economic ‘disruptions’, and local inequitable impoverishment.

How the global economy, shifting via modified price mechanisms to a post carbon energy economy will manage its transformation when even larger groups are more severely disrupted, impoverished, removed from comfort, whilst others, through chance, find their lives moving in the opposite direction is not clear.

If Europe, as a regional economy, is threatening to break apart because of the non-acceptance of economic discipline, combined with support payments from the rich (Northsea) states denied to the poorer southern states, what chance to do this more radically and on a global scale, and in the context of the abandonment of an energy supply that we know is abundant, inexpensive, universal and completely integrated to our lives and easy to use – hydrocarbons.

That such as UKIP and ‘The Donald’ have triumphed in a post – crisis downturn gives little confidence that global governance to modify the hydrocarbon price mechanism has even a slight chance of success.

I can only therefore conclude that economics is a busted flush.

It seems economic order can only be achieved when there is easy success to be had.

Now that this pleasant condition is passed into history, it follows that the vital changes to how we consume, live and regard our world will only take place when the event described as their prerequisite for change by David Attenborough takes place.

And the event he identifies is ‘catastrophe’.

Economics will become a conversation not about how to become and remain prosperous, but rather it will become an urgent conversation about how to survive.

Trump and survival. Oxymoron? Possibly.

I am Terence Field and I approve this message.

Comments?

David Lott on another Disputed Election in American History

David Lott offers a contrary view than many readers of this blog have about the election of the now President Trump.  David has paid his dues as a Royal Air Force pilot and a commercial aviator. He has exposed himself to public candidacy for the House of Commons as an early member of the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independent Party.  He is the quintessential English gentleman, a person of firm opinions but always expressed politely.  The following was written several days ago before the presidential inauguration here in the United States. - GNH

Below, not an Englishman's garden, but Steph's
garden in South Australia, a summer's outing in
her bird bath.  It is becoming a tradition to add
a scenic photograph from our readers to this blog.

The Presidential Election of 1876 by David Lott

We were subjected yesterday to wall to wall media attacks upon the President elect and this evening the same is being dealt out to Theresa May. The level of reporting has sunk to a level of unsubstantiated accusation that I have never before seen. I hope mobs do not burn down the White House or attack those who voted for Trump or perhaps in the UK those of us who simply want the same freedom as you enjoy in the USA.

Perhaps the little historical snapshot below will help a provide a sense of perspective. 

Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican vs Samuel Tilden, Democrat

This week’s inauguration is somewhat less controversial than that of President Hayes in the late 1800s.

It seems the Democrats fixed the votes in three southern states and did a little gerrymandering in Oregon. Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida were deemed to have flagrantly rigged the vote in favour of their candidate Tilden. After a commission was appointed from both Congressional houses it was eventually agreed that 20 disputed electoral votes should be handed the Hayes on the eve of inauguration day making him President despite losing the popular vote.

The price paid by the Republicans was to remove all federal troops from the three southern states and allowing the Democrats to dominate.

These Southern Democrats rapidly removed the franchise from black voters. These poor black Americans, people without the protection from federal troops, became subjected to a ballooning Ku Klux Klan leading to hundreds if not thousands of them being lynched.

Perhaps that election deserved an hysterical press reaction.

Surely this election does not merit the strange, divisive disrespectful harrying of the President elect. The outgoing President stokes the fire in addition, surely he should realise that he undermines the Office he holds.

I am sure that for some the change that is coming in the UK and the US is worrying but for many it is a change that is long overdue. Cannot you all wait a little to see how it pans out and then if you thoroughly disapprove complain and change things at the next election? All this protest, abuse, insult and promise of mayhem before the man even takes office or before the arrival of an independent Britain demonstrates an enormous lack of tolerance in both our nations.

Good luck! - David Lott writing from England

Comments?

Why Evangelical Christians voted for Trump - Some Responses

Several of you have written lengthy and thoughtful responses to Chris Kratzer's article asking why Evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump for USA president.  As the comments have been received, I felt it important to place these in a new post rather than just the comment field.  Those of you who read and respond to the articles live all over the world and the American nation and while we do not always share the same views of politics, religion and world events, it is important to listen to each other. My thanks to all of you. - Glenn N. Holliman

From an American Navy Veteran and Chaplain to Prison Ministries - 

Hi Glenn,

I can understand his (and your?) confusion at the seeming 'two-faces" of many evangelical Christians out there.  

I'll give you a short answer as to why my wife and I, who both consider ourselves conservative evangelical Christians and disliked either choice of candidate (HRC or the Donald), voted for Trump.  It came down  to who would select moderate or conservative judges for Supreme Court candidates.  The checks and balances of our system will have some control over any outrageous laws/edicts that Trump will attempt to put into place.  But, changing the face of the Supreme Court to one of being a liberal super-majority for potentially the next several decades was not something that we were willing to live with.  Hence, we voted for the party ... and not necessarily the candidate. Many of our friends also did so for the same reason.

From our Australian Writer 
The flock gathers at Steph's bird feeder
in southeast Australia!

Dear Glenn

Like Chris Kratzer, I find Donald Trump’s personal character deeply disturbing, BUT….

I’m not sure that what I’m going to say next will help him to understand why so many evangelical Christians, and non-Evangelical people, may have voted for Donald. But here goes…As a kid at Sunday school I began to find certain aspects of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, deeply disturbing. Even as a female child I felt offended at the patriarchal societal rules, I was dismayed by the vengefulness and violence incited in many sections, and I spotted inconsistencies everywhere (the sort that bothered theologist Barbara Thiering who wrote  ‘Jesus the Man’). By teenage-hood I had come to believe that man has created God, rather than the reverse. Having said that, I certainly believe in the historic revolutionary Jesus who tipped his society on its head and changed people’s lives for the good, and because of His example (along with those of countless other marvellous people) I am a true believer in GOOD. Put one more ‘O’ into GOD, and you have GOOD.

I also have come to believe that Barak Obama is an innately good person, one who has been forced to keep his country involved in multiple wars because of the Middle East debacle unleashed by George W, and one who has been soft on border control and immigration because, well, he’s a good-hearted bloke. BUT…

Very many ordinary Americans, British, Australians, and now Europeans like Germans and the French, have become sick and tired of their concerns being ignored as if they are somehow dumb and not worth listening to. Those people have been witnessing their country changing rapidly (and for the worse) due mainly to golden hearted and lax immigration policies by their respective governments. When the influx of population overwhelms infrastructure, and when most of the new immigrants espouse values opposed to modern day western values, we start to see unhappy dysfunctional societies. And what have the golden hearted governments been telling their people? 

That the overpopulation equates to economic growth: that the mix of cultures will always sort itself out and make us a ‘richer’ society. Over the past two years, whenever these ordinary people raised concerns about the veracity of their government’s claims, they were immediately branded 1. Racist and 2. Redneck fascists.  And the sad part is, of course all of the circumstances I’ve described above do provide fertile breeding ground for these abhorrent groups.

But back to the mass of ordinary people, Christians and atheists alike, well, someone like Trump comes along and bluntly shouts what they have been thinking for so long, giving them validity and a voice for the first time.  He sounds like a racist, but is he? He’s married to a lady from Slovenia. He wants to build a wall to keep out illegals. Is that such a dumb idea? He wants to tighten immigration laws, creating a more careful filter in an effort to prevent people entering with bad motives. Is that so bad, and if so, why? He wants to provide a protectionist system for the car building industry in Detroit. Sounds good to many workers, especially those who are unemployed. He defended being civil and answering the phone to the President of Taiwan, regardless of China’s furious reaction. Many people see Trump’s action there as brave and more ‘Christian’ than other governments who have been kow-towing to China.

And guess what? Many governments such as mine have taken a leaf out of Trump’s blunt book – they are now listening to the ordinary people. They now have the courage to tighten their borders and to strengthen the filter for immigration. They now have the courage to act more decisively and to drop some of their PC ‘speak’, knowing now that we can all see right through it. The people want plain talk from both sides of the political spectrum.

I like many others are worried about a Trump presidency. Will it lead to war with China? An allegiance with the war-like Putin? A war with the current CIA operative, leading to a dysfunctional Intelligence system?

None, some or all of these things may happen. Trump is unpredictable. But just maybe Chris Kratzer now has the smallest understanding as to why so many Evangelical Christians along with many others voted for Trump.

Steph from Downunder

From David, our scientist in the Midlands of England - 

A somewhat superficial response, but often first thoughts are the ones which feel right. As I recall, evangelical Christianity depends much on a child-like, emotional faith. One hears of people who know that God is 'calling' them. Those who have such faith often believe that the words in the books of the bible, being 'the words of God' must be literally true, however contradictory and occasionally thoroughly reprehensible the mixed messages might be. 

Analysis through rational thought is oft considered to be merely playing with semantics and denial of fundamental religious truth.  A mind-set like this is going to be easy meat for the Trumpeters and Brexiters, whose messages rarely stand up to rational analyses. They require an emotional, non-intellectual response.

From a law school professor in Pennsylvania -

Glenn, thanks. The issue raised by your cousin in the first article is something that irritates (no angers) my wife who was raised a Presbyterian and who is now a lapsed Episcopalian. She cannot understand how people of faith can support a loathsome, despicable person. Check out David Brooks today in the NYT. The next four years are going to be a Barnum and Bailey political world even though that circus is closing.

Thanks to all for sharing....some very differing views from thoughtful, well-educated, well-meaning persons. GNH

Trying to Understand Evangelicals who Voted for Trump

This article was sent by cousin Mike Holliman,  who like me was raised in a semi-fundamentalist Protestant tradition in the Deep South of the United States.  Like me, even now seven decades on, we still struggle with questions of faith.  Mike, a retired educator, forwarded this blog from a theologian of similar background to us. Chris Kratzer posted this on January 2, 2017. 

With the inauguration of a new American president this week, a person whose behavior and views fill many of us with trepidation, this search for understanding why certain people voted as they did still haunts.  Election results indicate that over 80% of those who identify themselves as 'evangelical Christians' voted for Trump.  - Glenn N. Holliman

To Those Christians Who Still Support Trump, Help Me Understand by Chris Kratzer,   

You voted for Donald Trump to be named president of the United States, he won.

As much as I personally disliked this result, I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, so I waited. Maybe there was something I was completely missing. Perhaps, Donald Trump was in reality an entirely different person than his campaign persona. Maybe, what you believed, many of us simply could not see, and Donald Trump is truly a God-send for our country, but needed to carry himself in certain controversial ways to get elected. Therefore, overtime, Donald Trump would shed his campaign skin and the real man, anointed by God, would emerge and all would clearly see it.

Yet, here we are, the election is over, and Donald Trump is no different—no more presidential, no less arrogant, no less divisive. I could list much more—nothing of him has changed, if anything, it has become worse.

So when I see your continued Christian support, I’m trying to understand, but finding it very difficult.

From what I know of your brand of Christianity, following Jesus and His example is primary. You are well versed at calling attention to perceived sin, you hold your understanding of moral purity as the highest standard from which to discern the favor and presence of God in ones life, and you have no lack of courage in condemning an American culture you deem to be filled with every form of lust, evil, and offense to God. Within your own churches and ministries, those who desire leadership are highly screened and continually discerned for alignment with the commands of God and a lifestyle faithful to Scripture. And above all, you believe our nation to be uniquely blessed by a God who has no hesitation in withdrawing Himself from anything or anyone who doesn’t honor His will, character, and ways. Is that not true?

And yet you still passionately support Donald Trump—not just the office of president, but the person soon to be occupying it.

Help me understand.

Did it all just magically go away? Where’s your sensitivity to sin and lack of Godly character, now? Where is your condemnation of moral impurity, now? Where is your concern for the removal of God’s favor upon our nation in the face of continued carnal leadership, now?

Help me understand.

Many of you have children—what will your response to them be one day when your son or daughter asks of you, “Dad, did you really vote for and continue to support a man who publicly made fun of special needs children, bragged about grabbing women by the “pussy,” spoke of them as being a “piece of ass,” and continually used his platform to childishly bully people with whom he disagrees?” For your sake, I hope that moment of curiosity doesn’t arise during family devotion time, that would be awkward. You cringe at the thought of allowing your children to attend an r-rated movie, accidentally listening to a vulgar song, or playing an immoral video game at a friend’s house, but apparently have little-to-no hesitation in supporting an x-rated president.

Help me understand.

How do you even begin to justify that, especially within your faith that confesses to be so centered on Jesus?

Donald Trump couldn’t even pass the basic screening to volunteer in your church’s children’s ministry, but he still receives your full Christian support as the president of the United States? He couldn’t qualify for the simple role of Elder in your church for lack of character and self-control alone, and yet you continue to display t-shirts, hats, and signs bowing to his name as the leader of your “one nation under God?” I would suspect that many parents, if they were honest, wouldn’t even feel good about him coaching the local girls “Upward” Basketball team, or even the boys, and yet he still receives your allegiance and is the object of your national hope?

Help me understand.

I would be hard pressed to find a pastor in your faith tradition who wouldn’t normally see Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” as the height of His declaration as to what following Him should look like—the fruits of a genuine person of faith and the desires of God upon the earth for all people and nations.

Here are the opening verses…

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, ² and he began to teach them. He said:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴ Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
⁵ Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
⁶ Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
⁷ Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹ “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 

¹² Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

It doesn’t get any clearer—this is the Jesus you profess to worship, this is the essence of the Kingdom you pray will come, this is the vision of God for all people and all things under heaven and earth.

So, help me understand, where does Donald Trump even begin to match any of this in character, vision, attitude, or example?

Where do we see Donald Trump being truly humble, and genuinely empathizing with and honoring those who aren’t privileged? Where do we see Donald Trump mourning for the oppressed, abused, marginalized, outcast, and religiously condemned within our culture? Where do we see Donald Trump displaying and valuing meekness over imperialism, greed, and power? Where do we see Donald Trump thirsting for self-controlled, Christ-righteous leadership beginning with his own? Where do we see  Donald Trump being merciful with those whom he disagrees, has taken offense, or perceives as an enemy—or ever worse, an immigrant or Islam believer? Where do we see Donald Trump striving for purity of heart over insecurity and impulsiveness? Where do we see Donald Trump using his Twitter feed, let alone his presidency for the goal of Jesus-exampled, sword-less peacemaking?

Instead—homophobic, narcissistic, racist, sexist, xenophobic, greedy, vulgar, arrogant, bullying, and childish seem to be more in line with his be-attitudes.

Please help me understand.

For how can you, as a Christian, continue to unequivocally support a man, no less the president elect of the United States, who represents so much of what Jesus, the Christ, opposes?

To be sure, no one is perfect. Donald Trump is my president by nature of my proud citizenship and civic respect, and will receive my prayers, love, and best wishes, but he reflects very little of the Jesus of my faith understanding and what I believe are His desires for our nation and world.

Which leaves me with a good bit of wondering and questioning—how is it, that Donald Trump could possible reflect yours?

To those Christians who still support Donald Trump, help me understand. - Chris Kratzer
Google Mr. Kratzer's name and his blog address appear.

Comments?

From David, our scientist in the Midlands of England - 

A somewhat superficial response, but often first thoughts are the ones which feel right. As I recall, evangelical Christianity depends much on a child-like, emotional faith. One hears of people who know that God is 'calling' them. Those who have such faith often believe that the words in the books of the bible, being 'the words of God' must be literally true, however contradictory and occasionally thoroughly reprehensible the mixed messages might be.  Analysis through rational thought is oft considered to be merely playing with semantics and denial of fundamental religious truth.

A mind-set like this is going to be easy meat for the Trumpeters and Brexiters, whose messages rarely stand up to rational analyses. They require an emotional, non-intellectual response.

From a law school professor in Pennsylvania -
Glenn, thanks. The issue raised by your cousin in the first article is something that irritates (no angers) my wife who was raised a Presbyterian and who is now a lapsed Episcopalian. She cannot understand how people of faith can support a loathsome, despicable person. Check out David Brooks today in the NYT. The next four years are going to be a Barnum and Bailey political world even though that circus is closing.