Great eulogy, thanks. I loved Carter, and voted for him. Visionary, peacemaker, renewable energy leader, & with one of the highest IQ's measured among Presidents.
Let's not forget that Carter's re-election in 1980 was stolen by the Reagan Campaign (w/ Bush Sr. & the war industry) who broke the law - secretly arranging for the Iranian hostages to remain captive until after the Election.
I'll resist resorting to the word "Evil" to describe a conflict of policies (as opposed to reactions to domestic and\or international crises) since I've got no X-Ray vision into wherever humans store true motives and prioritize them and determining internally when preparing resolve to act.
For most of US with no access or voice in policy-making, much less national and international E-CON-o-mic policies, no amount of resolve is structured into our remote electoral substitute for true political rivalry. Hence we've been mostly ruled during my post WW II lifetime by our current RULING DUOPOLY that is more of a corporate cartel or monopoly than a policy rivalry of Two Political parties offering competing structures.
No, the Chicago School does not count as a competitive economic policy-setting or even policy-outcome analyzing body politic\economic:
Although I'm less circumspect when it comes to the person and outsized influence on late 20th Century and up to current U.S. E-CON-o-mic (wish it were more comic than tragic) policies and policy outcomes of Milton Friedman and his bi-partisan proxy to rival Presidential administrations: namely Lawrence Summers.
Read up from all sides of political and E-CON spectrum and then talk amongst yourselves. Pipe up when you've got some coherence like these articles to share for stimulating a discourse and discussion that Wall Street will never deem suitable for U.S. broadcast media, either Commercial nor so-called Public Broadcasting as both have long been corporate-captured.
I haven't found it especially useful to bog down in our Duopolistic pasttime of assigning blame to one of the Ruling Binaries of our political structures. Call a part of the problem or whole shebang Left or Right Wing; or Democrat\Republican; or Liberal\Conservative. There is a point of diminishing terms and evaporating clarity not to mention transparence in naming academic disciplines, fields, areas of study not to mention movements within them and within the bodies politic and administrative that they report to and about.
The ruling consensus in most policy-making directly or indirectly tied to E-CON policies will have embedded since the end of WW II (and not the New Deal of Great Depression origins with its roots in Wall Street prevailing policy and mostly privatized errors) a host of residue from what is termed Neo-Liberal E-CONomic policies that were variously and mostly a Duopoly consensus that is invalidated by historical review of what was or would have been better for the Public Interest (rather than Private Interests where wealth has concentrated in quantifiable fact by winning their choice of Private Policy gaining pursuits at the expense of the Public Interest outcomes once privileged in U.S. policymaking) over roughly the past 70 years.
I place so much value in this May 11, 2022 NYU Psychology discipline study that I turn for orientation and conceptual coordinates to this Economic (Macro v. Micro in globalized markets) lecture by Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of Greece who returned to academics. Here speaking and conducting Q&A in English albeit presented to his class at Tuebingen University in Germany. As well as international visiting faculty for the Diem25 international economic student symposium with various conferences:
Yanis Varoufakis: From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism | DiEM25
"A lecture organised by University of Tübingen economics students, delivered on Monday February 3, 2020, on the theme "From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism".
"Mainstream economic models lack some important features of really-existing capitalism, including money, time and space. Its models offer ideological cover for a capitalist system that has usurped competitive, free markets."
"The result? Unbearable inequality, climate catastrophe and permanent stagnation. A fork on the road is approaching: It will take us either into deeper stagnation and environmental degradation or to a society with markets but no capitalism. Prof. Yanis Varoufakis talks about the future of our economy and the current state of economics with special regard to pluralism in economics."
I agree with what you've said. Nonetheless Carter had a relatively positive net effect. Despite widespread Utopian ambitions (I have mine too), we in the US are nonetheless stuck with a dysfunctional, dark-money infected, sham of a democracy (ie, duopoly) - and at this point, despite corruption on both sides, there is (& by now long has been) a 'lesser of evils' in the Democratic Party.
Here's an alt. definition of "evil": net effect destructive to social & ecological health/ resilience, despite motives.
I want to refer you to this excerpt re/ President Carter from 'Time' magazine article just published entitled, "Jimmy Carter Was More Successful Than He Got Credit For": ...
"In today’s world of perpetual military intervention, it’s striking that not a single bomb was dropped or shot fired in combat by American forces on Carter’s watch, and his leadership helped prevent at least five wars—in Panama, Israel, and Iran when he was president, and in Haiti and North Korea after he left office. The Camp David Accords he engineered proved to be the most successful treaty since the end of World War II."
That might explain our ruling elite ESTABLISHMENT (you're not in that club without heading some oligarchic "enterprise") turning so sharply against Carter after he showed his mettle as a national scene novice in his first term and even though he proved himself thoroughly indoctrinated and committed to the Neo-Liberal E-CON (old school Isolationist Conservatives are the most hearty of such 'Conswervatives') and latent militaristic if pluralistic hawks whose real object of worship is in fact and policy our pagan nation's supreme Idol, Daddy Warbucks and unending welfare for Daddy Warbucks corporate kinfolk.
This is a policy pickle with no easy resolution to our ever steepening slide into ever greater chasms of Inequality which in all historic cases I'm aware of has led to the sorts of anti-social instability that makes satiating Daddy Warbucks necessary to any kind of maintenance of social order we Amurkkkins mostly take for granted thanks to our geographic borders on large bodies of water.
Time and Travel expedience have changed that safety from wars on our borders and see the steroid terro-graphic if not TERROR GRAPHIC with its non-Anglo demographic bulges moving north and learning our lingo quite well that the Central and Latin American population bomb = MASS MIGRATION CRISIS & REPLACEMENT THEORY has\have wrought.
Strangely enough the question of what language we pray in as a nation may be an underlying and under-appreciated factor in resolving our MANUFACTURED CONSENT to our Duopolisitc consensus on basing our bread & butter & condos to spare and speculate on E-CON for the privileged and ruthless few among the corporate welfare-dependent captured elite across the porous borders of our SYSTEM OF CHECKS & BALANCES. May a God byond Competitive Dynamics Save our Soul.
Totally agree. I can't even imagine how much better off we would be in the US at this point if we had been 'evolved' enough to see the wisdom of Jimmy Carter's vision for the country. I WAS old enough to vote for him (and did), but felt like a bit of a 'lone wolf' at the time, for not being excited about Ronald Reagan. I never was, and still feel that he did so much damage as President that people still don't realize, or want to acknowledge. Very good points here, about the actual 'devolvement' of US voters over the last few years. I hope we can survive the next four years, but who knows.
To my shame, I voted for Reagan in my first presidential election. I just didn't know better.
I am not at all sure we're going to survive four years of the incoming guy. The only thing that MIGHT save us is all his followers are stupid and are currently fighting each other. Chaos is the best we can hope for.
We could have lived in a much better world -- if we stopped voting for idiots.
I agree we face daunting challenges, largely imposed on us by our own ignorant, lazy, irresponsible selves. But I refuse to accept that we are doomed. You may be correct, but I refuse still to give up or give in.
On the other hand, keep telling it how you see it. We need many sound perspectives to help us find our way. The Idea of America is too good to give up without a fight.
I think about what I would look for in my elected officials a great deal. What are the qualities I feel I should absolutely demand in a leader in a position of public trust? Integrity, competence, compassion, and yes I’d better be able to trust them to mind my Sunday school classroom, Jimmy Carter was the one, the person who met those criterion.
I’m not sure I’d trust many people in D.C. currently to set a good example and demonstrate good values definitely not to mind my Sunday school classroom. If you can’t be trusted to look out for the most vulnerable in your charge should you be leading anyone…
Yes I set a high bar the moment calls for nothing less. May Jimmy Carter rest in the light.
Faith aside, read up on President Jimmy Carter's track record doing something he never used in his political life for leverage. However, others have in some cases noted political exaggeration of Carter's academic and employment cv as it pertains to his Naval career. He was a submariner and certified to captain U.S. NON NUCLEAR Submarines. Yet, he was involved in key support services to U.S. Naval personnel assigned to assist the Canadian Navy in a nuclear cleanup operation as is clearly and succinctly described in Wikipedia with lengthy background mainstream reporting and institutional references cited:
Jimmy Carter never served on a nuclear submarine. Was not a nuclear engineer
By
Rod Adams
January 13, 2017
Initial version posted Jan 27, 2006
"A recent conversation about the dangers of false claims of expertise stimulated me to revise and republish a nearly 11 year-old post."
"It provides documented proof that Jimmy Carter was not a “nuclear engineer” and never served on a nuclear submarine. He left the Navy in October 1953, about 15 months before Jan 17, 1955, the day the the world’s first nuclear submarine went to sea."
"The below is a letter to a Wall Street Journal writer in response to an article about used nuclear fuel recycling.
"Dear Mr. Fialka (Wall Street Journal):
"I enjoyed your story about new efforts to recycle nuclear fuel. It is definitely the right thing to do; our current once-through cycle only extracts about 3-5% of the potential energy of the initial fuel loads."
"One myth correction, however. President Carter was a submarine officer, but he was not a nuclear engineer."
"He graduated from the US Naval Academy in June 1946 (he entered in 1943 with the class of 1947, but his class was in a war-driven accelerated 3 year program) with an undesignated bachelor of science degree. Even if the Naval Academy had offered a majors program for his class, it is unlikely that it would have included Nuclear Engineering as a option – after all, the Manhattan Project was a dark secret for most of his time at Annapolis."
"After graduation, Jimmy Carter served as a surface warfare officer for two years and then volunteered for the submarine force. He served in a variety of billets, including engineer officer of diesel submarines and qualified to command submarines."
"In November 1952, he began a three month temporary duty assignment at the Naval Reactor branch. He started nuclear power school (a six month course of study that leads to operator training) in March, 1953. In July 1953, his father passed away and he resigned his commission to run the family peanut farm. He was discharged from active duty on 9 October, 1953. According to an old friend of mine who served as Rickover’s personnel officer at Naval Reactors, LT Carter did not complete nuclear power school because of the need to take care of business at home."
"The prototype for the USS Nautilus was completed in Idaho in May 1953, so LT Carter might have had some opportunity to see it in action before leaving the Navy. However, the USS Nautilus did not go to sea until January 17, 1955, so there is no possibility that he ever qualified to stand watch on a nuclear powered submarine."
"He never experienced the incredible gift of being able to operate a power plant that was so clean that it could run inside a sealed submarine, so reliable that it could power that submarine even deep under the Arctic ice, and so energy dense that the submarine could operate for years without new fuel."
"When I think about the 1976 campaign and the importance of the energy issue at that time, I cannot help but wonder why Jimmy Carter’s promoters made such a big deal about his nuclear expertise. My wonder turns to cynicism when I think about the policies that his administration imposed and the damage that they did to the growth of the industry just at a time when we most needed a vibrant new energy industry player."
Then there is the wider context afforded by Wikipedia's editing of President Carter's page as of today 12-30-24 and updating it with the news of his death:
"Death
Main article: Death and state funeral of Jimmy Carter
Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100. His son, James E. Carter III, announced his death that afternoon.[519][520][521] This followed his February 2023 decision to enter hospice care.[522]
"Shortly after the announcement, President Joe Biden released a statement honoring Carter's legacy, calling him a "man of principle, faith, and humility." The Biden administration also announced plans to hold an official state funeral.[523]"
"From 1946 to 1953, the Carters lived in Virginia, Hawaii, Connecticut, New York, and California, during his deployments in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.[26] In 1948, he began officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret.[27] Carter was promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 1949, and his service aboard Pomfret included a simulated war patrol to the western Pacific and Chinese coast from January to March of that year.[28] In 1951, Carter was assigned to the diesel/electric USS K-1 (SSK-1), qualified for command, and served in several positions, to include executive officer.[29]"
"In 1952, Carter began an association with the Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program, led by then-Captain Hyman G. Rickover.[30] Rickover had high standards and demands for his men and machines, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on his life.[31] Carter was sent to the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C., for three-month temporary duty, while Rosalynn moved with their children to Schenectady, New York.[32]"
"On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, resulting in millions of liters of radioactive water flooding the reactor building's basement. This left the reactor's core ruined.[33] Carter was ordered to Chalk River to lead a U.S. maintenance crew that joined other American and Canadian service personnel to assist in the shutdown of the reactor.[34]"
"The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for 90 seconds at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor. When Carter was lowered in, his job was simply to turn a single screw.[35] During and after his presidency, Carter said that his experience at Chalk River had shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to cease the development of a neutron bomb.[36]"
"In March 1953, Carter began a six-month course in nuclear power plant operation at Union College in Schenectady.[26] His intent was to eventually work aboard USS Seawolf, which was intended to be the second U.S. nuclear submarine.[37] His plans changed when his father died of pancreatic cancer in July, two months before construction of Seawolf began, and Carter obtained a release from active duty so he could take over the family peanut business.[38][39]"
"Deciding to leave Schenectady proved difficult, as Rosalynn had grown comfortable with their life there.[40][41] She later said that returning to small-town life in Plains seemed "a monumental step backward."[42] Carter left active duty on October 9, 1953.[43][44] He served in the inactive Navy Reserve until 1961 and left the service with the rank of lieutenant.[45] Carter's awards include the American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, China Service Medal, and National Defense Service Medal.[46] As a submarine officer, he also earned the "dolphin" badge.[47]"
Hopefully some time in the future we will be ready for a president who treats us as adults, but unfortunately we haven't hit that bottom yet. I loved Jimmy Carter as president and his many years of service to the country after he left the White House. Rest in Peace, Mr. President!
Rest in peace. I was old enough to vote for Jimmy Carter, (barely) but I think I was deployed overseas and absentee ballots were not much of a thing back then. I voted for Reagan only because I was young, dumb and stupid. Also brainwashed like so many others.
Jimmy Carter was the last great president the U.S. had, and we squandered that, like so much else in the last fifty years. Now, it's all going to come back and bite us hard.
Although part of the issue was the evangelicals rejected an actual Christian in favor of Reagan. More recently, they turned out for Trump. I’m starting to think they do not give a shit about morality at all!
/s — there’s no lack of clarity there, unfortunately.
I was just starting university in the fall of 1976. Jimmy Carter to me seemed like your country's salvation after the Nixon and post-Nixon era. As you said the contrast between Carter and the Trumpet (P-elect #47) could not be starker. My thoughts and prayers are with the sane Americans who remain in your country. I hope they all stand up and make any change they can that will benefit their fellow citizens.
I guess he became a cautionary tale for politicians: never dare to tell people what they don't want to hear! Our current crop in Canada certainly learned that lesson well.
Voted for him, twice, and respected what he stood for, what he tried to accomplish as president and what he worked on aster he left public office. He was a brilliant, quiet, devoted man who loved us all. Rest in Peace, but if you can see your way clear to offer those of us who are open to it us guidance, please do!
In a time when the words “Christian values” are often wielded as weapons by those who seem unfamiliar with their essence, your life remains a testament to what they truly mean: love, humility, service, and unyielding moral courage.
As the 39th President of the United States, you brought a quiet dignity to the Oval Office, pursuing peace where others stoked conflict. Your leadership in brokering the Camp David Accords showed the world that diplomacy, grounded in faith and principle, could triumph over cynicism and division. And while history has recognized your presidency more kindly with each passing year, it is your post-presidency that stands as the gold standard of what an ex-president can and should be.
From eradicating diseases to building homes for those in need, your work with the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity has been an unparalleled legacy of compassion. You didn’t retreat to a gilded life of grift and spectacle but chose instead to labor humbly, embodying your spiritual call to serve “the least of these.”
In an era defined by loud self-aggrandizement and moral bankruptcy—where some falsely claim your faith while trampling its core tenets—you are proof that decency is not weakness and that true greatness lies in the quiet, steadfast work of lifting others up.
Thank you, President Carter, for showing us what goodness looks like.
I love your candid writing here. Yep - it does in fact seem we are all doomed! 😬
Late-stage capitalism and ecological collapse is evident all around us.
I’m so sorry that all those ‘morons’ voted for that narcissistic imbecile again. We will obviously feel the effects here in Australia too, but not as acutely, and not as quickly. What a shit show 🤯
"Carter was ahead of his time in many ways, but he made one big mistake: He thought you could treat Americans like intelligent people capable of looking at the facts and making good decisions."
Carter was very much a "sign of the times" with his deregulation policies and helping to oversee the petrodollar mess that Nixon had started, much as Obama continued the bank bailouts that Bush started. If he was truly a "visionary" and "ahead of his time" as you and some of your commentators in this thread mentioned, he would have met the fate of Kennedy.
As I noted before, the American people are not stupid -- they are brainwashed by privately owned news outlets that actually serve capitalist class propaganda and they are *desperate.* And the Dems have done nothing since the 1970s to change this situation.
"How deep does this hatred go? Some people chose to needlessly die in a pandemic rather than accept an immunization because the morons they listened to turned it into a political matter."
The medical panic of the COVID situation was a bunch of propaganda to help ultra-rich pharma companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson profit at our expense by pushing an experimental vaccine that *did not* prevent people from actually contracting the virus; nor did it stop people from spreading it. And non-partisan doctors & scientists who tried to point out all of Fauci's lies were routinely censored on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
How deep does this hatred go? Some people chose to needlessly die in a pandemic rather than accept an immunization because the morons they listened to turned it into a political matter.
None of the fear-mongering about COVID spread mostly by the Dems who are beholden to Big Pharma donations came to pass, including the many Dem authors on Medium who regularly insisted that it if we didn't immunize ourselves with those experimental "leaky" vaccines COVID would mutate into a super-virus that would wipe out humanity. Instead, it did what viruses usually do: it mutated into a less dangerous form that has now become a background matter like the flu thanks to herd immunity and viruses doing what they typically do.
"They are also the people who chose an incompetent old man-child instead of a highly competent younger woman of color."
Let us just be honest here, Michelle. Were you and other Dems supporting a old white man suffering from dementia up until his disastrous debate with Trump that caused the other Dems to turn on him and put a DEI-friendly darling in his place?
Hence, "competence" is not the main factor here, but rather how emotionally appealing they are due to a combination of their immutable attributes and party brand. The fact that you mention Harris's gender and race is *highly telling*, as it makes clear that "The Message!" was more important than any policies she may have had. And she had *no* working class policies. She ran solely on "messaging", "vibes", "joy" (i.e., emotional appeal), vapid celebrity endorsements by wealthy entertainment capitalists who live in a bubble (quite insulting to working class people), and the fact that she wasn't Trump.
And you say she was "highly competent"? Need I state her record as both a prosecutor in California and politician again? Need I remind you of her statement via an interview that if elected she would have done nothing different than the elderly white male dementia sufferer who was the Dem figurehead for the capitalist duopoly before her?
"But our most recent election proves we are even less able to make good decisions for ourselves now."
It shows that the vast majority of the working class are sick of the Democrats' constant slew of lies, broken promises, warmongering, and putting divisive "messaging"& emotional rhetoric over actual pro-working class policies. They did everything in their power to keep us divided and to keep us tethered to the capitalist class while doing nothing for us economically, and it came back to bite them.
We don't need another Carter-esque president. What we need to do is abandon the capitalist duopoly altogether. The Dems torpedoed their ship. Next, we need to torpedo the Republican ship and set sail in our own vessel. We must take matters into our own hands and stop hoping and praying that some establishment politician promoted by the capitalist duopoly -- either wing of the same predatory bird -- is going to "rescue" us from capitalism.
Only we can rescue ourselves. That is why I did not vote for Trump, but I sure as hell would not have voted for Harris and her alliance with the likes of Dick Cheney and Oprah Winfrey either.
Yes, I failed at that, VoR LOL! But as is often the case, I had a lot to say that I thought was important. I think its substance should be considered beyond simply its length.
As usual, as one of the Classical Lefties among your readership circle. I'll offer some insights here you will not get from Democrat loyalists, who allow that to compromise any dedication they may have to the Class War. I'll try to be succinct, worry not (wish me luck lol!) and I may turn this into an article.
I'll take it from the top, but it will have to be in 2 parts.
Part 1:
"Carter was a good man and a good president by any reasonable measure. The contrast between him and the man who is about to again dishonor the office of president of the United States could not be starker."
Yes, the virulent anti-Trump attitude that went a long way towards causing the Democrats to lose because they tried focusing more on that than building an actual pro-working class agenda -- and to divert us from the fact that they didn't have one. But that aside, Carter has been chastised -- and rightfully, IMO -- for heralding the present era of capitalism by moving the Democrats away from Keynesian economics and towards neoliberalism with his focus on pro-business policies like deregulation. That resulted in an economic slump that made Americans angry and caused them to vote for Reagan en masse -- sound familiar?
I should mention that Carter's administration was the first Democratic administration during the period of time when the "boom" that American enjoyed for about 35 years following the end of World War II was over since many European and Asian markets were now recovering from the widespread destruction of their infrastructure during the war. As a result, he paved the way for a Democratic Party that began seriously morphing Democrats from the FDR and Kennedy type into the Clinton/Obama/Biden type we know today -- a major change the Dem loyalists refuse to acknowledge yet.
"Well, unless they happen to be poor. In that case, screw them. They aren’t the people we’re talking about.
We are talking about the real Americans — the wealthy ones."
Total agreement! But... how did the Democrats of the past few decades help with that? Certainly not elitist wealthy individuals like the Clintons or Obama, who gleefully share country club golf games and luxurious galas with the Bush, Cheney, and Trump families.
In fact, the Dems used to *love* the Orange Guy until he became an inconvenience to the Dems winning the White House. And didn't they embrace Bush in recent years? And wasn't one of the many fatal mistakes Harris made in her non-democratic campaign to start openly working with the Cheney family? What does that tell you when you put the emotions and party loyalty aside and look at the things that the Democrats have *actually* done?
"Our best days are behind us
We elected a madman who has not even started his second term, but is already spreading chaos."
Our best days were behind us once the wealthy capitalist donors captured the Democrats, and many argue this started during the economic changes I mentioned above with the Carter administration (I would argue it started even sooner, with LBJ, but that's a whole other topic).
As for being a madman, I won't argue that Trump is totally sane. But I will argue he is no less mad than politicians from the other wing of the capitalist duopoly who are funding a genocide and pushing us into nuclear brinkmanship with Russia and China. And speaking of madmen, no one in the world today is worse than Netanyahu, and Biden/Harris supported him wholeheartedly despite performative criticism that never got in the way of sending him billions of dollars to carry out a brutal slaughter of Palestinians followed by an invasion of Lebanon that they were not spending on the working class here.
But if you're a Democrat loyalist, you have to ignore all of that. The vast majority of working class Americans did not, however. Hence, the election result.
"Half of the U.S. hates the other half
Partly, this is because people have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they are angry at anybody who tries to tell them the truth. They seek out “news” sources that are just propaganda mills, and they love them."
I think one of the main reasons half of America hates the other half is because of the very divisive identity politics spread largely by the Democrats. If you constantly insult young white men or heterosexuals etc, you are invariably going to drive them away. And also when Obama seriously thought he could salvage things for Harris with the black community by openly condescending and insulting black men, thinking he could guilt them into voting for a corporate shill they had *very good reason to hate* for what she did to the black community in California when she was a ruthless prosecutor defending the corrupt privatized prison labor system.
As for their refusal to believe it when someone tries to tell them the truth, we will have to agree to disagree on what that truth us. As for "news" sources that are just propaganda mills, I will agree with you there. But I believe you are referring solely to conservative outlets like Fox News rather than the notorious liars and Democrat propagandists who host MSNBC and CNN.
"I see a country in which half of us are either destitute or just above it. The middle class is tiny and the rich are oblivious to everyone else. They no longer are expected to pay their fair share of taxes."
Agreed. But let's no ignore the fact that one of the most remarkable and *telling* things about the 2024 election is that for the first time in recent memory the majority of people who have an annual income above 100K voted for the Democrats, and a great majority of working class people who bothered to vote at all voted for the Republicans. Hmmmm.... it seems the contention that the Democrats are the party of the working class has taken a beating for good reason. I am NOT arguing that the Republicans will do better... but it's clear the American people believe, based on four years of Trump vs. four years of Biden immediately afterwards that the former will do no worse.
Working class people are not "stupid." They are *desperate*, and the failure of the Dems to do anything for us and spend over a trillion on wars & corporate bail-outs rather than helping out the working class economically has caused them to seek alternatives.
"What if we had stopped meddling with (and enriching) the Middle East?
What if the Gulf War and 9-11 had never happened?"
General agreement, but let's address the donkey in the room.
The two major Middle Eastern wars that Bush/Cheney got us into were escalated into *seven* wars under the Obama administration. And look what Biden did after he got into office in terms of funding the war on Gaza, what he did with Lebanon and Yemen, and his antagonism of Iran at the behest of Netanyahu, the worst madman of them all in the modern world.
Let us further acknowledge all the insane Middle Eastern meddling Hillary Clinton presided over during her ill-fated years as Secretary of State, including her going on camera and joking about how a Middle Eastern head of state was sodomized to death by a spear when insurrectionists she supported got a hold of him.
And how Harris really helped her campaign (not!) by working with Dick and Liz Cheney, some of the worst of the Republican warmongers.
Great eulogy, thanks. I loved Carter, and voted for him. Visionary, peacemaker, renewable energy leader, & with one of the highest IQ's measured among Presidents.
Let's not forget that Carter's re-election in 1980 was stolen by the Reagan Campaign (w/ Bush Sr. & the war industry) who broke the law - secretly arranging for the Iranian hostages to remain captive until after the Election.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/reagan-iran/
Yes. Evil triumphed in that case, as it so often does.
I'll resist resorting to the word "Evil" to describe a conflict of policies (as opposed to reactions to domestic and\or international crises) since I've got no X-Ray vision into wherever humans store true motives and prioritize them and determining internally when preparing resolve to act.
For most of US with no access or voice in policy-making, much less national and international E-CON-o-mic policies, no amount of resolve is structured into our remote electoral substitute for true political rivalry. Hence we've been mostly ruled during my post WW II lifetime by our current RULING DUOPOLY that is more of a corporate cartel or monopoly than a policy rivalry of Two Political parties offering competing structures.
No, the Chicago School does not count as a competitive economic policy-setting or even policy-outcome analyzing body politic\economic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_of_economics
Although I'm less circumspect when it comes to the person and outsized influence on late 20th Century and up to current U.S. E-CON-o-mic (wish it were more comic than tragic) policies and policy outcomes of Milton Friedman and his bi-partisan proxy to rival Presidential administrations: namely Lawrence Summers.
Read up from all sides of political and E-CON spectrum and then talk amongst yourselves. Pipe up when you've got some coherence like these articles to share for stimulating a discourse and discussion that Wall Street will never deem suitable for U.S. broadcast media, either Commercial nor so-called Public Broadcasting as both have long been corporate-captured.
https://truthout.org/articles/neoliberal-policies-associated-with-reaganomics-actually-started-with-carter/
https://www.chronicle.com/article/larry-summers-and-the-subversion-of-economics/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Friedman (Rose Director Friedman)
https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/
I haven't found it especially useful to bog down in our Duopolistic pasttime of assigning blame to one of the Ruling Binaries of our political structures. Call a part of the problem or whole shebang Left or Right Wing; or Democrat\Republican; or Liberal\Conservative. There is a point of diminishing terms and evaporating clarity not to mention transparence in naming academic disciplines, fields, areas of study not to mention movements within them and within the bodies politic and administrative that they report to and about.
The ruling consensus in most policy-making directly or indirectly tied to E-CON policies will have embedded since the end of WW II (and not the New Deal of Great Depression origins with its roots in Wall Street prevailing policy and mostly privatized errors) a host of residue from what is termed Neo-Liberal E-CONomic policies that were variously and mostly a Duopoly consensus that is invalidated by historical review of what was or would have been better for the Public Interest (rather than Private Interests where wealth has concentrated in quantifiable fact by winning their choice of Private Policy gaining pursuits at the expense of the Public Interest outcomes once privileged in U.S. policymaking) over roughly the past 70 years.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2022/may/neoliberal-policies--institutions-have-prompted-preference-for-g.html
I place so much value in this May 11, 2022 NYU Psychology discipline study that I turn for orientation and conceptual coordinates to this Economic (Macro v. Micro in globalized markets) lecture by Yanis Varoufakis, former Finance Minister of Greece who returned to academics. Here speaking and conducting Q&A in English albeit presented to his class at Tuebingen University in Germany. As well as international visiting faculty for the Diem25 international economic student symposium with various conferences:
Yanis Varoufakis: From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism | DiEM25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aK4OztueuE
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"A lecture organised by University of Tübingen economics students, delivered on Monday February 3, 2020, on the theme "From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism".
"Mainstream economic models lack some important features of really-existing capitalism, including money, time and space. Its models offer ideological cover for a capitalist system that has usurped competitive, free markets."
"The result? Unbearable inequality, climate catastrophe and permanent stagnation. A fork on the road is approaching: It will take us either into deeper stagnation and environmental degradation or to a society with markets but no capitalism. Prof. Yanis Varoufakis talks about the future of our economy and the current state of economics with special regard to pluralism in economics."
Source: https://timms.uni-tuebingen.de/tp/UT_...
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Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
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I agree with what you've said. Nonetheless Carter had a relatively positive net effect. Despite widespread Utopian ambitions (I have mine too), we in the US are nonetheless stuck with a dysfunctional, dark-money infected, sham of a democracy (ie, duopoly) - and at this point, despite corruption on both sides, there is (& by now long has been) a 'lesser of evils' in the Democratic Party.
Here's an alt. definition of "evil": net effect destructive to social & ecological health/ resilience, despite motives.
I want to refer you to this excerpt re/ President Carter from 'Time' magazine article just published entitled, "Jimmy Carter Was More Successful Than He Got Credit For": ...
"In today’s world of perpetual military intervention, it’s striking that not a single bomb was dropped or shot fired in combat by American forces on Carter’s watch, and his leadership helped prevent at least five wars—in Panama, Israel, and Iran when he was president, and in Haiti and North Korea after he left office. The Camp David Accords he engineered proved to be the most successful treaty since the end of World War II."
That might explain our ruling elite ESTABLISHMENT (you're not in that club without heading some oligarchic "enterprise") turning so sharply against Carter after he showed his mettle as a national scene novice in his first term and even though he proved himself thoroughly indoctrinated and committed to the Neo-Liberal E-CON (old school Isolationist Conservatives are the most hearty of such 'Conswervatives') and latent militaristic if pluralistic hawks whose real object of worship is in fact and policy our pagan nation's supreme Idol, Daddy Warbucks and unending welfare for Daddy Warbucks corporate kinfolk.
This is a policy pickle with no easy resolution to our ever steepening slide into ever greater chasms of Inequality which in all historic cases I'm aware of has led to the sorts of anti-social instability that makes satiating Daddy Warbucks necessary to any kind of maintenance of social order we Amurkkkins mostly take for granted thanks to our geographic borders on large bodies of water.
Time and Travel expedience have changed that safety from wars on our borders and see the steroid terro-graphic if not TERROR GRAPHIC with its non-Anglo demographic bulges moving north and learning our lingo quite well that the Central and Latin American population bomb = MASS MIGRATION CRISIS & REPLACEMENT THEORY has\have wrought.
Strangely enough the question of what language we pray in as a nation may be an underlying and under-appreciated factor in resolving our MANUFACTURED CONSENT to our Duopolisitc consensus on basing our bread & butter & condos to spare and speculate on E-CON for the privileged and ruthless few among the corporate welfare-dependent captured elite across the porous borders of our SYSTEM OF CHECKS & BALANCES. May a God byond Competitive Dynamics Save our Soul.
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
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Totally agree. I can't even imagine how much better off we would be in the US at this point if we had been 'evolved' enough to see the wisdom of Jimmy Carter's vision for the country. I WAS old enough to vote for him (and did), but felt like a bit of a 'lone wolf' at the time, for not being excited about Ronald Reagan. I never was, and still feel that he did so much damage as President that people still don't realize, or want to acknowledge. Very good points here, about the actual 'devolvement' of US voters over the last few years. I hope we can survive the next four years, but who knows.
To my shame, I voted for Reagan in my first presidential election. I just didn't know better.
I am not at all sure we're going to survive four years of the incoming guy. The only thing that MIGHT save us is all his followers are stupid and are currently fighting each other. Chaos is the best we can hope for.
We could have lived in a much better world -- if we stopped voting for idiots.
I agree we face daunting challenges, largely imposed on us by our own ignorant, lazy, irresponsible selves. But I refuse to accept that we are doomed. You may be correct, but I refuse still to give up or give in.
On the other hand, keep telling it how you see it. We need many sound perspectives to help us find our way. The Idea of America is too good to give up without a fight.
Life has beaten me into pessimism.
I am by no means unsympathetic. I get it. Been there, managed to escape. It took more than hard work. Luck always plays a role.
Indeed it does, and I'm ready for more of that!
I hope you do. I’m sure you deserve it.
There's always plenty of luck. Which kind can take several lifetimes to determine and name correctly....
Tio Mitchito
I think about what I would look for in my elected officials a great deal. What are the qualities I feel I should absolutely demand in a leader in a position of public trust? Integrity, competence, compassion, and yes I’d better be able to trust them to mind my Sunday school classroom, Jimmy Carter was the one, the person who met those criterion.
I’m not sure I’d trust many people in D.C. currently to set a good example and demonstrate good values definitely not to mind my Sunday school classroom. If you can’t be trusted to look out for the most vulnerable in your charge should you be leading anyone…
Yes I set a high bar the moment calls for nothing less. May Jimmy Carter rest in the light.
Yes, yes, yes. To sum up Jimmy Carter in a word, he was a Christian. In the very best sense of that word. And I speak as one not of the faith.
tl;dr
Faith aside, read up on President Jimmy Carter's track record doing something he never used in his political life for leverage. However, others have in some cases noted political exaggeration of Carter's academic and employment cv as it pertains to his Naval career. He was a submariner and certified to captain U.S. NON NUCLEAR Submarines. Yet, he was involved in key support services to U.S. Naval personnel assigned to assist the Canadian Navy in a nuclear cleanup operation as is clearly and succinctly described in Wikipedia with lengthy background mainstream reporting and institutional references cited:
https://atomicinsights.com/jimmy-carter-never-served-nuclear-submarine/
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Fuel Recycling
Jimmy Carter never served on a nuclear submarine. Was not a nuclear engineer
By
Rod Adams
January 13, 2017
Initial version posted Jan 27, 2006
"A recent conversation about the dangers of false claims of expertise stimulated me to revise and republish a nearly 11 year-old post."
"It provides documented proof that Jimmy Carter was not a “nuclear engineer” and never served on a nuclear submarine. He left the Navy in October 1953, about 15 months before Jan 17, 1955, the day the the world’s first nuclear submarine went to sea."
"The below is a letter to a Wall Street Journal writer in response to an article about used nuclear fuel recycling.
"Dear Mr. Fialka (Wall Street Journal):
"I enjoyed your story about new efforts to recycle nuclear fuel. It is definitely the right thing to do; our current once-through cycle only extracts about 3-5% of the potential energy of the initial fuel loads."
"One myth correction, however. President Carter was a submarine officer, but he was not a nuclear engineer."
"He graduated from the US Naval Academy in June 1946 (he entered in 1943 with the class of 1947, but his class was in a war-driven accelerated 3 year program) with an undesignated bachelor of science degree. Even if the Naval Academy had offered a majors program for his class, it is unlikely that it would have included Nuclear Engineering as a option – after all, the Manhattan Project was a dark secret for most of his time at Annapolis."
"After graduation, Jimmy Carter served as a surface warfare officer for two years and then volunteered for the submarine force. He served in a variety of billets, including engineer officer of diesel submarines and qualified to command submarines."
"In November 1952, he began a three month temporary duty assignment at the Naval Reactor branch. He started nuclear power school (a six month course of study that leads to operator training) in March, 1953. In July 1953, his father passed away and he resigned his commission to run the family peanut farm. He was discharged from active duty on 9 October, 1953. According to an old friend of mine who served as Rickover’s personnel officer at Naval Reactors, LT Carter did not complete nuclear power school because of the need to take care of business at home."
"The prototype for the USS Nautilus was completed in Idaho in May 1953, so LT Carter might have had some opportunity to see it in action before leaving the Navy. However, the USS Nautilus did not go to sea until January 17, 1955, so there is no possibility that he ever qualified to stand watch on a nuclear powered submarine."
"He never experienced the incredible gift of being able to operate a power plant that was so clean that it could run inside a sealed submarine, so reliable that it could power that submarine even deep under the Arctic ice, and so energy dense that the submarine could operate for years without new fuel."
"When I think about the 1976 campaign and the importance of the energy issue at that time, I cannot help but wonder why Jimmy Carter’s promoters made such a big deal about his nuclear expertise. My wonder turns to cynicism when I think about the policies that his administration imposed and the damage that they did to the growth of the industry just at a time when we most needed a vibrant new energy industry player."
"Best regards,
Rod Adams
Editor, Atomic Insights
www.atomicinsights.com"
Then there is the wider context afforded by Wikipedia's editing of President Carter's page as of today 12-30-24 and updating it with the news of his death:
"Death
Main article: Death and state funeral of Jimmy Carter
Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100. His son, James E. Carter III, announced his death that afternoon.[519][520][521] This followed his February 2023 decision to enter hospice care.[522]
"Shortly after the announcement, President Joe Biden released a statement honoring Carter's legacy, calling him a "man of principle, faith, and humility." The Biden administration also announced plans to hold an official state funeral.[523]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter
"Naval career"
"From 1946 to 1953, the Carters lived in Virginia, Hawaii, Connecticut, New York, and California, during his deployments in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.[26] In 1948, he began officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret.[27] Carter was promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 1949, and his service aboard Pomfret included a simulated war patrol to the western Pacific and Chinese coast from January to March of that year.[28] In 1951, Carter was assigned to the diesel/electric USS K-1 (SSK-1), qualified for command, and served in several positions, to include executive officer.[29]"
"In 1952, Carter began an association with the Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program, led by then-Captain Hyman G. Rickover.[30] Rickover had high standards and demands for his men and machines, and Carter later said that, next to his parents, Rickover had the greatest influence on his life.[31] Carter was sent to the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C., for three-month temporary duty, while Rosalynn moved with their children to Schenectady, New York.[32]"
"On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, resulting in millions of liters of radioactive water flooding the reactor building's basement. This left the reactor's core ruined.[33] Carter was ordered to Chalk River to lead a U.S. maintenance crew that joined other American and Canadian service personnel to assist in the shutdown of the reactor.[34]"
"The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for 90 seconds at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor. When Carter was lowered in, his job was simply to turn a single screw.[35] During and after his presidency, Carter said that his experience at Chalk River had shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to cease the development of a neutron bomb.[36]"
"In March 1953, Carter began a six-month course in nuclear power plant operation at Union College in Schenectady.[26] His intent was to eventually work aboard USS Seawolf, which was intended to be the second U.S. nuclear submarine.[37] His plans changed when his father died of pancreatic cancer in July, two months before construction of Seawolf began, and Carter obtained a release from active duty so he could take over the family peanut business.[38][39]"
"Deciding to leave Schenectady proved difficult, as Rosalynn had grown comfortable with their life there.[40][41] She later said that returning to small-town life in Plains seemed "a monumental step backward."[42] Carter left active duty on October 9, 1953.[43][44] He served in the inactive Navy Reserve until 1961 and left the service with the rank of lieutenant.[45] Carter's awards include the American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, China Service Medal, and National Defense Service Medal.[46] As a submarine officer, he also earned the "dolphin" badge.[47]"
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, Psalm-Song Chasers
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Hopefully some time in the future we will be ready for a president who treats us as adults, but unfortunately we haven't hit that bottom yet. I loved Jimmy Carter as president and his many years of service to the country after he left the White House. Rest in Peace, Mr. President!
I agree. I'd prefer someone mature but not ancient. Too much to ask?
Rest in peace. I was old enough to vote for Jimmy Carter, (barely) but I think I was deployed overseas and absentee ballots were not much of a thing back then. I voted for Reagan only because I was young, dumb and stupid. Also brainwashed like so many others.
Jimmy Carter was the last great president the U.S. had, and we squandered that, like so much else in the last fifty years. Now, it's all going to come back and bite us hard.
The "sacrifices" thing was a big mistake- Jimmy could have had another term if he'd managed to keep his country preacher morality more in check.
Although part of the issue was the evangelicals rejected an actual Christian in favor of Reagan. More recently, they turned out for Trump. I’m starting to think they do not give a shit about morality at all!
/s — there’s no lack of clarity there, unfortunately.
I was just starting university in the fall of 1976. Jimmy Carter to me seemed like your country's salvation after the Nixon and post-Nixon era. As you said the contrast between Carter and the Trumpet (P-elect #47) could not be starker. My thoughts and prayers are with the sane Americans who remain in your country. I hope they all stand up and make any change they can that will benefit their fellow citizens.
I guess he became a cautionary tale for politicians: never dare to tell people what they don't want to hear! Our current crop in Canada certainly learned that lesson well.
Voted for him, twice, and respected what he stood for, what he tried to accomplish as president and what he worked on aster he left public office. He was a brilliant, quiet, devoted man who loved us all. Rest in Peace, but if you can see your way clear to offer those of us who are open to it us guidance, please do!
Jimmy Carter Dies at 100
••••
An Open Letter to President Jimmy Carter
Dear President Carter,
In a time when the words “Christian values” are often wielded as weapons by those who seem unfamiliar with their essence, your life remains a testament to what they truly mean: love, humility, service, and unyielding moral courage.
As the 39th President of the United States, you brought a quiet dignity to the Oval Office, pursuing peace where others stoked conflict. Your leadership in brokering the Camp David Accords showed the world that diplomacy, grounded in faith and principle, could triumph over cynicism and division. And while history has recognized your presidency more kindly with each passing year, it is your post-presidency that stands as the gold standard of what an ex-president can and should be.
From eradicating diseases to building homes for those in need, your work with the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity has been an unparalleled legacy of compassion. You didn’t retreat to a gilded life of grift and spectacle but chose instead to labor humbly, embodying your spiritual call to serve “the least of these.”
In an era defined by loud self-aggrandizement and moral bankruptcy—where some falsely claim your faith while trampling its core tenets—you are proof that decency is not weakness and that true greatness lies in the quiet, steadfast work of lifting others up.
Thank you, President Carter, for showing us what goodness looks like.
Rest in Peace.
Sincerely, A Grateful Admirer
https://substack.com/@patricemersault?utm_source=user-menu
I love your candid writing here. Yep - it does in fact seem we are all doomed! 😬
Late-stage capitalism and ecological collapse is evident all around us.
I’m so sorry that all those ‘morons’ voted for that narcissistic imbecile again. We will obviously feel the effects here in Australia too, but not as acutely, and not as quickly. What a shit show 🤯
Part 2:
"Carter was ahead of his time in many ways, but he made one big mistake: He thought you could treat Americans like intelligent people capable of looking at the facts and making good decisions."
Carter was very much a "sign of the times" with his deregulation policies and helping to oversee the petrodollar mess that Nixon had started, much as Obama continued the bank bailouts that Bush started. If he was truly a "visionary" and "ahead of his time" as you and some of your commentators in this thread mentioned, he would have met the fate of Kennedy.
As I noted before, the American people are not stupid -- they are brainwashed by privately owned news outlets that actually serve capitalist class propaganda and they are *desperate.* And the Dems have done nothing since the 1970s to change this situation.
"How deep does this hatred go? Some people chose to needlessly die in a pandemic rather than accept an immunization because the morons they listened to turned it into a political matter."
The medical panic of the COVID situation was a bunch of propaganda to help ultra-rich pharma companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson profit at our expense by pushing an experimental vaccine that *did not* prevent people from actually contracting the virus; nor did it stop people from spreading it. And non-partisan doctors & scientists who tried to point out all of Fauci's lies were routinely censored on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Jimmy Dore explains that all here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJiUgsCw8tM
How deep does this hatred go? Some people chose to needlessly die in a pandemic rather than accept an immunization because the morons they listened to turned it into a political matter.
None of the fear-mongering about COVID spread mostly by the Dems who are beholden to Big Pharma donations came to pass, including the many Dem authors on Medium who regularly insisted that it if we didn't immunize ourselves with those experimental "leaky" vaccines COVID would mutate into a super-virus that would wipe out humanity. Instead, it did what viruses usually do: it mutated into a less dangerous form that has now become a background matter like the flu thanks to herd immunity and viruses doing what they typically do.
"They are also the people who chose an incompetent old man-child instead of a highly competent younger woman of color."
Let us just be honest here, Michelle. Were you and other Dems supporting a old white man suffering from dementia up until his disastrous debate with Trump that caused the other Dems to turn on him and put a DEI-friendly darling in his place?
Hence, "competence" is not the main factor here, but rather how emotionally appealing they are due to a combination of their immutable attributes and party brand. The fact that you mention Harris's gender and race is *highly telling*, as it makes clear that "The Message!" was more important than any policies she may have had. And she had *no* working class policies. She ran solely on "messaging", "vibes", "joy" (i.e., emotional appeal), vapid celebrity endorsements by wealthy entertainment capitalists who live in a bubble (quite insulting to working class people), and the fact that she wasn't Trump.
And you say she was "highly competent"? Need I state her record as both a prosecutor in California and politician again? Need I remind you of her statement via an interview that if elected she would have done nothing different than the elderly white male dementia sufferer who was the Dem figurehead for the capitalist duopoly before her?
"But our most recent election proves we are even less able to make good decisions for ourselves now."
It shows that the vast majority of the working class are sick of the Democrats' constant slew of lies, broken promises, warmongering, and putting divisive "messaging"& emotional rhetoric over actual pro-working class policies. They did everything in their power to keep us divided and to keep us tethered to the capitalist class while doing nothing for us economically, and it came back to bite them.
We don't need another Carter-esque president. What we need to do is abandon the capitalist duopoly altogether. The Dems torpedoed their ship. Next, we need to torpedo the Republican ship and set sail in our own vessel. We must take matters into our own hands and stop hoping and praying that some establishment politician promoted by the capitalist duopoly -- either wing of the same predatory bird -- is going to "rescue" us from capitalism.
Only we can rescue ourselves. That is why I did not vote for Trump, but I sure as hell would not have voted for Harris and her alliance with the likes of Dick Cheney and Oprah Winfrey either.
Thank you for listening. And for writing!
Good job being succinct.
Yes, I failed at that, VoR LOL! But as is often the case, I had a lot to say that I thought was important. I think its substance should be considered beyond simply its length.
As usual, as one of the Classical Lefties among your readership circle. I'll offer some insights here you will not get from Democrat loyalists, who allow that to compromise any dedication they may have to the Class War. I'll try to be succinct, worry not (wish me luck lol!) and I may turn this into an article.
I'll take it from the top, but it will have to be in 2 parts.
Part 1:
"Carter was a good man and a good president by any reasonable measure. The contrast between him and the man who is about to again dishonor the office of president of the United States could not be starker."
Yes, the virulent anti-Trump attitude that went a long way towards causing the Democrats to lose because they tried focusing more on that than building an actual pro-working class agenda -- and to divert us from the fact that they didn't have one. But that aside, Carter has been chastised -- and rightfully, IMO -- for heralding the present era of capitalism by moving the Democrats away from Keynesian economics and towards neoliberalism with his focus on pro-business policies like deregulation. That resulted in an economic slump that made Americans angry and caused them to vote for Reagan en masse -- sound familiar?
I should mention that Carter's administration was the first Democratic administration during the period of time when the "boom" that American enjoyed for about 35 years following the end of World War II was over since many European and Asian markets were now recovering from the widespread destruction of their infrastructure during the war. As a result, he paved the way for a Democratic Party that began seriously morphing Democrats from the FDR and Kennedy type into the Clinton/Obama/Biden type we know today -- a major change the Dem loyalists refuse to acknowledge yet.
"Well, unless they happen to be poor. In that case, screw them. They aren’t the people we’re talking about.
We are talking about the real Americans — the wealthy ones."
Total agreement! But... how did the Democrats of the past few decades help with that? Certainly not elitist wealthy individuals like the Clintons or Obama, who gleefully share country club golf games and luxurious galas with the Bush, Cheney, and Trump families.
In fact, the Dems used to *love* the Orange Guy until he became an inconvenience to the Dems winning the White House. And didn't they embrace Bush in recent years? And wasn't one of the many fatal mistakes Harris made in her non-democratic campaign to start openly working with the Cheney family? What does that tell you when you put the emotions and party loyalty aside and look at the things that the Democrats have *actually* done?
"Our best days are behind us
We elected a madman who has not even started his second term, but is already spreading chaos."
Our best days were behind us once the wealthy capitalist donors captured the Democrats, and many argue this started during the economic changes I mentioned above with the Carter administration (I would argue it started even sooner, with LBJ, but that's a whole other topic).
As for being a madman, I won't argue that Trump is totally sane. But I will argue he is no less mad than politicians from the other wing of the capitalist duopoly who are funding a genocide and pushing us into nuclear brinkmanship with Russia and China. And speaking of madmen, no one in the world today is worse than Netanyahu, and Biden/Harris supported him wholeheartedly despite performative criticism that never got in the way of sending him billions of dollars to carry out a brutal slaughter of Palestinians followed by an invasion of Lebanon that they were not spending on the working class here.
But if you're a Democrat loyalist, you have to ignore all of that. The vast majority of working class Americans did not, however. Hence, the election result.
"Half of the U.S. hates the other half
Partly, this is because people have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they are angry at anybody who tries to tell them the truth. They seek out “news” sources that are just propaganda mills, and they love them."
I think one of the main reasons half of America hates the other half is because of the very divisive identity politics spread largely by the Democrats. If you constantly insult young white men or heterosexuals etc, you are invariably going to drive them away. And also when Obama seriously thought he could salvage things for Harris with the black community by openly condescending and insulting black men, thinking he could guilt them into voting for a corporate shill they had *very good reason to hate* for what she did to the black community in California when she was a ruthless prosecutor defending the corrupt privatized prison labor system.
As for their refusal to believe it when someone tries to tell them the truth, we will have to agree to disagree on what that truth us. As for "news" sources that are just propaganda mills, I will agree with you there. But I believe you are referring solely to conservative outlets like Fox News rather than the notorious liars and Democrat propagandists who host MSNBC and CNN.
"I see a country in which half of us are either destitute or just above it. The middle class is tiny and the rich are oblivious to everyone else. They no longer are expected to pay their fair share of taxes."
Agreed. But let's no ignore the fact that one of the most remarkable and *telling* things about the 2024 election is that for the first time in recent memory the majority of people who have an annual income above 100K voted for the Democrats, and a great majority of working class people who bothered to vote at all voted for the Republicans. Hmmmm.... it seems the contention that the Democrats are the party of the working class has taken a beating for good reason. I am NOT arguing that the Republicans will do better... but it's clear the American people believe, based on four years of Trump vs. four years of Biden immediately afterwards that the former will do no worse.
Working class people are not "stupid." They are *desperate*, and the failure of the Dems to do anything for us and spend over a trillion on wars & corporate bail-outs rather than helping out the working class economically has caused them to seek alternatives.
"What if we had stopped meddling with (and enriching) the Middle East?
What if the Gulf War and 9-11 had never happened?"
General agreement, but let's address the donkey in the room.
The two major Middle Eastern wars that Bush/Cheney got us into were escalated into *seven* wars under the Obama administration. And look what Biden did after he got into office in terms of funding the war on Gaza, what he did with Lebanon and Yemen, and his antagonism of Iran at the behest of Netanyahu, the worst madman of them all in the modern world.
Let us further acknowledge all the insane Middle Eastern meddling Hillary Clinton presided over during her ill-fated years as Secretary of State, including her going on camera and joking about how a Middle Eastern head of state was sodomized to death by a spear when insurrectionists she supported got a hold of him.
And how Harris really helped her campaign (not!) by working with Dick and Liz Cheney, some of the worst of the Republican warmongers.