When This Nation Failed Its President
and the comforting lie that has allowed people to feel good about it
James E. “Jimmy” Carter was the 39th president of the U.S., elected in 1976, precisely 200 years after the Declaration of Independence. He was a man of clear vision.
He saw that we were threatening to destroy the ecological environment on which all life depends. His primary concern was energy, and he was an ‘early adopter’ of the realization the global warming was a huge concern for the future of the ecological environment of the planet.
He saw the implications of ‘postcolonialism’ for the U.S and the world: all nations would have to be respected as such by all nations, as opposed to the old ‘might makes right’ paradigm that had governed relations among geopolitical entities for as long as civilization had existed. He saw clearly how the U.S. was included in that analysis.
Above all, he saw that the only hope for humanity to transcend the trials and travails of civilization (including those that have been byproducts of its benefits) is the recognition that all people are worthy of a fundamental level of respect and dignity. Included in that is a necessity for all people to have sufficiently all of the basic necessities of life, both material (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare) and immaterial (e.g., a democratic political process and its blessed concomitant, equal liberty under the rule of law).
In 1980 this nation rejected the hard truths being told by Jimmy Carter. It opted instead for the fantasies being pedaled by Ronald Reagan. (We even doubled down on that fateful choice when George W. Bush was elected president over Al Gore in the year 2000.)
We all know the trajectory this nation and the world have taken over the 40+ years that have ensued. To allow ourselves to feel better about that choice, we in the U.S. have persistently insisted that Jimmy Carter was a failure as a president.
It is true that Jimmy Carter was an unlucky president. His only real failure, though, was to fail to realize that ‘the people’ of the United Sates of America are a bunch of self-centered, intellectually lazy cowards. Some people have more of this or that among those traits, but almost every single one of us is too much of some combination of the three. People lack the gumption to make the necessary changes in their own lives, much less make the effort that is necessary to effect the changes that are needed on a larger scale, to make this world a better place for every person inhabiting it.
Jimmy Carter did not fail the people of U.S. as its 39th president. The people of the United States of America failed him.