President Jimmy Carter

A large swath of voters in the US elected a man-child to the highest office in the land. Some voted in denial of his words and deeds; others, as far as I can tell, didn’t care. No matter. The President-elect takes office Monday morning, coinciding with a federal holiday honoring the late, great Martin Luther King, Jr. The juxtaposition is depressing.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

As this country mourns the death of former President Jimmy Carter, the President-elect has asked that the flag be raised for his special day, an act that is self-centered, disrespectful, undignified, and crude.

The Carter Center’s mission is to Wage Peace, Fight Disease, and Build Hope.

The new guy wants to set back women’s rights by a century, as he hatefully deports hard-working immigrants while freeing the criminals who attacked the Capital on his behalf. He’s cozying up to three of the world’s wealthiest billionaires while lining his pockets and lying for sport.

When I hear that we’ve “seen worse” or “we’ll get through this,” I cringe. Some of us will be fine, others won’t, and race and gender will unjustly determine many outcomes.

I struggle as I search for ways to be. It takes energy to be scared and angry all the time. Avoiding news coverage helps tame the beast, but it’s always waiting to pounce on the other side.

Joshua Rothman’s piece in the New Yorker suggests that:

“Our political culture tells us to see our opponents as uniformly awful—to reduce them to their vote—and yet ordinary human experience shows that most people are complex, decent, and just trying to get along. What should we prioritize: the stark binaries of politics or the reality of people as we know them? Hope doesn’t deny how grim things are; it doesn’t look away from the news, wish away the signs in the street, or sugarcoat the terrible plans of those coming to power. But it doesn’t deny the potential in people, either. “

In “The Spirit of Hope,” the philosopher Byung-Chul Han “distinguishes between hope and optimism. “Hopeful thinking is not optimistic thinking,” Han writes, with emphasis. Optimism “knows neither doubt nor despair. Its essence is sheer positivity.”

I hope positive thinking, acts of kindness, and truth will see me through.

President Jimmy Carter is celebrating his 98th birthday today.

He’s my idol.

I met President Carter and First Lady Rosalyn Carter in 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s an extraordinary man who’s done amazing things in this world. Here are just a few:

Jimmy Carter served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.

He negotiated the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, which provided for the return of the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. In an effort to end the Arab–Israeli conflict, he helped arrange the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt.

In his final months in office, Carter was able to push through important legislation that created Superfund to clean up abandoned toxic waste dumps and that set aside some 100 million acres (40 million hectares) of land in Alaska to protect it from development. Carter would also be remembered for his inclusion of women and minorities in his cabinet, including Andrew Young, the African American former mayor of Atlanta, who played a prominent though controversial role as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

He considers one of his greatest achievements, the near-eradication of Guinea Worm Disease. According to the Carter Center:

Incidences of Guinea worm disease have been reduced from an estimated 3.5 million in 1986 to 15 in 2021. The disease has been eliminated in 17 countries.
The Guinea worm eradication campaign has averted at least 80 million cases of this devastating disease among the world’s poorest and most neglected people.
The campaign has helped to establish village-based health delivery systems in thousands of communities that now have networks of health personnel and volunteers who provide health education and interventions to prevent other diseases. Source: The Carter Center

Happy birthday, President Carter!