A Nation Mourns While Justice Falters
President Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, died on Dec. 29, 2024, at 100 years old and will be honored with a state funeral on Jan. 9. He was probably the most beloved and respected president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, especially for his work after leaving office.
On Jan. 6 Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the certification of the national vote that returned Donald Trump, probably the most widely despised, corrupt, and distrusted president since Richard Nixon, back into the Oval Office as president. Trump will then be sentenced at the end of the very same week for 34 felonies that he was convicted of for bribery in the 2016 election. Let us not forget that this past Monday, Jan. 6, was the fourth anniversary of the capital insurrection that Trump himself ignited and was charged with, but never convicted of because of the slow and inept judicial processes.
In America, there is swift justice for the poor and defenseless and something less than just for the wealthy and corrupt. There are still some 100 cases against the capital rioters who still haven’t been tried in court. And after the felonious president is sworn in, those cases may be dropped, and those previously convicted — pardoned. That will be one of the first miscarriages of justice of the new regime — probably not the last.
However, it is the irony of this moment in history that is stunning, perhaps baffling when you think about it until you stop and realize that this resembles past events.
President Carter, who had brokered a peace accord between Israel and Egypt, won the Nobel Peace Prize but was denied a second term after his defeat by Ronald Reagan. Even if history is not conclusive on whether Reagan’s campaign played dirty tricks with the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, Carter’s defeat ushered in an increasingly darker U.S. foreign policy of deposing leftist governments with illegal arms sales to Iran and the drug sales in South LA, as exposed by journalist Gary Webb.
After leaving office, President Carter didn’t go out to play golf. He committed himself to doing good deeds according to his Christian faith. By the time he came to San Pedro in 2007, Carter, who had become the face of Habitat for Humanity, had built a set of homes overlooking Harbor Boulevard. He had already built houses in South LA, Wilmington and elsewhere across the nation. I remember that moment well when he had dinner with then-Councilwoman Janice Hahn and her brother Mayor James Hahn at The Whale & Ale on 7th Street in San Pedro. It was captured on the front page of this paper at this time.
What we didn’t fully recognize then, but what seems prescient today is that IF the government had gotten behind the Habitat for Humanity model of building homes the current housing crisis might not be what it is today. Habitat houses are sold for what they cost to build. The actual dollar amount varies depending on the specific project. However, homeowners make only a $500 down payment and put “sweat equity’ into building their own homes. Homeowners’ payments consist of the mortgage loan amount (principal), real estate taxes, and homeowner’s insurance. And according to their website, they have helped some 13.4 million people build or repair their homes.
If you compare Carter’s post-presidency to every other president over the last 70 years there’s really no one who comes close to his charitable works. And when you compare his generous core Christian beliefs to the current set of white Christian Nationalists who want to put Bibles in every classroom and make praying mandatory, well there are just two different versions of Christ going on here. That in and of itself is just one further irony of our times.
What we now see with this recent election is the third time that true progress has been stopped cold by conservative monied interests that are more interested in profits over people, who will dedicate themselves once again to dismantling environmental protections, failing to enforce anti-trust laws and allowing billionaires to buy elections and access to the Oval Office. With this second term of the Orange felon, the corruption will just be more obvious but possibly more clandestine. And like the time before and time before, the conservative neo-libertarians will drive the country into yet another crisis, that some as yet unelected Democrats will have to dig us out of. Think Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and then Joe Biden.
The true irony of these recent events is that we’ve lived through the same kinds of betrayals of democracy for over half a century and clearly half of the voters can’t see because of the fake news on their social media feeds or is it Faux News? Or is it because the corporate-owned news media fails to explain the connection between past and present?
Just maybe the senior citizens in red states will wake up when the Republicans come after their Social Security and Medicare benefits. In the meantime, the Orange savior of the Christian Nationalists is going to invade Greenland, rename the Gulf of Mexico, and save us from the brown immigrants at our southern border — the ones who pick our crops and process your foods, the ones who mow the lawns at Trump’s golf courses.
Hey, but who cares about all the chaos? Let’s all just go golfing and pray for the best.
