Only fools believe in genetic determinism » « I reaffirm my support for the Freedom From Religion Foundation

Jimmy Carter has died

Gone at age 100, a life well lived. My very first presidential election was in 1976, and of course I voted for Carter — it was actually an election that gave me a misleading optimism in future presidential elections that was repeatedly dashed.

He wasn’t the greatest, most successful president, but he was a damned good human being. I’d vote for any decent person who’d run against these venal, corrupt jerks who have been running over the last few decades.

Only fools believe in genetic determinism » « I reaffirm my support for the Freedom From Religion Foundation

Comments

  2. Rich Woods says

    Here in the UK, I got cable in 1995. After a year or two of watching the mainstream films and documentaries I was getting tired of the repetition of most of it, but there were still these obscure channels where people just built stuff. One morning I woke up, made breakfast, and put the telly on to find a US channel where half a dozen volunteers were building a wooden-framed house. A big red pickup drove up to the site and this elderly man got out and put on his tool belt, then stepped up and started screwing nails into joists. It was a bit of a surprise to realise that this was Jimmy Carter (I am just old enough to remember his period as president). He struck me as a good man because of that, and because I know now that he didn’t just do that as a publicity opportunity, that’s how I’ll remember him.

  3. nomdeplume says

    One of the rare good men who were US President. The only other postwar “Good man Presidents” I can think of are Eisenhower and Ford, and of these three Carter was by far the best.

  4. Hemidactylus says

    I think I’m around 10-12 years younger than you. I was a wee lad in ‘76 and Carter was president when I was becoming more aware of the world. My dad used to take us camping in the Smokies in the late 70s and I have memories of visiting Plains either on the way up or back home.

    Of course I liked him as an uncritical kid. Sadly I recall the hostage crisis in Iran, which was an echo of the coup under Ike several administrations before. And one of the first uses of Delta Force ended in disaster. It was a bold try I guess.

    Weirdly I got interested in conspiracy theories in my early 20s which then converged on the Trilats, of which Carter was a member. His national security guy helped found it under a similar format as the Bilderbergs but it smartly included an Asian component with Japan. I much later became fonder of Zbig, who was a huge influence on Carter’s foreign policy. They did after all begin the tilt toward the mujahideen after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and Reagan would escalate that into Russia’s Vietnam debacle.

    Carter brought Revisionist Begin and Nasserite Sadat together to thaw relations between Israel and Egypt, which is weird because one would have thought Israel and the Hashemites would have broke bread earlier than with Egypt. This came not too long after the Yom Kippur war. Didn’t Jordan sat that one out for the most part?

    I think Carter is better remembered for Habitat for Humanity and other post-POTUS stuff than his Trilat globalism. Even so the late Zbig was a far better person than the vile Kissinger so Carter wound up being far less bad than Nixon. He followed Watergate and Ford’s pardon of Nixon and the Vietnam darkness. I think there was some malaise speech that backfired on him, but I haven’t read on this in years. I did do a deep dive on Zbig though.

    Long live peanuts! And Billy Beer. RIP Jimmy Carter.

  6. lasius says

    He tried to eradicate an entire animal species.

    In the end, he didn’t manage to do it in his lifetime.

  7. Marissa van Eck says

    @3/nomdeplume

    Ford pardoned Nixon in 1973. If it weren’t for him, we’d never be in this hideous mess with a unitary Executive free from any consequences. That was the original “Presidential immunity” ruling; the SCOTUS ruling recently just codified what had been de facto for decades.

  8. bcw bcw says

    Carter was the first time I saw the press behaving like the mean-girl cliche that they hide under the veil of “but we’re journalists.” Petty, dishonest coverage because it was easier than trying to explain complex ideas and because their wealthy owners were already pitching for the Republicans.

  10. woozy says

    The story that was was holding on to vote was a very sweet and inspiring one. It just sickens me he had to die with a giant kick to the gut against everything that is decent and hope. What a fucking mess the next 20 to 30 to 40 years are going to be. I feel sad for all of us who will now have to die in despair. He deserved better.

  12. nomdeplume says

    @7 Sure, but the pardon is debatable. Nixon, as vile as he was, did far less bad stuff than Trump, and half of America believes Trump shouldn’t have been prosecuted for anything.

  13. says

    Carter brought Revisionist Begin and Nasserite Sadat together to thaw relations between Israel and Egypt, which is weird because one would have thought Israel and the Hashemites would have broke bread earlier than with Egypt.

    That’s most likely because: a) Israel were more willing to give the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt than to give the West Bank to Jordan; and b) perhaps Sadat was more willing to actually assume responsibility for the people in Sinai than the Hashemites were to assume responsibility for people (and terrorist actions) in the West Bank.

  15. says

    “This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problem we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.” — Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America, the White House, June 16, 1977

    Okay, that’s a bit of “long-termism” I can respect…

  18. StevoR says

    @ ^ Raging Bee : Great quote there thanks.

    Carter is before my time – first POTUS I remember was Reagun. Specifically his speech when the Challenger Space Shuttle blew up.

    Buit from all I’ve read and heard about him since he was was one of the best people ever to become President even if not the most successful.

    @3. nomdeplume :

    One of the rare good men who were US President. The only other postwar “Good man Presidents” I can think of are Eisenhower and Ford, and of these three Carter was by far the best.

    Obama? Bill Clinton? Okay, the former a LOT more than the latter and neither perfect (Humans of course) and neither as good a person as Carter was but still.

    Recency bias – but in a bad way? Dunno.

    @6. lasius : “He tried to eradicate an entire animal species. In the end, he didn’t manage to do it in his lifetime.”

    Huh? Who did? Carter? Which species? Baffled

  19. StevoR says

    @ ^ But from all I’ve read and heard about him since he was was one of the best people ever to become President even if not the most successful.

    Er for clarity Carter that is NOT Reagun!

  21. seversky says

    I wholeheartedly concur. He was a rarity for not leaving office having amassed millions of dollars more than he had when he entered. I understand he donated the Nobel Peace Prize money to his charity. Can you see Trump turning up to help build housing for the poor with his own hands or donating his profits while in office to some charity working for the homeless?

  22. Snarki, child of Loki says

    The list of “good ex-presidents” should include “what they DID as ex-president” to get on that list.

    Carter did lots of things (H.for.H, global election monitoring, diplomatic envoy stuff). What did Ford do? What did Eisenhower do?

    Oh, and just setting up a charity for other people to put money in isn’t that great an accomplishment.

  23. nomdeplume says

    @22 Good point. But I only meant “good human beings”. And to answer Steve – don’t think Clinton is a good human being. Obama I have oscillated in my view – borderline.

  24. Bekenstein Bound says

    nomdeplume@3:

    The only other postwar “Good man Presidents” I can think of are Eisenhower and Ford, and of these three Carter was by far the best.

    What? Ford was a Republican.

  26. Pierce R. Butler says

    I must beg to differ, particularly with Hemidactylus @ # 4’s

    I much later became fonder of Zbig, who was a huge influence on Carter’s foreign policy. They did after all begin the tilt toward the mujahideen after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and Reagan would escalate that into Russia’s Vietnam debacle.

    In point of historical fact, Zbigniev Brzezinski, as Carter’s National Security Advisor, sold Carter on the idea of “giving Russia their own Vietnam” by stirring up a Muslim rebellion in Afghanistan (then a quiet and officially “neutral” nation under an opportunistic set of Russian-aligned leaders who had set up a shaky government when the previous dynasty had imploded). Under Brzezinski’s orders, the CIA duly opened a flow of weapons and money to Pashtun Islamists, and, more consequentially, helped them recruit fighters by funding and coordinating a previously minor “pan-Islamic” movement.

    Responding to calls for help from their allies/puppets in Kabul, the Kremlin began sending troops across the Amu Darya, thereby antagonizing other groups within the loose multi-ethnic just-barely-a-nation and starting a familiar vicious cycle of resistance and repression. Meanwhile, Republican dirty tricks put Reagan in the White House, and his posse decided to fuel the Afghan fire and to claim the Brzezinski/Carter strategy as their own. In time, indeed, the Soviet Union did get its own Vietnam, hooray.

    Remember that “pan-Islamic” movement, put on bipartisan US $teroids? It worked! It even kept working after US aid dwindled to mere millions – in very large part because the Saudis, urged to chip in by their friends in Washington, kept pumping money to the most fanatical and ruthless imams and mullahs and madrasahs they could find, both via the royal treasury and loyal courtiers such as the Bin Laden family.

    That’s right, dot-connectors – the whole muhajideen terrorist movement moved from obscurity to the world stage because the international-relations-naive Jimmy Carter hired and listened to a hardcore Cold War hawk (with ambitions to become the Democratic Henry Kissinger and the liberator of Eastern Europe, plus a typical US elite ignorance of and disrespect for “3rd-world” societies). As the Afghan fire began to surge out of control – particularly the poppy-farming and heroin-pushing aspect, also following the Vietnam pattern – the Reaganistas stopped calling attention to their earlier boasts, the Democrats likewise, and of course US media succumbed yet again to its chronic amnesia when the schemes of the best & brightest go off the rails.

    We have no way to tell what would have happened if Carter & Company had patted “Zbig” on the head and sent him back to the Ivy League (and to abusing his family, according to his daughter Mika – yes, same Brzezinskis) – but I, for one, suspect I’d rather live in a timeline where World Jihad remained a fantasy of sullen and impoverished Quran-bangers. We might even have been better off with a second Gerald Ford term (puke!).

  27. says

    I very strongly agree with PZ’s sentiments about Jimmy Carter. I/we did not share his religious beliefs and he made some political decisions I disagreed with, but, we could not help respecting his societal ethical values when it comes to an effort of his like Habitat for Humanity. Over the years we have made significant contributions to Habitat to further their excellent work.
    I just want to add that in regard to the recent election, we needed an F.D.R. But, the magat hordes foisted a narcissistic, hateful, ignorant convicted felon on us.

  28. says

    Here’s another story I read that I find very significant (I anyone finds facts that contradict this, let me know). Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the white house. One of the first things that abominable raygun did was rip them out. WTF

  32. KG says

    Worse than his support for the Afghan mujahedin, Carter gave diplomatic support to the Khmer Rouge following the 1978 Vietnamese invasion that put an end to the Cambodian genocide. I don’t know how to balance that against his undoubted post-presidential good works – it probably made little if any practical difference.

  33. rietpluim says

    It is a little disheartening to think that being a reasonably decent human being is enough to make somebody one of the least bad presidents of the last few decades. One would say that being decent is a minimum requirement, not a decisive one.

  34. StevoR says

    @ ^ rietpluim : Currently it seems to be a disqualifying factor. Of course the “good news” is that Trump is fixing things so those lucky evangelicals and the rest of us won’t have to worry about voting in USA elections ever again. (Ppl think he was joking? he won’t do that? I don’t think so..)

    @ 23. nomdeplume : okay, Fair enough. The contrast with the incoming once outgoing orange turd is very stark indeed, so.. yeah. Plus Dubya George the Lesser. As usual , Americans have to have things the wrong way round, starting with George the Third and then getting the Second one last..

    @20. John Morales : Ah, Guinea Worm, thanks. Didn’t know about that till now.

  35. Bekenstein Bound says

    Eisenhower was a pre-Southern-Strategy Republican. The party changed for the worse with Nixon, just as it later would again with Trump.

  36. StevoR says

    Carter’s own words and truths spoken here :

    “The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.”

    “The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.”

    “A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”

    “We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war.”

    “I’d like to be remembered as someone who was a champion of peace and human rights.”

    Source : https://www.azquotes.com/author/2561-Jimmy_Carter

  37. StevoR says

    PBS newshour has agood article on carter’s fight against Guinea worm here :

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/after-his-presidency-jimmy-carter-made-eradicating-guinea-worm-disease-top-mission

    Nobel Prize-winning peacemaker Jimmy Carter spent nearly four decades waging war to eliminate an ancient parasite plaguing the world’s poorest people.

    Rarely fatal but searingly painful and debilitating, Guinea worm disease infects people who drink water tainted with larvae that grow inside the body into worms as much as 3-feet-long. The noodle-thin parasites then burrow their way out, breaking through the skin in burning blisters.

    … (Snip)…

    “It’d be the most exciting and gratifying accomplishment of my life,” Carter told The Associated Press in 2016. Even after entering home hospice care in February 2023, aides said Carter kept asking for Guinea worm updates.

    ..(snip)..

    Thanks to the Carters’ efforts, the worms that afflicted an estimated 3.5 million people in 20 African and Asian countries when the center launched its campaign in 1986 are on the brink of extinction. Only 14 human cases were reported across four African nations in 2023, according to The Carter Center.

    It also has articles on Carter’s Foreign Policy here :

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-we-know-about-jimmy-carters-foreign-policy-legacy

    Carter was a foreign policy neophyte, idealistic about efforts to achieve Middle East peace and driven by a Christian faith that informed his vocal but inconsistent focus on human rights. Yet, he was also a traditional Cold Warrior and pushed back on the Soviet Union’s influence. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a U.S. national security advisor and Sovietologist, was his foreign affairs mentor and closest White House confidant.

    Oh and to answer Hemidactylus (29th December 2024 at 5:42 pm) :

    Carter brought Revisionist Begin and Nasserite Sadat together to thaw relations between Israel and Egypt, which is weird because one would have thought Israel and the Hashemites would have broke bread earlier than with Egypt. This came not too long after the Yom Kippur war. Didn’t Jordan sat that one out for the most part?

    Well, kinda, Its complicated fromthe YomKippur war wikipage :

    As the Syrian position deteriorated, Jordan sent an expeditionary force into Syria. King Hussein, who had come under intense pressure to enter the war, told Israel of his intentions through U.S. intermediaries, in the hope that Israel would accept that this was not a casus belli justifying an attack on Jordan. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan declined to offer any such assurance, but said that Israel had no intention of opening another front.

    &

    he U.S. pressed King Hussein to keep Jordan out of the war.[331] Though King Hussein initially refrained from entering the conflict, on the night of 12–13 October Jordanian troops deployed to the Jordanian-Syrian frontier to buttress Syrian troops, and Jordanian forces joined Syrian and Iraqi assaults on Israeli positions on 16 and 19 October. Hussein sent a second brigade to the Golan front on 21 October.[332] According to historian Assaf David, declassified U.S. documents show that the Jordanian participation was only a token to preserve King Hussein’s status in the Arab world.[333] The documents reveal that Israel and Jordan had a tacit understanding that the Jordanian units would try to stay out of the fighting and Israel would try to not attack them

    Plus see article here :

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/account-of-king-husseins-1973-war-warning-still-deemed-too-harmful-to-release/

    So, yeah, complicated. Token violence but not real war .. kinda?

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