Losing My Perspicacity December 30, 2024

Farewell to Jimmy Carter, the best of us; MAGA is eating itself over on Twitter; Aaron Rodgers had (another) really bad day; and The High Note.

Author

Julie DiCaro
December 30, 2024

Good Morning and Happy Monday! Welcome to the last two days of 2024 — and good riddance to bad rubbish. We’ve said that pretty much every year since 2016, and here we are again.

I hope everyone has had a joyous holiday season so far. Believe it or not, I’m still recovering from the bout with COVID, which seriously kicked my ass. I’m finally out of bed and up and around again, but still sniffling, coughing and dealing with lingering headaches. Who knew COVID could still pack such a punch? Speaking of which, if the person on Bluesky who keeps sending me doom posts about long COVID subscribes to this newsletter, I’m good. I don’t need the constant reminders about all the things long COVID can do to me. As I have zero control over it, I’m going to hope for the best and move on. I’ll let you know if long COVID enters the chat.

Today: Farewell to Jimmy Carter, the best of us; MAGA is eating itself over on Twitter; Aaron Rodgers had (another) really bad day; and The High Note.

Here we go.

RIP, President Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter passed away yesterday at the age of 100. He held on so long after the passing of his wife, Rosalind, because, he said, he wanted to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris. Carter was born on October 1, 1924, in Georgia, smack in the middle of the Jim Crow era. He lived long enough to vote for a Black and Indian woman for President of the United States.

The first presidential campaign I remember was Reagan running in 1980, and my parents were big fans. I remember adults blaming Carter for the gas crisis, inflation, the Iran Hostage crisis (more on that in a moment), and everything that was going wrong in the country at the time. Worse, the narrative I absorbed as a kid was that Carter was a whimp, a wuss, not strong or decisive enough for a country as big and tough as the United States. We did a straw poll for the election in first grade, and our entire class voted for Reagan, which I’m reasonably sure meant every set of parents of my classmates was voting for Reagan.

As I got older, though, I started to question the take on Carter that I’d grown up with. No matter the issue, Jimmy Carter always seemed to be the voice of gentle reason in the room. My AP History teacher, whom I worshipped and who is probably more responsible for my leftist politics than anyone else, adored Jimmy Carter and talked to us often about his accomplishments, both in and out of office. In particular, Carter considered his entire life after he left office his “second term,” and, in addition to his infamous work with Habitat For Humanity, he set out to do everything he could, as a private citizen, to set right the things that were wrong in the world.

As president, Carter tried to nudge American foreign policy away from its reflexive Cold War dualism toward an emphasis on human rights. He recognized that if the United States were to have any meaningful relationship with Latin America, we needed to attenuate our colonialism, so he pushed through the ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. He advanced peace in the Middle East farther than any of his predecessors (or successors), and he appointed more women and people of color to federal office than any previous president. Many environmentalists consider him the best president ever for their cause.

Carter was also heavily invested in universal healthcare long before others picked up the mantle in the 1990s:

Carter understood problems afflicting the world as spiritual challenges in part, noting that industrialized Western society had failed to adopt Christian principles of concern and caring. He believed that people of privilege, and especially people of faith, bore a special responsibility for those less fortunate, for those who suffer and are deprived. “That’s where Jesus spent all his ministry,” Carter said. Piety alone wasn’t sufficient; followers of Jesus must live out their convictions with acts of charity.

Early on, Carter identified access to healthcare, including mental healthcare (one of Rosalynn’s concerns), as a fundamental human right, noting at one point that 40,000 children die every day from preventable diseases. Using education and simple, low-cost methods, the Carter Center’s health initiatives addressed “neglected tropical diseases”: lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, schistosomiasis and malaria. Other programs targeted guinea worm and river blindness (onchocerciasis), extraordinary initiatives that have achieved near eradication of those diseases in regions where the Carter Center has been active.

It’s impossible to quantify the effect the Carter Center has had on the world; it’s one of the foremost drivers of good in the world. I love this line from the Times’ piece:

“James Laney, former president of Emory University, partner of the Carter Center, offered the best and most succinct characterization of the man from Plains. Carter, Laney remarked, was “the first president to use the White House as a stepping stone.”

What an incredible legacy. In a world of Donald Trumps, be a Jimmy Carter.

I mentioned the Iran Hostage Crisis earlier, and I wish the fact that the incoming Reagan administration almost certainly worked to delay the release of the hostages until after Election Day. This New Republic Piece was written by Jonathan Alter, Gary Sick, Kai Bird, and Stuart Eizenstat in 2023:

Forty-three years after the climactic events of 1980, the four of us—all steeped in the history of the Carter administration—believe that it’s time to move past conspiracy theories to hard historical conclusions about the so-called October Surprise. We think there’s now enough evidence to say definitively that Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager, the late William Casey, ran a multipronged covert operation to manipulate the 1980 presidential election—and that these acts of betrayal might have affected the outcome.

****

But Bill Casey was determined not to let that happen. In March, The New York Times confirmed a long-ignored story that in the summer of 1980, Casey persuaded former Texas Governor John Connally to embark on a secret mission to the Middle East, where Connally and his associate, Ben Barnes, asked various Arab leaders to urge the Iranians not to release the 52 hostages. This firsthand account was only the latest evidence that Casey, at a minimum, attempted to prolong their captivity in order to help his candidate win.

I don’t know about the rest of Gen X, but it feels like so much of what I was told as a child (and teen and young adult) has turned out to be wildly untrue.

I’m not a religious person, but I will spend the rest of my life asking myself WWJCD? What would Jimmy Carter Do? and endeavoring to be the kind of American he would have wanted me to be.

RIP, Mr. President.

Meanwhile, in MAGAland

I won’t lie: This entire thing has been hugely entertaining. I blame my dad for my sick, dark, sense of humor. From Laura Bassett’s newsletter, Nightcap:

Speaking of MAGA, a spectacular civil war has broken out in the past few days between Trump loyalists and the billionaire tech bros that bought the election for him, which has culminated in Elon Musk calling some Trump supporters “contemptible fools” and telling them to go “fuck [themselves] in the face” before Trump has even taken office. The fight is over immigration—specifically, whether Trump’s administration should welcome the kinds of highly-skilled immigrant tech workers that men like Elon Musk rely on for labor, or whether Trump’s “America First” hardline anti-immigration stance is supposed to exclude all immigrant workers so that Americans can take those jobs for themselves. MAGA pundit Laura Loomer appears to have started the fight by tearing into Musk over his support for immigrants (like himself) studying here in working in American tech jobs, and it escalated into a broader attack on Elon’s influence in MAGA world.

Let me be clear: I do not support the demonization of immigrants for America’s problems. I do, however, enjoy watching the MAGA crowd turn on each other and, particularly, on Elon Musk. And I love watching Trump try to decide where his bread is buttered. Surprise! He chose the guy with the billions.

Moreover, the MAGA blind squirrel morons actually found a nut, diving into the H-1B Visa data and realizing how many big corporations are using the program to depress wages.

I live in an area where many Southeast Asian immigrants live and work for tech companies. And while I’ll never complain about immigration, I do believe that H1Bs are being used to exploit cheap labor from overseas, which is grossly unfair to both immigrants and American workers.

The best part of this entire donnybrook, though, was Vivek Ramaswamy jumping in and insulting the majority of Americans.

I’m not sure Vivek ever watched Saved By The Bell. I don’t think Screech was all that smart.

You can imagine how well that went over with the crowd that drives Ford F-750s and won’t touch Bud Light because they sent some promotional cans to a trans woman.

God, it’s just been so damn entertaining.

Of course, January 20th is not far off, and soon enough we’ll be stuck with the real-life consequences of President Donald Trump. But for now, it feels good to watch his supporters eat each other’s faces before he’s even taken office, especially since they’re all turning on Musk.

We take our wins where we can get them.

Aaron Rodgers had really bad day

A-A-Ron also went 12-18 for 182 yards, was sacked for a safety, and was benched for Tyrod Taylor. The Jets lost to the Bills 40-14, and Taylor was responsible for both touchdowns. This all comes during the same week that the 2022 Rookie of the Year, WR Garrett Wilson, said he may ask for a trade if Rodgers remains the Jets’ QB. It was only a few weeks ago that actress Shailene Woodley, Rodgers’ ex-fiancée, said that dating the QB led to the “lowest low” of her life. No kidding, girl.

You all realize, of course, what this means. Vaccines are going to be SAVAGED this week on Pat McAfee’s show.

What a shame.

The High Note

The people of Northern Minnesota are celebrating the closure/sale of One Heartland, a summer camp that has hosted kids from all over the country for the last 30 years.

So why on earth would residents be celebrating the sale of the land the camp sits on?Are they cruel? Heartless? Do they hate kids and the outdoors?

Not at all. You see, One Heartland was a camp for children living with AIDS. In recent years, the number of children contracting AIDS has fallen to such a low level that the camp is no longer needed.

There is, however, one child buried on the camp’s property. Twelve-year-old Chris Edwards was laid to rest at the camp in 1999.

“It’s a heartbreaker,” said Chris’ brother, Dylan Edwards, who attended the camp with Chris for years.

“But the purpose of the camp was for sick kids,” he said, and if there are so few that a camp isn’t feasible, “it’s hard to feel bad about that.”

What a great reason to close down a summer camp.

Survive and advance today. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Reply

or to participate.