BLOGS

James Carter, the 39th President of the United States, https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/james-carter/

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Climate Change, Democracy, Education, Existentialism, Nobel Peace Prize, Nuclear Power

James Earl Carter Jr. was the 39^th President of the United States. In 1980, I voted for the first time as an eighteen-year-old for his re-election. He lost to Reagan, the “Gipper,” who launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, blocks from the assassination of voting rights activists Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner by domestic terrorists in white robes,[1] and the first uttered promise by a political candidate to “make America great again,” without defining “when” greatness was, or how he would bring it about. It has recently been revealed (long suspected) that his operatives had a secret deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election was “won,” then miraculously release them after Reagan’s inauguration.[2] He was the first president to comment on the climate crisis and put solar panels on the White House roof. His successor, safely in the pockets of the fossil fuels industry, promptly took them off and forgot about the crisis.[3]

Carter was an Annapolis Naval Graduate, and a Nuclear Engineer (I did wince at his southern pronunciation: “new que lure”). He rappelled into a nuclear reactor after a meltdown and lived to a hundred to tell about it.[4] Jimmy Carter negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1978, two years before I voted for him, and the year I received my driver’s license (that I am scheduled to renew this summer). He is the reason that we ratified the Panama Canal treaties. He established full-diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and negotiated the SALT II Treaty with Russia (important in the Cold War/M.A.D. era). He is the reason we HAVE a Department of Education. You can see why I was proud to vote for him.

His post-presidency was astonishingly productive. He witnessed over 100 elections promoting democracy around the world. He and his wife Rosalyn built up to 1,000 homes through Habitat For Humanity. He won the 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.” In addition to all of that, he still managed to teach Sunday School at Maranatha Baptist Church in Georgia. Jimmy Carter, a one-term president, and the longest-lived ex-president, was the backlash to Watergate.[5]

The Nixon administration years brought us Watergate and the lack of trust in our institutions, which we currently still endure today. It started with his first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, accepting bags of money in the White House (as he had as Maryland’s governor),[6] Richard Nixon’s departure before impeachment and removal, and his pardon by his unelected Vice President, Gerald Ford, which gave a green light for future presidents to skirt the law.[7] He colluded with a foreign power to win an election before collusion was “cool.”[8]

If history is not propagandized, obfuscated, or “banned” beyond this moment, Jimmy Carter will go down as our only authentically Christian president. I say authentic versus “cultural,” now used to describe people who like the ritual, music, and customs around holidays (Christmas just concluded, unless you include Epiphany), but may be non-practicing, non-theist, apathetic, trans-theist, deist, pantheist, or atheist, like Richard Dawkins,[9] of “The God Delusion.” For Jimmy Carter, God was no delusion. He walked out his faith, while other politicians memorized scriptures to spout from podiums.

He was our first openly Evangelical Christian President, and it’s why politicos like Michelle Bachmann supported him initially. He ran afoul of the religious right when he applied federal law and the Bible against Bob Jones University for their anti-miscegenation (“interracial dating” and generally not wanting African Americans as students – old school terminology).[10] The right pivoted to a B-Movie actor who could “act” presidential but showed zero interest in being of intellectual heft to BE presidential. Hence, a former reality show host isn’t much of a departure from the Reagan model.

They’ve never been about that “Jesus’ life.” Jimmy Carter always was.

Godspeed Jimmy, to Rosalyn’s arms.

[1] Aug. 3, 1980: Reagan Gives “State’s Rights” Speech at Neshoba County Fair, Zinn Education Project, https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/reagan-speech-at-neshoba/

[2] Expert analyzes new account of GOP deal that used Iran hostage crisis for gain, PBS News Weekend, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/expert-analyzes-new-account-of-gop-deal-that-used-iran-hostage-crisis-for-gain

[3] Where Did the Carter White House's Solar Panels Go? David Biello, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/

[4] How Jimmy Carter Saved a Canadian Nuclear Reactor After a Meltdown, Blake Stilwell, Military.com, https://www.military.com/history/how-jimmy-carter-saved-canadian-nuclear-reactor-after-meltdown.html

[5] James Carter, 39^th President of the United States, https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/james-carter/

[6] Spiro Agnew and “Bagman,” https://www.southplattesentinel.com/2019/02/26/spiro-agnew-and-bagman/

[7] Watergate Scandal, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Watergate-Scandal

[8] When a Candidate Conspired With a Foreign Power to Win An Election, John A. Farrell, Politico, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/

[9] Richard Dawkins, a “Cultural Christian,” John Stonestreet, Breaking Point, https://www.breakpoint.org/richard-dawkins-a-cultural-christian/

[10] The Real Origins of the Religious Right, Randall Balmer, Politico, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

Image source: Wikipedia/Pine_Tree_Flag

Since its creation during the American Revolution, the flag has carried a message of defiance: The phrase “appeal to heaven” comes from the 17th-century philosopher John Locke, who wrote of a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule.

Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home, Jodi Kantor, Aric Toler and Julie Tate, New York Times

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Civilization, Democracy, Existentialism, Fascism

So what is the Comstock Act? Many of us have heard of it, if only vaguely. We may also have heard the term “Comstockery,” defined as the “strict censorship of materials considered obscene” and “censorious opposition to alleged immorality,” and know that it was coined by playwright George Bernard Shaw.

The occasion was the removal of Shaw’s Man and Superman from the shelves of the New York Public Library in 1905. Taking umbrage and spotting an opportunity, Shaw fired back, announcing his intention to bring “Mrs. Warren’s Profession”—a play that had been banned in London for its frank discussion of prostitution—to New York, telling the city’s papers, “Comstockery is the world’s standing joke at the expense of the United States. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all.”

Anthony Comstock, by then America’s leading moralist, hadn’t heard of Shaw until the playwright’s words were published in the papers. He did a little quick brushing up and fired back, calling Shaw an “Irish smut peddler” and alerting the New York police to the dangerous content of Shaw’s play. He also wrote a huffy letter to Shaw’s producer Arnold Daly, calling “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” “filthy” and quoting, with an ominous tone of warning, recent court decisions in obscenity cases. Daly, a savvy publicity man, did not let the opportunity go by. He sent Comstock’s letter to all the papers, along with an exquisitely civil response inviting Comstock to come to a rehearsal. 

The result? Ticket sales went through the roof, and the play was sold out weeks before the curtain went up. The police were called forth on opening night—not to raid the play, but to dispel the overflow mob in the streets clamoring to get in. Score one for GBS.

A Nationwide Abortion Ban Could Really Happen. You Can Thank Anthony Comstock’s Suitcase Full of Dildos. Eleanor Clooney, Mother Jones

George Bernard Shaw, in The Guardian article from 1997, is lauded as one of the "founding fathers of British socialism," which also meant at the time that he was an avowed eugenicist. (The title of the play was a dead giveaway.) The author of "The Handmaid's Tale," Margaret Atwood, has said in interviews that she's not keen on the term "progressive," since it was born in the era of trying to breed "better humans" and sterilize underserving others.

However, Comstock managed to model for conservatives yet born the extremism that we are now witness to in the 21st Century. He's noted in her research for "setting up stings" and physically fighting against those he SET UP in the sting because only he was the "righteous one." He was also known for pouring out his ration of whiskey as pious as any of the Pharisees, so he wasn't particularly the "life of the party" as the Continental Army fought the War of Independence for "religious freedom" and to skip out on the taxes the colonists owed King George of England.

I do agree with Clooney's article on one thing: this puritanism is inherent in human culture. It's been with us since, metaphorically, Eden.

I do appreciate from her that we have had, and probably always will have puritanism: "behavior or beliefs that are based on strict moral or religious principles, especially the principle that people should avoid physical pleasures." Collins Dictionary In that respect, Osama Bin Laden was a Muslim puritan, influenced still by the author Sayyid Qutb (1906—1966). "As an Islamist, he held that all aspects of society should be conducted according to the Shari’a, that is, laws of God as derived from the Qur’an and the practice (sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad. Probably his best known and most distinctive doctrine is his interpretation of jahiliyya (pre-Islamic ignorance) as characterizing all of the societies of his time, including the Muslim ones." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Sayyid Qutb

*****

The Louisiana House approved a bill Tuesday that would add two medications commonly used to induce abortions to the state’s list of controlled dangerous substances, making possession of the drugs without valid prescriptions a crime punishable by fines, jail time or both.

The measure, which has drawn support from anti-abortion groups and alarm from medical professionals and reproductive rights advocates, would add the medications mifepristone and misoprostol to Schedule IV of the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law. Abortion — both medical and surgical — is illegal in Louisiana, so it is already illegal to prescribe the medications to terminate pregnancies, except in very limited circumstances.

Medication abortions accounted for 63% of all abortions last year, according to the reproductive rights think tank the Guttmacher Institute.

The bill passed 64-29 in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. It will now go back to the Senate, and if it is approved, it would then be sent to the governor to sign into law.

Louisiana House passes bill to make abortion pills a controlled dangerous substance, Daniella Silva, Marissa Parra and Natalie Obregon, NBC News.

There is a desperation in these actions at the oxymoronically-named Supreme Court and local levels: "Demographics is destiny" is being fought tooth and nail.

I think it is instructive that white evangelicals became a numerical minority in 2017. In 2045 or sooner, white Americans are projected to be 49.7% of the population (Brookings) versus 50.3% of all ethnic groups combined (African Americans projected to remain around 13%). It's slight, it's petty, but it does explain a lot about them, even the repeal of Roe v Wade: Kate Cox in Dallas wasn't arrested for seeking an abortion outside of Texas. Brittany Watts in Ohio was criminally charged with a miscarriage in a toilet that could have been avoided had the state not banned the procedure and threatened doctors with arrest. Thankfully, the grand jury overturned it.

White woman: A mulligan. No arrest, but instructive that authorities will look the other way because she will "help" in the anxious arithmetic of white supremacy.
Black woman: A prison sentence (if they could), and a toilet for her fetus.

We may never see a national abortion ban, but that may be unnecessary if the spirit of Anthony Comstock is invoked in these draconian measures NATIONWIDE.

The phrase “appeal to heaven” comes from the 17th-century philosopher John Locke, who wrote of a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule.

It's the formula for the Republic of Gilead in "The Handmaid's Tale." Like the fictional "Sons of Jacob" before the hierarchy of the Commanders, they are willing to do violence to bring about their fever dreams of of a "united Reich" dictatorship.

Perhaps we humans are simply the ultimate expression of Comstockery, cognitive dissonance allowing us to gaslight collectively into thinking of ourselves as "blessed," the "Promised Land," "Manifest Destiny," Homo Sapiens ("wise men"): we have created works of artistry, delved into the mysteries of quantum mechanics, split the atom, created technologies at nanoscales and have the ability to launch objects into near orbit or, for interplanetary and interstellar journeys, and simultaneously created several means to end our existence, and all life on the planet. Instead, the more apt description, Homo Stultus ("stupid men"), is apropos because intelligence applied without thought of the consequences beyond a business quarter is active, abject stupidity! It does, however, resolve the Fermi Paradox: Intelligence might well be its own Entropy. The aliens that we seem to have not yet communicated with or made contact with might have killed themselves. This is hopefully instructive. Humanity needs to pass through its "great filter" to build starships.