Farewell to Jimmy Carter… and American democracy

The pious display of Jimmy Carter’s casket was a last-ditch attempt to give U.S. politics an image of unity, dignity, decency, and decorum.

The funeral pageantry and tributes to the late Jimmy Carter seemed a tad contrived, as if America’s political establishment was trying its best to project an image of national unity and reverential soul – at a time when the country is irrevocably, bitterly divided and its institutions are tarnished beyond redemption.

Carter died at the age of 100 on December 29 – the longest-lived U.S. president in history – and was given a state funeral on January 9 in the National Cathedral in Washington. A national day of mourning was declared, and flags flew at half mast on public buildings.

The drawn-out funeral arrangement seemed to give the media endless scope for nostalgia about a humble peanut farmer who became president for one term between 1977 and 1981. The rose-tinted view of Carter’s legacy harked to a time of supposed decency and bipartisan civility in American politics.

The contrast with the present partisan enmity in U.S. politics could not be sharper. The contempt between Democrats and Republicans could not be more vicious.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. He takes over from Democrat Joe Biden. The vaunted peaceful transfer of power is a charade. During the election campaign last year, Biden repeatedly called Trump the “biggest threat to our democracy.” This was a reference to Trump’s demagoguery and fascist proclivities.

Yet, at the funeral for Carter, Trump was seated beside former Democrat President Barack Obama, chatting and smiling before the service. Also sitting in the front rows were Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Trump – despite her condemnations also lambasting Trump as a threat to democracy.

The contrived bonhomie between Obama and Trump was cringemaking. Trump had stoked the false claims about “Kenyan-born” Obama not being an American citizen and dog-whistled racist hatred by referring to him as Barack Hussein Obama.

Two days before Carter’s funeral, Trump was mouthing off about forcibly taking back the Panama Canal and he trashed Carter for signing away American ownership of the canal in 1977.

The top mourners in the National Cathedral included former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush.

The church pews were more fitting of the dock at the Nuremberg Trials for war criminals.

Biden gave an oration for his “close friend” as if to grift off the image of Carter as a benign Commander-in-Chief.

Biden couldn’t resist sticking it to Trump with pointed “lessons” from Carter’s life of humility, public service and lack of ego. Biden also said Carter was an exemplar of resisting “the greatest sin – the abuse of power.”

How absurdly rich that Biden should stand up to lecture on not abusing power after he used his presidential office to pardon his convicted criminal son. Biden is rushing through preemptive pardons for people that the Democrats fear the Trump administration will go after in reprisal prosecutions.

When Jimmy Carter won the election in 1976, he was a relative breath of fresh air in the corrupt milieu of Washington. It was after the Watergate scandal of the Richard Nixon presidency, which was notorious for lies and political intrigue. It was also the end of the shameful Vietnam War – an imperialist genocide waged on lies about defending democracy against communism in Southeast Asia.

But Carter’s presidency wasn’t distinguished by greatness. He lost the 1980 election to Republican Ronald Reagan owing to a mess over the Iranian revolution kicking out the US-backed client dictatorship of Shah Pahlavi in Tehran.

Carter’s long post-presidential career as a humanitarian envoy in a private capacity did gain international respect. But in later life, he was outspokenly critical of his own nation’s politics. Carter denounced the distorting effect of big money in American elections. He said with candid truth that the U.S. was no longer a democracy but rather had become an oligarchy.

Trump’s incoming administration has more billionaires than any previous one in history. Chief among them is South African-born tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, the richest man in the U.S., who donated $250 million to the Trump campaign.

American democracy died decades ago. The exact death knell is debatable. Was it the CIA assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, or was it the vote-rigging theft of the presidential election in 1960 by JFK with the help of the Mafia?

Was it the Vietnam War that killed millions of Vietnamese that Carter’s election tried to redeem? Or was it Carter’s support for Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, a network of Islamists that evolved into Al Qaeda terrorists?

The same terrorists who Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden bombed multiple countries to supposedly defeat? The same terrorists who have taken over Syria and whom the U.S. media is busily whitewashing as a legitimate government in Damascus.

Or did U.S. democracy die when Teddy Roosevelt grabbed Panama with imperialist thuggery to construct the 80-kilometer canal (1904-1914)? The canal that Trump wants to grab back – by military force if needs be.

Or was it the failed fascist coup against another Roosevelt, FDR, in 1933, by Nazi-supporting American corporate leaders?

Or the rise of the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his valedictory speech in 1961? Or the creation of the CIA assassination organization in 1947, which Eisenhower later ordered to carry out the coups in Iran and Guatemala in 1953 and 54?

Or was it slave-owning “Founding Fathers” at the birth of the United States of America who went on to exterminate native Americans to steal their lands?

The web of lies and deception in American imperialist politics runs deep and wide. All of the above is but a glimpse of the nefarious disease.

The precise date of death for American pretensions of democracy is hard to determine.

But what we see now in the present day is a moribund state of corruption, lies, and loathing where the office is an openly oligarchic plaything, where foreign policy and imperialist bullying will henceforth be conducted by billionaires via Twitter. The mutual contempt for democracy among American political puppets of the warmongering oligarchy is no longer concealed.

The pious display of Jimmy Carter’s casket was a last-ditch attempt to give U.S. politics an image of unity, dignity, decency, and decorum.

American democracy was buried a long time ago.

Farewell to Jimmy Carter… and American democracy

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of The Alternative World.