Just a few minutes ago I read that today, December 29, 2024, President Jimmy Carter has passed away. He’s finally reunited again in the afterlife he so fervently believed in with the love of his life, his late wife Rosalynn Carter, whom he was married to for over 77 years until her own death…
Now we could say a lot of things about Carter, good and bad. Above all, I’ll remember him as a President who was ahead of his times in a great many ways. The solar panels he installed near the White House as soon as he won the elections, I feel were a great sign of a man with his eye on the future. There’s symbolism in it.[1]
About as much symbolism in Carter’s placing of the solar panels was Ronald Reagan’s subsequent removal of said solar panels… some men are “men of the future”, some men are “men of the past”. Jimmy Carter was a man of tomorrow, a man ahead of his era. I feel like America and perhaps the world wasn’t ready for him. His stance on Israel and Palestine, too, was ahead of its time — many people today espouse the same criticism he did. But when Carter himself called out Israel’s lousy human rights track record as an ex-president, it was groundbreaking and revolutionary.[2]
Now Jimmy Carter has died, aged 100. The only President to make it to a full century. A man who, as a US diplomat, was days away between signing a peace agreement between North and South Korea in 1994, only for Kim Il-Sung to die right before it was to be signed and replaced by his mad son… Carter was a man of vision. Not always everyone’s cup of tea — but a great man, nonetheless. I’ll miss him. And even as a non-American, I salute him.
Footnotes
[2] To honour Jimmy Carter’s legacy, amplify his call for freedom in Palestine
No comments:
Post a Comment