Okay so I realize you're being lighthearted here and I don't mean to take away from that (he would appreciate you noting both his civic duty and his education in nuclear energy), but I will never turn down an excuse to talk about why I love my man Jimmy Carter.
--personally brokered multiple peace agreements as a mediator between other countries--basically he was the guy who kept things calm and civil so stuff could get signed, both during and after his presidency. This included the Camp David Accords, widely considered the most important peace document in the Middle East
--not actually a very good president BECAUSE HE WAS TOO HONEST
--was a peanut farmer and got a ton of flak for it because "lol poor peanut farmer" but it was his family's farm and he was genuinely proud, not ashamed, of his work
--Married to his wife Rosalynn for 77 years and they were so deeply in love that when she died I said "he won't last a year now" and I was right, they were really two halves of one very incredible whole
--worked for Habitat for Humanity after his presidency, and not as an admin, either; there are lots of people out there who can say Jimmy Carter helped build their house
--he and Rosalynn fought for DECADES to eradicate Guinea worm, which is an extremely painful and disabling parasite, AND THEY ALL BUT SUCCEEDED. When they began their work in 1986 in tandem with the WHO, over three and a half million people were infected every year. In 2023 there were twelve. To be clear: not twelve million, not twelve thousand, not twelve hundred. TWELVE. One-two with no zeroes after it. As of today, his death date, the 2024 case count is seven. One digit. If we can hit zero in 2025 and 2026 it will be only the second disease in all of human history to be eradicated completely by humans (the first was smallpox)
--there is increasing evidence that he actually did solve the Iran hostage crisis and Reagan bribed the Iranian government to not release the hostages until after the election in order to make Carter look weak and boost his own chances
--left the Baptist church because while he considered himself a devout Christian he absolutely could not abide their views re: women, and said women should be full equals with men
--established the Department of Education
--during his reelection campaign, he met my uncle. My uncle is mentally disabled. Carter was visiting his workplace. My uncle biked right past the Secret Service, which they took about as well as you'd expect, held out a hand, and said "hello, Mr. Carter, my name is David Lastname and I sure am glad to meet you." Carter would have been perfectly within his rights to have my uncle arrested as a security risk, and in 1980 basically nobody would have come to my uncle's defense. Instead he waved off the Secret Service, shook my uncle's hand, and said "hello, Mr. Lastname, my name is Jimmy Carter and I sure am glad to meet you." I don't know if he intuited that mirroring is one way we help my uncle to understand stuff or if it was a natural habit of his, and I don't care. What I care about is that more than a decade before the ACA he made a conscious decision to take the time to treat a mentally-disabled man with courtesy, kindness, and dignity, with no idea whether that man could even vote.
Jimmy Carter was not a great president, but he was a great man. There's a saying in Christian circles that if you have lived well G-d will greet you at the gates of heaven with "well done, thou good and faithful servant," and let me tell you, if heaven exists but that isn't standard procedure then G-d damn well better have made an exception today. He was a good and faithful servant, to all of us.
May his memory be for a blessing.
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