MAGA media pitched a hissy fit last week after Joe Biden compared Donald Trump with Jimmy Carter.
Hours after Carter’s death, Biden presented reporters with a brief eulogy. Then a reporter asked what he thought Trump should take from the 39th U.S. president.
“Decency, decency, decency,” Biden replied.
Like many Americans, I didn’t think much of Carter while he was president. He was Southern, which I equated with racism, and an evangelical Christian, which I equated with sexism and religious bigotry.
And as someone living uncomfortably near the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, I didn’t approve of his support for nuclear energy.
Today you’d call me a low-information voter, except that I didn’t vote in 1976 or 1980.
Later I did, and I changed my mind about Carter as I saw how he spent his post-presidential years – building houses for the poor, fighting disease, advocating for peace and calling out some successors, including Trump.
Now I know that he was a progressive evangelical who believed in equality for all and in the separation of church and state. And that he put solar panels on the White House before most people recognized the devastation that fossil fuels have wreaked on our planet.
In the days since Carter’s death, columnists have extolled his humility and humanitarian efforts. They’ve also given him long overdue credit for his accomplishments in the White House, including mediating a treaty between Egypt and Israel and resolving conflicts over the Panama Canal.
While Biden also praised Carter, he took some heat from right-wing pundits for implying – correctly – that Trump lacks decency.
Interestingly, they didn’t address the countless indecencies that the incoming president has committed.
Biden noted that unlike Trump, decent people like Carter help those who are in need and don’t insult anyone’s looks or way of talking.
And just about everyone would agree that decent people also don’t:
- Demand unconditional adoration.
- Brag about sexually assaulting women.
- Make racist and sexist comments.
- Stiff their vendors or employees.
- Mislead the public about an impending pandemic.
- Encourage violence against people they consider enemies.
- Lie about almost everything.
- Knowingly make false promises.
- Take classified government documents and refuse to return them.
- Refuse to accept a decisive defeat in a fair contest.
- Incite an insurrection.
- Encourage congressional extremists to shut down the government and tank the global economy.
Trump did all that and more. Some Americans applauded his hate speech and bad acts. Others, including wealthy, educated CEOs, just salivated over the tax breaks and deregulation that he promised.
Still others who would never tolerate his all-round deplorableness in anyone they know nonetheless cast their ballots for him because he somehow convinced them that he was a qualified candidate.
So he got the most votes – 49.8% of the total. And while probably none of those voters would put it that way, the 2024 election was a victory for indecency.
Yet the brouhaha over Biden’s comment shows that decency, or at least the appearance of it, still matters.
Even though blood-red MAGAs jeer at civility, tolerance, honesty and other hallmarks of decency, even though their leader has violated just about every standard, they bristle at the suggestion that he is indecent.
When Carter turned 100 on Oct. 1, Trump took a swipe at him, saying he’s now “considered a brilliant president by comparison” with Biden, whom he called “the worst.”
But now that Carter is dead, Trump – or more likely, a handler – felt obliged to pay tribute to him on social media:
“The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude … he truly loved and respected our Country, and all it stands for.”
Regardless of whether the writer meant those words, they ring true.
Lisa Von Ahn is an experienced columnist previously published in the Pottsville Republican Herald newspaper.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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