Cushing, Oklahoma, dubs itself the pipeline crossroads of the world. The tagline is emblazoned on a giant roadside sign fashioned out of pipes on the corner of Main Street and South Stiles Road. It has a valve and everything.
He had a vision - and it is winning all over the world.
By the way, he happened to be a nuclear safety expert, and was in office when the Three Mile Island reactor had an actual, barely contained, meltdown, and nearly exploded.
People act like Reagan invented the mess we’re in, but Carter helped open the door. He deregulated major industries, embraced austerity politics, empowered Paul Volcker, and helped shift the Democratic Party away from New Deal economics toward market discipline, weakened labor, and “responsible” technocratic cruelty.
That’s the world we still live in: wages crushed, unions weakened, public goods privatized, housing treated like an investment vehicle, and both parties pretending the market is a law of nature.
And abroad, his “human rights” branding didn’t stop him from backing dictators, arming reactionaries, and helping set the stage for decades of intervention and blowback. Reagan didn’t create that machinery from scratch, he inherited and escalated it.
So yes, Carter was smart. Yes, Three Mile Island showed he was calm and technically competent.
Carter was the polite beginning of the catastrophe. Reagan made it louder. Clinton made it bipartisan. Bush made it apocalyptic. Obama made it sophisticated. Trump made it naked. Biden made it normal again. Trump is now making it permanent.
I fondly remember Jimmy Carter.
He had a vision - and it is winning all over the world.
By the way, he happened to be a nuclear safety expert, and was in office when the Three Mile Island reactor had an actual, barely contained, meltdown, and nearly exploded.
People act like Reagan invented the mess we’re in, but Carter helped open the door. He deregulated major industries, embraced austerity politics, empowered Paul Volcker, and helped shift the Democratic Party away from New Deal economics toward market discipline, weakened labor, and “responsible” technocratic cruelty.
That’s the world we still live in: wages crushed, unions weakened, public goods privatized, housing treated like an investment vehicle, and both parties pretending the market is a law of nature.
And abroad, his “human rights” branding didn’t stop him from backing dictators, arming reactionaries, and helping set the stage for decades of intervention and blowback. Reagan didn’t create that machinery from scratch, he inherited and escalated it.
So yes, Carter was smart. Yes, Three Mile Island showed he was calm and technically competent.
Carter was the polite beginning of the catastrophe. Reagan made it louder. Clinton made it bipartisan. Bush made it apocalyptic. Obama made it sophisticated. Trump made it naked. Biden made it normal again. Trump is now making it permanent.