The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope

Heather Cox Richardson’s assessment about the life and career of President Jimmy Carter is commendable, yet incomplete.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2024 Richardson failed to mention that it was President Carter who led the transfer of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama. She did not mention that Carter fired Andrew Young from his position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after Young privately met with representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Movement. Yet Jimmy Carter was the only U.S. president or former president who termed the Israeli government an apartheid regime! President Carter was not only the most decent and respectable president of my lifetime. He was also the most sincerely reverent, realistic, compassionate, and just.  The nation disrespected and rejected him, but Jimmy Carter never dishonored the nation. He was the best patriot, diplomat, humanitarian, and egalitarian politician on the global stage of my lif...

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024   Heather Cox Richardson’s latest assessment on U.S. politics is worth pondering. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-20-2024 . Historians will soon record that the 2016 and 2024 elections of Donald John Trump fueled an era of fascism in the United States that threatened the world for decades. And, if Trump’s tenure as President of the United States does not ultimately result in the death of democracy, it could still leave democratic norms in shambles. Trump’s deference to Elon Musk, Musk’s fascist capitalism, and white pseudo-Christian fascism and Zionism already endanger women, indigenous people of color, LGBTQIA people, immigrants, and dissidents across the world, as well as the planet’s ecosystem. Lust for greed, violence, domination, and self-worship does not make a society or its leaders great. It is a force that eventually consumes its host like metastasizing cancer or a raging virus. It is important to remember that...