Jimmy Subtly Squelches Trump Inauguration

This from the man who overthrew the Soviet Union without firing a shot

According to the mandate of the U.S. flag code, flags must be lowered for 30 days following the death of a sitting or former president. Former President Jimmy Carter died Sunday at age 100.

All flags were ordered to be displayed at half-staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, all military posts, naval stations and naval vessels. Flags are flown at half-staff “when the whole nation is in mourning,” according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Because state flags are not allowed to fly higher than the Stars and Stripes, they will be at half-mast as well.

That timeline overlaps the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump and adds another layer of history to his presidential legacy.

When Trump takes the oath of office, he’ll be the first to do so while U.S. flags are lowered.

As if the nation were in mourning for his accession.

For former President Jimmy Carter, this means flags will remain at half-staff until at least Jan. 28, covering both the presidential inauguration and the first week of Trump’s second term.

However, it’s not federal law, so as incoming president, Donald Trump could break with tradition and order flags raised back to full-staff. It will have to be a really good excuse, though, as no one will buy the idea that Trump is worthwhile.

Biden also announced Monday that a national day of mourning will be held on January 9th. He ordered an official state funeral for Carter, the 39th president. His body will lay in state at the Capitol, as have other presidents.

Before he died, Carter was able to fulfill a final wish, casting a vote in November for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. His ballot was placed in a dropbox at the Sumter County Courthouse in Georgia. Carter had told a family member that he was "only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris," according to his grandson, Jason Carter.

"President Carter, thank you for your support," Harris wrote in a social media post.

Carter was a champion of equal rights. He addressed gender equality in Congressional legislation, Executive action and Presidential appointments. He created a Task Force on Women Business Owners, acknowledging that women face challenges beyond the traditional problems of lack of adequate capital, lack of marketing and procurement opportunities, and lack of management and technical assistance…they face the barriers created by negative attitudes toward women.

The number of businesses owned by women rose from 1.9 million in 1977 to 2.5 million in 1980 (a 33.4% gain).

Carter’s elevation of human rights in US foreign policy has often been overlooked. The specific application of human rights criteria to US relations with then-Soviet-controlled Central and Eastern Europe was pivotal in the overthrow of the communist regime. Carter’s shift to human rights came just as democratic dissidents and workers’ movements began to gather strength in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland. Operating under the Helsinki Accords, Carter put the US on the offensive in the Cold War and triggered the dockworkers strike in Gdansk, Poland. The Carter administration warned the Soviets not to invade Poland.

Reconnecting the link between U.S. values and policies was the ultimate weapon against Russia. Carter triggered a wave of freedom that crested with the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989. While Reagan is often credited with the achievement, the course was set for him by Carter. Reagan and his administration had no idea that the Soviet Empire would fall.

Reagan acted tough and waved a sword; Carter held out hope for enslaved people and the Soviet empire fell.

But Carter got scant credit for it.

When Trump fawns all over Putin at their next meeting, he will have no clue that the man he is worshipping is in charge of a country that Jimmy Carter cut down by a third. Without firing a shot.

Trump will follow circumstances; Carter made the circumstances.

Not to make a list, but Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978, a milestone in Middle East peace efforts. Carter prioritized human rights in U.S. foreign policy, advanced environmental conservation, and created the Departments of Energy and Education. Carter’s work with the Humanities helped define the values of a generation. He pressed for Medicare for everyone.

He was able to achieve so much because he followed moral guidance, not political expediency, in setting his course.

The gravestones of Jimmy and Rosalynn, his wife of 77 years, will be by a willow tree at the edge of a pond that - of course - Jimmy helped dig.

It is near the small town of Plains, Georgia, near their home (which Carter has donated to the nation).

“Simply put, Jimmy Carter was a good man,” said former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms.

You can’t say it any clearer than that.

And because he was a good and decent man, I am sure he would be distressed by the thought that his half-mast flag tribute would interfere with the inauguration ceremony of incoming president Trump.

Not me, though.

I am so shallow that I delight in the thought that the first presidential inauguration Ever under half-masts of mourning, will be for Donald Trump.

Let him fume. The history books cannot change what is being written. Even if Trump squirms out of the half-mast requirement with some flimsy excuse, everyone will know. ‘You cheated’. The books will say so.

Nice work, Jimmy. Subtle but firm.

I think I’ll make that willow tree a destination journey for a summer trip. My wife and I have done Gettysburg, where the South ended in Pickett’s Charge. We’ve been to the beach at Kittyhawk North Carolina where humankind first had success with machine-aided flight. We visited the base in Florida where humans first left to set foot upon the moon.

Now it would be totally in keeping to thank the man who essentially ended communism…without firing a shot.

He did it by standing up to his values…American values.

Jimmy and Rosalynn are the only presidential couple in the modern era to move back into the home they lived in before the presidency – a place so small that visiting dignitaries kept asking where the “main house” was. The house was appraised for less than the value of the Secret Service SUV’s parked outside.

But now it is priceless.

And when the breeze sways the gentle branches of that willow tree, within sight of the house they lived in for so many years, we can hear Jimmy whispering that it’s “where our hearts have always been.”

Us too, now. Sleep well Jimmy.