Why'd Jimmy Carter not get reelected?

His presidency was pretty all over the place and inconsistent. Read the Pearlstein book about Reagan.

Carter came off as aloof and innefective even though he really accomplished some great things. If Carter got reelected maybe we could have had universal healthcare by now.

Ronald Reagan got the corporation on board of his presidency. And he promised huge tax cut for them in return of large amount of campaign funding. Reagan is the beginning of American downfall.

How was the economy in 1980?

Malaise

[quote] If Carter got reelected maybe we could have had universal healthcare by now.

No, Ted Kennedy would have continued to block it to keep Carter from getting the credit, just as he blocked Nixon's prior similar healthcare reforms. The "Lion of the Senate" single handedly set back this effort for over half a century.

I blame the bunny.

R6, oh yeah! Thanks for reminding me. More proof that the Kennedys are not all they are cracked up to be. Their mystique needs to die!

His interview in Playboy magazine really upset a lot of his base, too.

R1 basically summed it up. He was indecisive, trying to please everyone, which always results in nothing getting done. That, and the economy was in the dumps, interest rates and inflation were sky-high.

He certainly made up for it after he left the office however. A great human being...

Carter's biggest mistake was to not support the Shah in squashing the Iranian Revolution. A LOT of the problems in the Middle East would not be happening if Iran was still an America ally.

H U G E mistake!

R9 his playboy interview was published before the 1976 election I don’t think it had much of an impact

Gas crisis, Iran. He was over his head.

Super high interest rates

What R5 said. Americans didn't want to hear how bad our country was doing. Reagan talked about a new day and shining city, etc. R11 If I recall correctly, Carter nearly rendered the CIA useless. Carter thought using spies was morally wrong and wanted to rely more on technology like satellites. The Iranian Revolution caught the U.S. completely off-guard (and probably the Shah too). I never understood why Pahlavi didn't have Khomeini silenced back in the 1960's.

Iranians hated Pahlavi not because of his brutal Savak but because of his attempted Westernization of their very conservative Muslim country. Khomeini was cheered because he returned Iran to its Muslim identity and culture.

I don't think you had much of a choice other than cheering after Khomeini took over. He threw the country back into the middle ages. Not sure everybody in Iran was OK with this. Iran, if the revolution had been squashed and if it had stayed westernized, would have been a better ally to the West than the creeps in Saudi Arabia.

[quote] He threw the country back into the middle ages. Not sure everybody in Iran was OK with this.

Vis-a-vis "throwing the country back into the middle ages", that's Western perception. For Iranians, Khomeini returned them to their Islamic roots. Those who "weren't OK with that" fled the country.

As the Iran Hostage Crisis endured, Carter forced himself to stay in the WH, and cease political campaigning until the hostages were released. Effectively, he became another hostage in the crisis, but in the Rose Garden.

Jumping forward four decades, in the face of the COVID crisis, Trump reacted in an opposite manner and continued to have his campaign rallies (AKA the super-spreaders). History will have to judge if that helped or hindered his campaign. In both cases, they are one-term presidents.

[quote]r10 He was indecisive, trying to please everyone, which always results in nothing getting done.

Naturally, as he was a Libra with Libra rising.

*is*

Why did Ted Kennedy block health care reform?

[quote]Those who "weren't OK with that" fled the country.

There were a lot of people who couldn't flee the country.

Such an amazing human being but a terrible president. The job isn’t cut out for everyone, unfortunately.

He was apparently a cold hearted micro manager.

Not a great president but a good ex-president but not actually much loved by people who've had to deal with him.

Apparently, not a popular member of the ex-President's Club. Both Bush couples, the Clintons and the Obamas all got along. None of them are/were close to the Carters.

Why did Ted block health are? Never knew that. How could he?

The word “malaise” which he used in a speech and which summed up the late 70s zeitgeist

Things that happened right before the election that affected everyone and pissed off even people who don’t pay attention to politics:

- 1979 oil crisis, resulting in long lines and rationing to get gas. As a child I remember this, I waited in the car what felt like an hour with my dad fuming behind the wheel

- 1980 Iran hostage crisis, when the US embassy in Tehran was held hostage. There were a lot of yellow ribbons tied around trees in remembrance and prayers offered up in churches for the safe return of Americans.

- High inflation rate that made everyone feel poorer and made people have to manage their savings much more actively just to tread water financially. I remember as a child going to the bank with my mom with a handful of savings deposit books as she moved money in and out of savings bonds

R25 he can be a bit sanctimonious, he probably gets along great with Al Gore

Conservatives at the time hated him because he was an actual Peanut Farmer from flyoverstan with a Mensa IQ. So he had that kind of down home talk but was a brilliant man. He wasn't very charismatic however. Regan was an old movie star still trying to look like 29 at the age of 70. Sound familiar? Only instead of caftans he tried to look like he just stepped off the set of Gun Smoke.

Deplorables of the time loved that shit and hated Mr. Smarty Pants Mensa Peanut Farmer.

Carter didn't get reelected because he was too honest, and a man who didn't play the political tricks game. I don't think he ever realized just how crooked the GOP was/is, until it was too late. It's sad to say but to be successful in politics you have to have the talent to trick the opposition to get what you want, and at times that requires a level of dishonesty. If you've got the interests of the people in your sights I call it 'honest dishonesty'.

I can't answer, OP, and I was born in 1983; however, I'd say Carter is one of my favorite presidents. I love hearing him speak.

In college, I had a professor say that Carter was one of the most intelligent presidents we've ever had.

R31 Carter also lived a very modest life after his presidency. Unlike his successors who managed to live a lifestyle that the compensation of a former president cannot provide.

Long gas lines.

If you read Ted Kennedy’s book, the Democrats hated him.

r32 interestingly, my professor said something like "He came across as too intelligent to appeal to the American electorate." Again, I wasn't around for Carter v. Reagan, but I imagine that set up a stark contrast with Reagan.

R34 if he blocked health care continually I don’t blame them. Why did he do it?

He was also about 10000 times worse then Bernie Sanders on his worst day when it came to refusing to drop out and further dividing the party.

Really, he was kind of an asshole.

Carter defeated Ford in 1976 because of the backlash against Nixon and Watergate. His presidency suffered from an inability to set and achieve goals like getting a handle on runaway inflation and the Iran Hostage crisis.

Khomeini's revolution in Iran was not some throwback to the Middle Ages. It's the flip side of modernity. Just as a free, open, and secular civil society emerged from modernity, so too did the forces that saw that type of society as a threat to it. The United States from Eisenhower to Carter supported a regime that modernized and oppressed Iranian society. Iranians rejected the American-backed Shah and embraced what they viewed as authentically theirs...not something imposed from the West.

Very high interest rates.

[quote] He was apparently a cold hearted micro manager.

Where have you come across this, R25? Would be interested in references. Or personal experience.

(He taught some classes at my med school - Emory. Interestingly, he did not come across that way at all.)

[quote] Not a great president but a good ex-president but not actually much loved by people.

My roommate was from Plains, Georgia. She and her family ADORED Carter.

I have always wondered why Carter seem distant from other ex-presidents. Yet, he seemed a man ahead of his time (solar panels on the Whitehouse, advocating being prepared for a pandemic, interested and knowledgeable about EVERYTHING.)

He seemed brilliant and approachable when teaching us: even more so than some of our medical professors.

He is also a poet. Seemed pretty humble. And deeply connected/committed to his wife.

Wonder if there are any DLers that were part of his staff? And would have the inside baseball?

Kennedy blocked health care because he was petty. One thing I have noticed and try to point out to my younger friends is that no matter how good your idea is, most people will reject it because it wasn’t their idea.

I have a GenY friend who got demoted out of management because he kept complaining about processes that were inefficient. He argued about profitability and insisted on doing things his way. He was, for the most part, correct. I tried to explain to him that it didn’t matter and he was basically telling his boss that the boss was bad at his job.

Sometimes being right is not enough.

R37 A LOT of parallels between the 1976 election and this one (“bring decency back to the White House”).

[quote]Khomeini's revolution in Iran was not some throwback to the Middle Ages.

Tell that to the millions of women who all of a sudden were property of their husbands.

Schools need to start teaching history again.

R39, I read similar things in one of Jack Germond's books, probably [italic]Fat Man in a Middle Seat[/italic]. If you remember the old [italic]Firing Line[/italic], he was the fat guy in the middle. Germond wrote that of all the presidents he'd covered, Carter was definitely the smartest. He also wrote something to the effect that when it came to "nut cutting," Carter was as cold and ruthless as any politician.

When people talk about Carter rmicro-managing, they usually bring up his scheduling the White House tennis courts himself.

R6 and others: Carter proposed an incremental plan, in part because he was dealing with inflation. It was, like many of the proposals from his administration, impractical and could easily be stopped if he wasn't re-elected. His administration also proposed a sweeping mental health program--it was a bit of a grab bag that lacked coherence and was one of the first things Reagan killed--it's easy to see how Carter's national health insurance could have met with a similar fate. Kennedy advocated for something much more comprehensive from the get-go. The cult of Carter that we have now forgets what a disaster he was as president---totally out of his depth and often bizarre in the way he pursued things. His foreign policy team included the dovish Andrew Young and Zbigniew Brzezinski who was probably the most hawkish Democratic cold warrior. In the end, Carter was his own Secretary of State and was no more consistent---advocating human rights but hosting state dinners for horrible dictators.

Now we war tawkin about somewig from my erwar.

Jimmy Carter was nothing but racist white Southern trash who set progressive movements back 50 years or more.

And don’t forget his brother Billy, the namesake of the shittiest beer ever created, making deals with Libya. That was one Billy from the 1970s had no trouble not being a hero.

He was just another hillbilly hick cracker who hid behind Jesus to justify demonizing Jews. Anti-Zionism is racism. It makes you a deplorable. Jimmy Carter is a deplorable. The entire white south is deplorable. Whiteness itself is deplorable. Christianity is deplorable. Heterosexuality is deplorable. You can’t call yourself a progressive if you support any of those things for any reason.

[quote] Khomeini's revolution in Iran was not some throwback to the Middle Ages.

Tell that to all the Iranian gays who were given the choice of emasculation or death. Our blood is on Jimmy Cracker’s hands.

Reagan had the support of Jerry Falwell's odious Moral Majority and other so-called Christian groups that organized into a political bloc following Roe v. Wade and the ultimately failed passage of the ERA.

Iran's "roots" stretch back far beyond the establishment of Islam in the 7th century. The subsequent conversion to Shia Islam a thousand years later was largely a tactic for the ruling Safavids to distinguish their empire from an adversary, namely the Ottomans. To suggest that Khomeini returned the country to its rightful, theocratic state is to accept to the Ayatollah's propaganda, which in many ways is not so different than that of the "Judeo-Christian roots" so frequently trumpeted by Falwell et. al. in the 1980s and '90s. The Revolution caught the entire world by surprise, not just the U.S.

The hostage situation was indeed a PR disaster for Carter, but curiously the subsequent hostage crisis during the Lebanese Civil War and its connection to the Iran-Contra scandal didn't do much damage to Reagan. Moreover, US forces suffered no less than three devastating attacks in Beirut in 1983 and 1984 (Embassy bombing in April '83, Barracks bombing in October '83, embassy annex bombing in September '84) that caused hundreds of deaths and Reagan still won in a landslide that November. The US just left Lebanon with our tail between our legs, content to support anybody that was anti-Iran (Saddam, the Sauds) much like we supported anyone who claimed to be anti-Communist.

Evangelists first got into politics on a mass scale to support Jimmy Carter because they thought he would enact their agenda.

Was not alive then but my father's take is that Carter was a very nice man who was a terrible leader, especially at a time of crisis, he did not know how to inspire people and false hope was Reagan's stock in trade. He said it really did feel like we'd turned a corner when Reagan took office, that there was hope and optimism whereas with Carter there was just malaise. (FWIW, my father is a liberal Democrat who was not a huge fan of Reagan, but he said that was the national mood overall.)

Thank god you went off the rails r48. Saves me the time of having to discredit your ramblings. You did that all on your own.

You discredit yourself with that ad hominem attack. You have nothing to refute me with because deep down you know that Communism is justified because it works. If we have to kill people in order to get things done, then that’s just too fucking bad. Whoever said “you got a break some eggs to make an omelette“ was right. And you are a bad egg.

It is no tragedy that 100 million people were killed for opposing communism. The tragedy is that we couldn’t kill 100 million more for the same reason.

Kennedy thought Carter brought his hillbilly cartel to the WH. He also thought Carter was very vindictive.

There were several reasons.

1. Carter wages elected at a time of economic doldrums, mostly caused by the paying off the costly Vietnam War.

2. Carter was primaried by Sen. Ted Kennedy. A strong primary challenger always weakens the candidate in the general election. That happened to Ford, who was primaried by Reagan.

3. Carter made some mistakes as chief executive. At one point he fired his entire cabinet and reorganized it with mostly new people. He also made the famous "Malaise" speech, which was considered a downer. By contrast, the emerging Republican candidate Reagan was projecting all sunshine and lollipops, and roses. He also boycotted the Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan. This was the start of America's sorry entanglement in that sorry part of the world. The Olympic boycott was extremely unpopular.

4. The Iranian hostage crisis was the event that sealed his fate. He made the mistake of allowing the Shah to receive medical treatment in the U.S. The attempt to rescue the hostages failed. This became a talking point of the Republicans about how the Democrats allowed the military to decline. Carter also didn't leave the White House for the time of the hostage crisis, which limited his ability to campaign.

5. This last point cannot be emphasized enough. Carter was elected as the first Evangelical Christian president, yet, his base abandoned him for Reagan, mostly because the of the emerging power and influence of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy and other televangelists.

6. Carter also had a third party candidate to contend with, John Anderson. Anderson was a liberal Republican who launched an independent bid, and his candidacy further weakened Carter's base.

7. Carter was not at all racist. But he was humiliated by his home Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, who voted to remain whites-only. Carter had a brother Billy, who was a horrible stereotype of the do-nothing good-ole-boy Southern redneck who seemed to love the limelight and go on talk shows like Mike Douglas, and even lent his name to sponsor a "Billy beer."

8. The neoconservative movement emerged in full-throated opposition to Carter, with names like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter and their spawn. Conservative talk radio also opposed Carter, and its force grew in this time.

4.

4.

The Reagan campaign secretly negotiated with the Khomeini regime in Iran to prevent the hostages from being released until after Reagan was inaugurated. Republicans are scum, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise

9. This is r57 again, the other thing Carter did that was extremely unpopular was negotiating the transfer of the Panama Canal to the country of Panama. Again, a very unpopular move that was seen as a weakening of America's power.

I'm willing to bet that those defending communism never lived under it.

It cannot be worse than Trumpism.

It's actually the same thing , it's strange that people don't see the similarities. All dictatorships are wrong no matter which end of the political spectrum.

Stop throwing around the deplorable buzzword “dictatorship“ in order to vilify Communism. Even Jane Fonda could see the virtues of it.

Communism is evil. Calling me a right-winger will not change that.

R7 Why didn't he save the bunny? I thought he was supposed to be a good person

Putin has realized that destroying this country from the right hasn't worked so now he's trying to do it from the left. There's always stupid people willing to follow like lemmings.

All opposition to Communism is evil. Trying to treat the necessary and just use of force against deplorables as if it was no different than Nazi war crimes is a false equivalence of the worst kind. In fact, in many ways you are worse than a deplorable; you enable deplorables by parroting their reactionary anti-Communist crap while claiming not to be one.

R67 Fuck off, you stupid crazy cunt.

Putin doesn’t give a shit about communists only in as much as he is trying to restore what he sees as the greatness of pre-Communist Russia. He wants to be a czar. What he does not realize is that the czar created the conditions that made Communism necessary.

The Soviet Union shall rise again before the say-outh ever does.

R69 If you say so, it will happen! You just have to wish it!

Kennedys' derailing of Carters' health care plan needs to be discussed every time his name comes up. Supposedly, Kennedys progressive policies were his one redeeming quality that made up for decades of revolting behavior. But even that is a myth. At the end of the day the media hated Carter but adored the Kennedys so it doesn't get mentioned. I've noticed the political press seems to have a particular seething animosity towards southern Democrats ( Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Carter). The journalists who cover DC politics are a creepy incestuous bunch and they all follow each others' lead.

Obviously the hostage crisis damaged Carter but I'm not sure how much better another leader would have done.

I don't know how much Anderson affected Carter - Anderson was a former Republican and may have pulled away some votes for Reagan from Rockefeller Republicans.

People craved some sort of return to normalcy - a switch to being conservative was in the air. The previous 15 years had been a wild ride of changes - for all the positives, like women's rights, civil rights, gay rights, etc, there was the crumbling of America's cities (NYC went bankrupt), increased drug addiction, the war was still fresh, runaway inflation, plus a lot of domestic terrorism - bombings and plane hijackings were not uncommon.

It was a crazy 15 years (65 to 80), particularly compared to the prior 15 of 1950-1965. And the Republicans made a deal with the Iranians to keep the hostages just so they could pound it into Americans heads day after day. It worked.

And Reagan had charisma to spare.

John F. Kennedy would be considered a neoconservative if he were alive today. Castro was the good guy in the Bay of Pigs.

The economy was in the dumps thanks to Nixon and Carter could get us out of it. Reagan created a fake economy by borrowing up a storm and tripling the debt. That all came crashed down, especially on GB I, and he lost re-election.

Clinton raised taxes on the rich and the economy boomed again.

John F Hinckley Junior was doing Americans a favor by shooting Reagan.

The Kennedy administration was afraid of the Russians that's why they called off support for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

As well they should’ve been. Russia would’ve been justified in invading the United States.

It's pathetic that the United States was afraid of the Russians.

Oh, wait, Cuba was not important enough to fight over. It was better to engage in an endless war in Viet Nam.

Pres. Carter could come off as cold and aloof, but only because he did not suffer fools easily. He hated layabouts, especially those paid with government funds. He once walked by 2 Secret Service agents inside the White House who were just standing around doing nothing and he looked at them and said "can't you two find something to do?".

Another reason John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were nothing but a couple of imperialist warmongers who enabled Nixon.

[quote] Iranians hated Pahlavi not because of his brutal Savak but because of his attempted Westernization of their very conservative Muslim country.

No that is a gross generalization. In fact much of the protests and demonstrations were by socialists or people wanting more freedom of speech and representative democracy as per the West. They formed an uneasy coalition with the religious fundamentalists, assuming the revolution would benefit all who had fought equally. Once the fundamentalists took over they suppressed their former allies in a bloody purge.

R71: You don't know what you're talking about. Kennedy had been damaged by Chappaquiddick. He was hardly a media darling. Carter had alienated much of the media on his own . It's not difficult to document Carter's shortcomings as a leader.

[quote] Iran's "roots" stretch back far beyond the establishment of Islam in the 7th century. To suggest that Khomeini returned the country to its rightful, theocratic state is to accept to the Ayatollah's propaganda.

R50 Iran has been Muslim for 1,400 years. What came before Islam is long forgotten and irrelevant. Islam is the foundation, heart and soul of Iran and 99.5% of Iranian people. Iran is no more a “theocracy” than Egypt, Jordan or Morocco. To characterize it as such displays a woeful ignorant of Islam and its complete dominance of Muslim societies.

[quote]No that is a gross generalization. In fact much of the protests and demonstrations were by socialists or people wanting more freedom of speech and representative democracy as per the West.

R82 And speaking of overgeneralization, you're another Westerner who believes that Teheran is indicative of Iran or that Istanbul is indicative of Turkey. Nothing could be further from reality. Those few protestors/demonstrators who wanted Western-style "freedoms" either fled the country or ended up disappeared. Muslims don't seek "freedom" from Islam, but rather a looser fist on the leash held by the ruling despot(s).

It was time to crush unions and these were the divorce years - just a series of, “If you don’t like it, leave” moments.

This Greatest Generation began socializing as many responsibilities/liabilities as possible - dependents, unions, healthcare, pensions - while privatizing that savings.

A vast capital strike worked its way through manufacturing and transportation sectors and that money fled to Asia.

R42 and R49. The Khomeini regime and its successors are unflinchingly brutal in the their treatment of women, gays, and a number of other religious and ethnic minorities.

Religious fundamentalism, however, is not a throwback to medieval religiosity or piety. It's a thoroughly modern phenomenon. The same forces that created an increasingly secular open society based upon individual civil rights and liberties, tolerance, and the rule of law also created a worldview in opposition to that. That worldview has manifested itself as religious fundamentalism. At the heart of this worldview is dread and anxiety..

Look, in the west from the 16th c onwards we reached modernity through violent wars of religion, exploitation of women and children, bloody revolutions, dictatorships. In the Middle East these societies and states were cobbled together to further the west's industrialization. And fundamentalism is a response to that and a forced secularization in Iran, Egypt, and Turkey.

[quote] Turkey. Nothing could be further from reality. Those few protestors/demonstrators who wanted Western-style "freedoms" either fled the country or ended up disappeared.

They weren’t “few” and I specifically referred to the post-revolution purge.

[quote]Muslims don't seek "freedom" from Islam, but rather a looser fist on the leash held by the ruling despot(s).

No need for the scare quotes because I didn’t say they did. You’re not quoting me.

And it sounds a lot like you’re claiming that, outside of Teheran, all Iranians are religious crazies ready to blow up the world for Allah. Which is ridiculous. How are things in Tel Aviv, Yitzak?

[quote]the Ayatollah's propaganda, which in many ways is not so different than that of the "Judeo-Christian roots" so frequently trumpeted by Falwell et. al. in the 1980s and '90s. The Revolution caught the entire world by surprise, not just the U.S

I can't remember Falwell advocating for veiling women, killing atheists or throwing gays off roofs.

[quote] Jimmy Carter is a deplorable. The entire white south is deplorable. Whiteness itself is deplorable. Christianity is deplorable. Heterosexuality is deplorable. You can’t call yourself a progressive if you support any of those things for any reason.

Take a pill Mary! Look at who opposed him and won, RONALD REGAN the Trump of that decade. It's called contest, at the time he was the most progressive person to lead the country. Had we fallowed his lead, we still wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil and gas by now.

Remember, he even installed solar panels on the roof of the White House as an example of what Americans should do. What did Regan the Trump of the 80's do? He had them removed the day he took office and cut all the funding for alternative power.

#TRUTH

He's still friends with Newt.

[quote] That, and the economy was in the dumps, interest rates and inflation were sky-high.

Carter is responsible for the economic boom of the 80s. Without the hiring of Paul Volcker--who Reagan wanted to fire--inflation wouldn't have been killed.

[quote] Yet, he seemed a man ahead of his time

Didn't Reagan rip the panels off the roof once he became president? What an ass.

[quote] Kennedys' derailing of Carters' health care plan needs to be discussed every time his name comes up. Supposedly, Kennedys progressive policies were his one redeeming quality that made up for decades of revolting behavior. But even that is a myth. At the end of the day the media hated Carter but adored the Kennedys so it doesn't get mentioned. I've noticed the political press seems to have a particular seething animosity towards southern Democrats ( Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Carter). The journalists who cover DC politics are a creepy incestuous bunch and they all follow each others' lead.

You are so right! I'm 33, but even i am sick of the damn fawning over the damn Kenney family. When I see Kennedy ranked so highly in rankings of the best presidents, I almost break out in hives. How the hell does someone who was barely in office 3 years rank that high? In some cases, I"ve seen him ranked higher than Truman! What BS. The entire family needs to be forgotten. Can you imagine how much better America would be if we had universal healthcare today?

R93: You obviously don't know anything about the Kennedys.

Had Reagan not been elected, we have led the world in renewables.

[quote] You obviously don't know anything about the Kennedys.

OK.

I consider myself an independent: voting at different times for all parties (and I mean all.)

But yes, Reagan was regressive and let’s face it, genuinely demented....now even documented in his first term.

Yet, he is a hero to

Go figure.

* yet he is a hero to Republicans*

[quote] genuinely demented....now even documented in his first term.

This is yet another ridiculous thing about Trump supporters. Many of them love Reagan yet they spend all day calling Biden "sleepy Joe" or "dementia Joe". These people are too dumb to get irony.

[quote] This is yet another ridiculous thing about Trump supporters. Many of them love Reagan yet they spend all day calling Biden "sleepy Joe" or "dementia Joe". These people are too dumb to get irony.

Spot on.

I genuinely grieve the lack of knowledge and nuance which seems to pervade the Republican Party.

It is if they revel in their ignorance and solipsistic idiocy.

R99, I've said this before half-jokingly but after these election results, I mean it seriously--there needs to be some kind of equivalent to liberal reeducation camps for these people. They don't care that medical workers or their neighbors are dying of a virus, they don't care to wear masks because it's against "liberty", they feel that they are "dsicriminated against" for being (usually) white Christians, etc. Unless these people have immediate family members dying, they won't give a shit. All they care about is themselves and their businesses. I was in high school and college in the 00s and even then, many adult Republicans were crazy. But they weren't THIS crazy. It's gotten 10x worse. Outside of these people being "reeducated", the only other option for them to get COVID and die.

R100, they quote statistical probabilities and I have begged, reasoned, and now I’ve repeated “I don’t care. Put on your mask” dozens of times. I need a cane.

I’m in a densely packed urban area with travelers moving through; there is no way any statistic fits this situation.

We go from a president who need to sell his peanut farm because of conflict of interest to a billionaire who never paid tax and a woman candidate who used a private email server for government work. How much has the country declined in 40 years! It is just sad.

R84 the pre-Islamic history of Iran is not "irrelevant" or "forgotten." Where do you think Nowruz comes from? And comparing the political system of Iran to the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan, where there is no morality police like the Gasht-e Ershad, or the successive military dictatorships of Egypt betrays an equally woeful misunderstanding of regional affairs. Perhaps you are thinking Saudi Arabia or Malaysia..?

R88 The Christian Right in America has long sought to deny women and gay men rights based on a tendentious view of religion and its role in government.