Issue of the Week: Human Rights, Hunger, War, Disease, Environment, Economic Opportunity, Population, Personal Growth

Published January 30, 2025

The End Of Civilization As We Knew It, Part Twenty-Six

Who knew, as we silently paid our respects on January 7 in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C., to President Jimmy Carter, who had passed away as the oldest president in American history at the age of 100, that in days, President-elect Trump’s inauguration would be moved from the traditional outdoor West Wing of the Capitol to indoors at the same spot we then stood.

Since we had just stood with thousands of others for hours in 8 degree wind chill weather to get into the Capitol, we understood to an extent the reason given for moving the inauguration inside. When Trump was inaugurated in 2017, it was outside. As with Biden in 2020. As with every president except Reagan in 1985 in the modern era and beyond. Every inauguration since Andrew Jackson in 1829 was held outside the capitol, with the exceptions of when presidents died from assassination or illness and vice-presidents were then sworn in at various locations.

Ironically, the weather conditions were similar, virtually as cold or colder, when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated, Barack Obama for his second term, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt for his third term.

The importance of the occasion and the ability of the public to attend from all around the nation with crowd sizes in the hundreds of thousands, and inaugural addresses with the full mobility of voice as speeches with unique historical importance was always warranted as more important than the weather. The only exception in 1985 was when the wind chill temperatures were far lower, -10 to -20.

Countless thousands waited for hours in 8 degree wind chill weather, day and night, from January 7 to January 9 to honor President Carter in the rotunda of the Capitol. From the most elderly to the youngest, diverse in every way, from all over the country and the world. The only thing that ended it was when it was time for the funeral and the gates were closed. Had there been more days, it was obvious many thousands more would have continued to come.

Today is the 143^rd birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His words in his first inaugural address have echoed through history: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The Great Depression was at full fury. He then began to enact a series of social programs for basic needs and infrastructure programs to support the small businesses that were the backbone of the American economy, job programs, conservation projects, regulation of what he called “The monied interests,” particularly financial institutions and many other reforms that became the norm that defined America and were built upon by every president from FDR to Jimmy Carter.

The day before yesterday, after a week of a hurricane of unprecedent events since the inaugural, the new occupant of the Oval Office attempted, in an unprecedented action, to freeze all government spending on nearly all such programs, in America and around the world, upon which millions of lives, the American economy, global stability and American leadership in the world depend.

A federal court stopped the freeze the same day. The White House then both withdrew the freeze and signaled continuing it in some respects at the same time, leading to a second federal Judge issuing another injunction today to be clear that no freeze could occur.

More will come and all this will work its way through the courts, probably the Supreme Court eventually.

The thousands who came to honor Carter included Republicans who had not voted for him. The overwhelming experience was of people acutely aware of what had changed since Carter was president and what was about to change further, and not for the best. Honoring him was honoring the values he stood for that have been increasingly eroded. At the same time, there was a palpable sense of people having faith in the America that Jimmy Carter stood for, both as president and as a unique post-president, enduring in the end.

As has been written before at length, the initial work of Planet Earth Foundation in ending world hunger and related disease, the worst killer in history at the time, and the relationship to the environment and war or peace, had an impact on Carter who took significant action as a result.

The founder of the Foundation, and its news arm Planet Earth Media and project on the interdependent major issues facing the world, World Campaign, Keith Blume, and the project director of all the above, Clara Lippert, were in Washington, D.C. with the crowds, in the cold, to honor President Carter.

We filmed the scenes and interviewed a large number of people. The result follows in a short documentary, Honoring Jimmy Carter: