Episode Details

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor

Text originally published Dec. 30, 2024

This, That or the Other Carter - by Mr. Fish

Jimmy Carter, out of office, had the courage to call out the “abominable oppression and persecution” and “strict segregation” of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” He dedicated himself to monitoring elections, including his controversial defense of the 2006 election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and championed human rights around the globe. He lambasted the American political process as an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”

But Carter’s years as an ex-president should not mask his dogged service to the empire, penchant for fomenting disastrous proxy wars, betrayal of the Palestinians, embrace of punishing neoliberal policies and his subservience to big business when he was in office.

Carter played a significant role in dismantling New Deal legislation with the deregulation of major industries including airlines, banking, trucking, telecommunications, natural gas and railways. He appointed Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve, who, in an effort to combat inflation, drove up interest rates and pushed the U.S. into the deepest recession since the Great Depression, a move that saw the start of punishing austerity cuts. Carter is the godfather of the pillage known as neoliberalism, a pillage fellow Democrat Bill Clinton would turbo charge.

Carter fell under the disastrous influence of his Svengali-like national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish exile, who rejected the Nixon-Kissinger reliance on détente with the Soviet Union. Brzezinski’s life’s mission, one that meant he saw the world in black and white, was to confront and destroy the Soviet Union along with any government or movement he deemed to be under communist influence or sympathetic to it.

Carter, under Brzezinski’s influence, walked away from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaty (SALT II) with the Soviet Union, which sought to curb nuclear weapons deployment. He increased military spending. He sent military aid to the Indonesian New Order government during the Indonesian invasion and occupation of