A SHORT HISTORY OF RIGHT WING DESTRUCTION PART 28

It has become fashionable in right-wing circles to demonize Jimmy Carter's presidency.  I guess you have to find some way to distract from all the corruption and misery caused by Republican administrations, so you demonize one of the most moral men to occupy the Oval Office.

Jimmy Carter was an idealist and right-wingers do not care for idealists.  Right-wingers consider themselves grounded in the "real world."  It's the world of dog-eat-dog and winner take all.  You can put aside all those silly notions about human rights and the Golden Rule.  The Golden Rule is something you claim to support on Sundays and shove aside as impractical the rest of the time.

President Carter had the misfortune of being in office when the oil-producing nations in the Arab world started to assert themselves.  The oil-producing countries suddenly realized they had an energy addict in the United States.  OPEC could jack up the prices and the United States had very few options but to pay.

President Carter also inherited a rotten economy from the Nixon and Ford years.  We had a situation called "stagflation."  It was a combination of high inflation and high unemployment.  According to classic economics, those situations were never supposed to occur simultaneously

The worst blow to the Carter presidency was the Iranian hostage crisis.  The nightly news reminded us every day of the length of their imprisonment by Iranian militants and the Carter administration wasn't militant enough for some.  You have the feeling that some right-wingers would have preferred we attack Iran even if it meant killing all the hostages.  It would make the United States look "tough."

More to come