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The Gang of Four! [1]

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Date: 2025-01-01

By David Glenn Cox

There is a somewhat bitter irony in the outpouring of sympathy for the late President Carter. I’m glad he’s being recognized and acknowledged, in death. But in the words of Leo Durocher, if you’re not going to put me in the hall of fame while I’m alive. Then, go to hell! President Carter was the first to taste the Lee Atwater Republican slime machine. Swift boating before Swift boating was cool.

Americans think the President is some sort of mystical wizard. Help! We have inflation! We had inflation under Jerry Ford too. Remember Jerry’s plan? WIN! Whip Inflation Now? What’s the cure for inflation? You raise the interest rates. WAA! Jimmy Carter raised the interest rates. No, he didn’t, he got the blame for it while having nothing to do with it. Much like the current inflation fears which mysteriously faded after the election. Americans being Americans, want instant answers and even quicker results. The President should fix everything immediately. Fix it daddy! Fix it right now or we’re voting for the guy who will eventually destroy our way of life.

Where did the inflation come from? It came from the sudden sharp rise in oil prices. Because the United States refused to knuckle under to unelected robed potentates. Jimmy Carter could have expelled a dying Shah of Iran from this country. That’s all he would have had to have done is to bow down and kiss ass with a bunch of dickheads and dictators. All in the name of cheap gas and the people of the United States, kicking a dying old man out of the country on the express orders of foreigners. I dunno, bad precedent perhaps?

I’ll tell you something mostly only Atlanta natives know about the Carter Center. It was built on the site of General Sherman’s Headquarters, during The Battle of Atlanta. Turning a military headquarters into a center for peace, beating swords into plowshares. Jimmy Carter could have built the center anywhere in Atlanta, but he chose to build it right there.

Leonid Brezhnev invaded Afghanistan in much the same way Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, unprovoked and unannounced. Waa! Jimmy Carter canceled the Olympic Games! Screw foreign policy! Screw national honor or standing! I want my Olympic games! Funny story, my father was 21 on December 7th, 1941. He didn’t get his Olympic games either, but he never blamed Franklin Roosevelt for it.

Dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease) is a disease with no known cure other than simple prevention. The disease is 100% preventable. Requiring no laboratories, doctors or pharmaceutical companies. Simply by providing clean water, the disease magically disappears. You’ll never get rich in this world by providing people in the third world with simple low-cost solutions, without a pill or an injection. If that’s the only good deed you ever did in life was helping the poorest of the poor to have clean water, it’s enough for heaven in my book.

For many years after leaving office, President Carter was considered the epitome of failure and was held in higher esteem outside the United States than inside. The Ray Guns had publicly criticized the state of the White House. Clearly, these weren’t the right sort of people for our private club. Who let them in? We had to hold our nose and fumigate trying to get the middle class smell out of the rooms. Can you believe he actually worked with his hands? I don’t believe I’ve ever known anyone who has done that before. Oh wait, I spoke to the gardener once.

Bar none; this is my favorite Jimmy Carter story of all time. After the death of Chairman Mao Zedong certain truths had to be faced by the Chinese government dealing with the failures and excesses of the previous regime. Mao was considered a god! You couldn’t say anything against Mao. He was perfect in all ways and forms much like our own King, it wasn’t a crime when he did it. But eventually reality must be faced, and scapegoats were chosen to be Mao’s sin eaters.

Including Mao’s widow, who was among the Gang of Four. The Gang of Four were said to be responsible for 95% of all the troubles in China and suspected as having a hand in the rest. Guilty of poor harvests, late deliveries and poor production methods and even responsible for subversive weather conditions. The Gang of Four became the Chinese Communist Goldstein equivalent. The source of all domestic evil and failure. The government was going to have a panel discussion with the former President of the United States Jimmy Carter. As he was introduced to the room, Carter was greeted with polite applause. He was offered a huge, upholstered chair to sit in, at center stage.

But as Mr. Carter sat down, the back leg of the chair broke. Without missing a beat or dropping his smile Mr. Carter remarked, “It must be the Gang of Four.” The audience so long propagandized to believe everything under the sun. Broke into uncontrolled, uproarious, spontaneous laughter. This was the funniest thing any of them had ever heard a politician say in their entire lives, until they realized. They could be arrested and sent to prison for laughing at a joke like that. It then got suddenly quiet in the room as Mr. Carter was brought another chair.

But they weren’t so propagandized as once thought. They didn’t believe it, after all. A peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, knocked over the entire propaganda apparatus with just one remark. They don’t believe you and they never did!

It may sound trivial to us, but to an authoritarian regime which had just lost its neo god leader it wasn’t. With very little prodding, the whole room had all laughed at the government. That’s why they always say, “the truth shall set you free!” For just that one moment, Jimmy Carter had set them free! Until the fear of prison and beatings re grabbed a hold of their souls and shut them back up.

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

― Mark Twain

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