It’s the Consumption, Stupid
Jimmy Carter’s loss was greed’s win
“Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption,” the late Jimmy Carter said during his first and only term as President of the United States. “Owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning . . . piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”
Has there ever been a more apt description of what ails America a quarter of our way into this greed-strewn 21st century of ours? Indeed, the material gluttony that so troubled Carter in the late 1970s seems harmless by comparison. Back then a single, hard-wired telephone was the only device sounding off in most American homes. A glass was the receptacle of choice for a drink of water. An air ticket to Europe or Asia was so expensive that most of us never ventured farther than a state park for our annual vacations.
How amazing that James Earl Carter, a man of such dignity and kindness, was able for four short years to hold the reins of power atop the most powerful nation on earth and sound out a warning.
And yet, Carter was on to something. Even if most of us on the surface seemed ok with a single…
