Thank you Heather Cox Richardson for writing perhaps the most historically important essay of yours I’ve ever read. I say that because it describes a north star that guided Jimmy Carter‘s life although someone would say he was guided by Jesus Christ. I prefer north star because it’s a term sometimes associated with sailors And he was in the Navy. The north star of his values and of how he acted on those values to make the world a better place, including attempting to do so while president (although he was thwarted by political forces he could not control) should in a perfect world guide every politician in America… or at least every member of the Democratic Party. And so, while I marvel at the example of a good life so many spoke of, I am in pain because I know following that example will not happen except in the margins in the years ahead. Unless the Democratic Party breaks with the big money interests that Carter himself hated (Citizens United 😡), it will never direct its energies to defeating the evil that exists in society today (Putin, Trump, Musk Alito, et al) by offering the American people the transformational, sustainable development based future that’s out the waiting to be born…. which Carter knew existed.