Jimmy Carter’s final message

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a proclamation that, following the death of the president or a former president, the American flag is to fly at half-staff for 30 days over all federal buildings, grounds and naval vessels throughout the United States, its territories and possessions. Therefore, because of President Carter’s recent passing, on January 20, 2025, the flag flying over the “inauguration” of convicted felon and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump will be flying at half-staff.

Ordinarily this would mean nothing more than a symbolic honouring of a former president. But because it’s going to be Trump and MAGA at the inauguration, he and his drooling acolytes will be positively, wildly triggered by it. They will scream conspiracy theories about how the half-staff flag was deliberately intended to disrupt Trump’s inauguration. They’ll foam at the mouth about how a “Democrat President” is upstaging their beloved toad-god.

I hope so, anyway. In 2016 Jimmy Carter came out and boldly proclaimed the truth that many Democrats were afraid to say, that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president, that he won the 2016 election because of Russian interference. In life he remained unequivocal about Trump’s unfitness for the office that he, Carter, filled so presidentially. In death he will get one final overt say, and it will be redolent with symbolic comeuppance. The half-staff flag will serve a dual purpose, to honour the life of Jimmy Carter, a great man, and to mourn the temporary ascendancy of a monster.

Had Carter died just ten days sooner, or a day after the inauguration, Trump would have missed out on the perceived symbolic disrespect. Of course, Trump isn’t only a narcissist, he is also a supremely stupid man. He might fail to notice the inadvertent slight. In case he misses it, I think we should emphasise the fact that the nation is in mourning because he won, and that we are mourning not just Carter but the democracy he represented. I think we should rub that in every chance we get in speech and posts on social media. Let it be known that the flag is flying not just FOR Carter but AGAINST Trump.

Furthermore, I think it’s a disgrace, to properly employ a word Trump frequently overuses, that Trump says he plans to attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral. I think the family should forbid his entry. Trump is a racist, a rapist, a stochastic terrorist, a thief, a felon and a traitor. He has no business attending the funeral of a man whose shoes he is not qualified to shine, let alone infesting the office of a man who once filled it so magnificently.

I will say it again and for all time: Donald Trump is Constitutionally forbidden to hold the office of president of the United States. The fourteenth amendment explicitly says so. If we are forced to witness his unlawful inauguration, let us seize every symbolic chance to protest it. Let’s use the half-staff flag as our protest. I think Jimmy Carter would have approved.

Finally, brothers and sisters, I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year. Despite the awfulness of another illegitimate Trump “presidency,” we all have our private islands of individual happiness. Let us embrace that fact, each and every one of us, against the cold and cruel political decline of a once great nation, and use our individual comforts to keep alive the hope it will be restored in four years’ time.

Robert Harrington

Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.