+
upworthy
Democracy

Jimmy Carter shares four ways Americans can save democracy in a powerful January 6 op-ed

jimmy carter, january 6, new york times

Jimmy Carter at the Commonwealth Club in California, 2013.

It’s been a year since the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol Building and it’s clear that America has failed to learn the lessons of the uprising. The attack on the Capitol left five dead and defaced a monument to the greatest gift that humankind has bestowed upon itself, democracy.

It was a prime example of the damage that has been done to this country by opportunists on the right who promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.

The riot showed what people in power put at risk when they spread misinformation and cast doubt on the democratic process. Surely, this horrific example would have caused people in power—whether in Washington, the media, or America’s religious institutions—to cool down the rhetoric and restore faith in democracy.

But sadly, it hasn’t.

A new NRR Ipsos poll found that two-thirds of GOP voters, and just over one-third of all voters, still believe the “Big Lie.”


via Wikimedia Commons

On the one-year anniversary of the attack, former president Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed for The New York Times to warn America of the danger of promoting the “Big Lie” and how it can lead to the downfall of our “precious democracy.” But he didn’t just sound the alarm, he also provided four practical steps on which Americans of all political stripes can reverse course and improve our collective faith in vital institutions.

Carter opens “I Fear for Our Democracy” by lamenting the fact the uprising hasn’t been taken seriously enough.

“There followed a brief hope that the insurrection would shock the nation into addressing the toxic polarization that threatens our democracy,” Carter writes. “However, one year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems.”

Carter has a real fear that Americans may lose democracy altogether.

“I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally—the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power—has become dangerously fragile at home,” Carter writes.

via Wikimedia Commons

The former president has a long history of promoting democracy abroad and understands its power to transform a nation.

“After I left the White House and founded the Carter Center, we worked to promote free, fair and orderly elections across the globe,” Carter writes. “I led dozens of election observation missions in Africa, Latin America and Asia, starting with Panama in 1989, where I put a simple question to administrators: ‘Are you honest officials or thieves?’”

Ever the pragmatic politician, Carter laid out four ways that Americans can work together, regardless of party, to undo the damage done to the democratic process over the last few years.

1. Gather around common values.

“First, while citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility, and respect for the rule of law.”

2. Reform the election system.

"Second, we must push for reforms that ensure the security and accessibility of our elections and ensure public confidence in the accuracy of results.”

3. Be about more than politics.

"Third, we must resist the polarization that is reshaping our identities around politics. We must focus on a few core truths: that we are all human, we are all Americans and we have common hopes for our communities and our country to thrive.”

4. Fight disinformation.

"Lastly, the spread of disinformation, especially on social media, must be addressed.”

via Wikimedia Commons

In the op-ed, Carter refrains from speculating on what would happen in America if its citizens completely lost all faith in the democratic process. But it's not hard to imagine it would quickly lead to the decay of every institution that upholds the fragile framework for freedom and civility.

“Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss,” Carter warns in his final paragraph. “Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.”

You can read the entire op-ed at The New York Times.


Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo via Canva, @WhattheADHD/Twitter

The 'bionic reading' font is designed to help keep you focused and read faster.

Reading is a fundamental tool of learning for most people, which is why it's one of the first things kids learn in school and why nations set literacy goals.

But even those of us who are able to read fluently might sometimes struggle with the act of reading itself. Perhaps we don't read as quickly as we wish we could or maybe our minds wander as our eyes move across the words. Sometimes we get to the end of a paragraph and realize we didn't retain anything we just read.

People with focus or attention issues can struggle with reading, despite having no actual reading disabilities. It can be extremely frustrating to want to read something and have no issues with understanding the material, yet be unable to keep your mind engaged with the text long enough to get "into" what you're reading.

Keep ReadingShow less

A guy passes out on his bed eating pizza.

A 29-year-old woman had a baby girl, and after a brief maternity leave, she had to return to work. She couldn't afford childcare, so her husband, 35, reluctantly agreed to watch the baby while she was at work.

“It’s important to know that he’s been unemployed since 2021,” the woman wrote on Reddit’s AITA subforum. “He receives benefits. It’s also important to know that he’s extremely lazy. He doesn’t cook, clean, or help out in any way. I was nervous about leaving her home with her father, but I had no choice.”

The mother had reason to be worried about leaving her baby home alone with her husband, but in the beginning, things seemed fine. “When I came back from work, she was clean and sleeping. The next few times I came home, he was either playing with her, feeding her, or out for a walk with her. I was happy,” she wrote.

Keep ReadingShow less

Only child asks her friends what it's like to grow up with siblings.

Ahhh, siblings. Sometimes they're your best friends and other times your living room turns into an MMA octagon over the remote control. If you grew up with brothers and sisters, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to be an only child. (That's not to say you didn't dream about it when your sister stole your favorite shirt for the 30th time.)

But not everyone has siblings, so it can be equally as hard for someone who grew up as an only child to picture what it would be like to have them. Only children also likely had moments where they dreamt of having a little brother or sister, not realizing the literal torment siblings can inflict on each other.

TikTok creator Lonnie IIV recently posted a video of himself with two other friends seemingly out to lunch, when the girl in the group asked what it was like to grow up with siblings. In less than a minute she realized she lucked out being an only child because her two guy friends gave her a crash course in sibling behavior.

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo: courtesy BioCarbon Engineering/WikiCommons

Technology is the single greatest contributor to climate change but it may also soon be used to offset the damage we've done to our planet since the Industrial Age began.

In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire "seed missiles" into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing. Less than a year later, thousands of those seed missiles have sprouted into 20-inch mangrove saplings that could literally be a case study in how technology can be used to innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.

Keep ReadingShow less
Health

Artists got fed up with these 'anti-homeless spikes.' So they made them a bit more ... comfy.

"Our moral compass is skewed if we think things like this are acceptable."

Photo courtesy of CC BY-ND, Immo Klink and Marco Godoy

Spikes line the concrete to prevent sleeping.


These are called "anti-homeless spikes." They're about as friendly as they sound.

As you may have guessed, they're intended to deter people who are homeless from sitting or sleeping on that concrete step. And yeah, they're pretty awful.

The spikes are a prime example of how cities design spaces to keep homeless people away.

Keep ReadingShow less