"We are all butlers"

As follow up to my friend's email exortation to Choose love instead of fear or other petty emotions, and all will be well I asked her to clarify what she meant. She replied:

It’s hard to say what I’m saying exactly, other than in my belief that times will get even harder than they are, and there will be choices to made in how each of us treats one another, the basic option behind all that will are going through now and will be going through will boil down to two choices – love or fear. To the degree that we are able to observe our inner nature and slow down with a stimulus arrives, and choose the higher path (love) I believe we are supported. In the Biblical perspective, “the greatest of these is love” comes to mind. In the metaphysical perspective, love has a higher vibration than fear which lowers us. I believe we are closer to our creator and our ‘real selves’ when we choose to love, despite the illusions around us. I don’t know if that makes sense.

After teasing her a bit about sending her back to re-write (it's the English teacher in me, can't help), and trying my hardest to be polite and loving (!), I offered some of the following thoughts (slightly edited for this blog post).

My (short) reply is I don't really agree there are "only" two options, as you suggest (love/fear). Nor do I believe "love" has anything to do with what I thought we were talking about here, the context being Barack Obama/politics (which is what generated your original platitude). While what you say may be true when interacting with people at work or at home, I believe we as voters need to critically scrutinize our political leaders and when necessary speak up loud and clear. It may not be "nice" or "polite" or "loving" to do so, but politics is not about "love"--politics is about remaining clear-eyed and maintaining a healthy cynicism towards our elected officials. This is not a debasement of our inner self, as you suggest. Rather, it's a necessary responsibility.

To be frank, the message you send (in both your first comment and your second clarification) is sort of disturbing. I don't know if you voted for Obama, but I'm noticing that many people who not only voted for him but still support him, especially people who might otherwise call themselves social or fiscal conservatives, are guided by this sort of blind devotion, in spite of what I perceive to be evidence that he was not ready for prime time (to put it politely). I don't know if this applies to you, but that's what I'm hearing.

I watched a really good movie last night called Remains of the Day, starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. It's an old Merchant Ivory production, based on a novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, about a head butler (Hopkins) and head housekeeper (Thompson) serving in the household of a London aristocrat in the days leading up to World War II and how he was duped by the Nazis into propagating their propaganda, and how the butler dutifully served his master and looked the other way. What a powerful (and sad) story about loyalty and blind devotion. This morning I followed up and read a couple of reviews. One line from a Rolling Stone review stood out to me:

For Ishiguro, we are all butlers in the service of global masters who screw us up if we offer unquestioning trust.

"Unquestioning trust" is the message I'm hearing from Obama supporters, and your comments seem to reinforce my concerns. That you would sort of (gently) rebuke me in your first email about "petty emotions," as if to suggest that being critical of Obama is petty, and then, in your later clarification, imply that there are only two options (fear or love) when it comes to how we view this administration--is pretty disturbing. In the days preceding the rise of Nazi Germany, many people (like this London aristocrat) ignored or dismissed the significance of what was going on until it was too late.

There are plenty of "red flags" about this administration that should give all of us pause, and maybe we should "fear" a little bit. Personally I think it's OK to fear when many of our Congressmen and women don't actually read long and complex bills in their rush to pass bills for "our own good." I think it's OK to fear when legitimate criticism is mocked by our own elected leaders, including our president. I think it's OK to fear when the mainstream media stops being the responsible watchdog it should be and instead begins to take on the role of cheerleader for this administration. And I think it's OK to fear when otherwise intelligent and educated people have a hard time articulating why they believe what they believe and can rely only on feeling or emotion or symbolism or wishful thinking.

OK my short response is longer than I meant to be...if you're interested, here's an item that I stumbled on yesterday while browsing through Snopes. It's an open letter to Barack Obama, written by Lou Pritchett, former VP of Procter and Gamble, who apparently sent this to the New York Times but it wasn't published.

You Scare Me, by Lou Pritchett