Meeting the Enemy

So Jimmy Carter is meeting with Hamas leaders. It goes directly against the policies of the Bush administration -- indeed, the policies of many recent presidents -- to meet with an 'enemy'. The expressed reason is that it gives legitimacy to the enemy, something that can't be admitted.

Oppressed peoples strive against their oppressors. If the oppressors refuse to talk with them, negotiate with them, even acknowledge their presence, the oppressed find ways to speak more loudly, and if they are subjected to harm then they don't mind harming the oppressors. Thus terrorism.

I wonder about powerful people who won't spend time with lessers, who won't listen to a point of view unlike their own. Are they afraid of someone less powerful? That's crazy. The only way this is possible is if they hold power but somewhere deep inside fear that they aren't as powerful as they appear, even to the point of impotence. Do they want to avoid being confronted with their own actions that result in others being harmed? Ooh. Ouch.

I also wonder what these men -- and it always seems to be men, doesn't it? -- are like in their marriages. When problems arise in marriage, as they inevitably shall, do these men sit down with their wives, listen to the other point of view, and negotiate a fair solution? If they're capable of doing this at the personal level why do they avoid doing it at the political level? Or do they just get their way in their marriages all the time, just like they do in office?

I suspect that what's happening is that when a politician refuses to meet and deal with an enemy, he does not know how to meet and deal with his own dark side. He hasn't developed the skill. If this is so then it means he lives with an amount of fear, even terror, that something inside him is wrong or evil but he doesn't know how to confront it, how to approach it, how to work past it without giving in to it (why was Star Wars so popular? Because each of us knows the struggle between the Dark Side and the Force). And if this is so then I am uncomfortable with the most 'powerful' men in the world not having conquered themselves, refusing to look inside, and instead projecting an enemy outside themselves to keep the focus away from the feared reality. These aren't the most advanced people to lead us.

Conservative pundits frame Jimmy Carter as a failed president. They badmouth the humanitarian things he does, and meeting with enemy leaders is just unthinkable. Perhaps they are being faced with a person more advanced than they are prepared to understand, and rather than try to understand and learn from a superior example they make him into another enemy. This would guarantee that we do not grow as a culture toward something better. We remain a culture of people who can't confront our own dark side and have to fight off any hint of it. The dark side thus remains and others are harmed by our making them into enemies. How sad.