Readers,
This morning I gave myself a little gift: I watched the first episode of Season 2 of the Netflix series Queer Eye. This show fills me joy, and sometimes even stronger emotions. For example, forty five minutes and two cups of coffee into Season 2, I was sitting on my sofa, weeping like a baby, while I watched five gay men and the congregation of a church in the rural south embrace each other. I'm not joking, I was: Weeping. Like. A. Baby.
Now, I know you're all waiting for the dazzling segue way here: what do the heartwarming LGBTQ-powered makeover show, Queer Eye, and the autobiography of former FBI director James Comey, A Higher Loyalty, have to do with each other? Well, here's my answer: they both gave me hope.
Readers, this is not an easy time to be an American. Living abroad, as I do now, it's hard to express to the people around me the feeling of dread that I experience when I watch the news. I think many Americans have begun to live in this state of fear. I'm afraid that the country I love and believe in, the country I am deeply loyal to, is being torn apart. I'm afraid that the goodness at the core of the American philosophy is eroding, that we the people have failed each other in some fundamental way. It's like seeing a friend slowly succumb to alcoholism.
James Comey's autobiography, A Higher Loyalty, chronicles his experience watching this first hand. We all know how this story ends: with Jim Comey, scandal-beset and stranded in LA, receiving the news that he has just been fired from the FBI by President Trump via a news broadcast. But where does that story start? How did he get there? What decisions did he make along the way?
I came into this book with an open mind. Like many, I was skeptical about the handling of the Clinton emails, but I was also sympathetic to Comey based on how he had been treated by the current administration. I thought he seemed like an OK guy whenever I saw him on TV. Now, you could say that I'm naive, or partisan, or easily persuaded, and that may all be true. But it doesn't change this fact: reading A Higher Loyalty has me absolutely convinced that James Comey is more than an OK guy. As he guides you through his years fighting the Mafia, untangling the web of NSA surveillance and government-sponsored enhanced interrogation, there is a single through-line. For better or worse, Jim Comey shows us an example of what it means to live a principle-driven life.
Readers, America is a nation founded on principles. It has not always lived up to those principles, but nonetheless it is a country whose inception was based around a creed, a set of truths, held to be self-evident by all those who call themselves American. A Higher Loyalty explores what it means to live your life according to a creed. To dedicate yourself to the service of your principles, come hell or high water. I respect and admire that, even if I don't always like the outcomes. It's so easy to live without rules, to skate by without ever really having to think about what it is you stand for, and who you take yourself to be. Because of this, it's easy to make decisions selfishly, and justify the principles retrospectively. Reading A Higher Loyalty gave me two things: (1) hope that there are principled people in government, and that they are fighting the good fight, and (2) a reminder that principles are important, thinking about them, living them, sacrificing for them.
But what about Queer Eye? Good question readers. Here's the thing about principles, they only exist in the abstract. You need people and situations to give them meeting. Like, for example, putting five gay men in the heart of bible-belt, rural south, a territory notorious for rendering great wrongs against the queer community. Switching the setting of Queer Eye to communities around Atlanta for the reboot of the program has fundamentally altered the program. When all the hair and remodeling is set aside, the show, for brief moments, becomes a powerful vehicle driving forward the process of reconciliation. In these moments the people on the show set aside long-held principles in favor of relationships. And it's messy: you can see the anger on Bobby's face put there by the mere thought of the church, you can see Antoni burst into tears as a woman recites Psalm 139. These are hurts that run deep. And so they should. But maybe they can also be healed. So Queer Eye gives me hope for America in a different way: it makes me hope that we the people might be able to listen to each other, and figure out a path to reconciliation.
James Comey is no wizard of prose, but his simple, straightforward style is imposing and at time gestures to the grand. Here he is, hitting home his central theme, "Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington - to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth."