Materialists Anonymous

Posted on November 4, 2004 in Campaign 2004 Compassion

Poor Republicans. They woke up yesterday with a hangover after the binge that they made of the election. They’re not ready yet to take the first step in a national recovery program: We admitted we were powerless over materialism and that our lives had become unmanageable. So for now, they are still glutting themselves on greed and doing everything they can to protect it even though the protecting makes them even sicker and more afraid.

So what’s one to do? In the dysfunctional families of their youth, the strategy was to kick the hell out of anyone who screwed up. They think: if the Liberals win, that’s what is going to happen to us. So to prevent that from happening, they live in denial about the way that their thinking screws up their lives and the lives of the people they share this country with. So what’s a good person, an unconditional lover of his fellow human beings, and a would-be nurturant parent to do for these big children who still throw fits at the thought of self-transformation? What any loving relative of an addict must do. Wait it out. Hope that one day they will get sick of the vomit that’s all over them, the fear, the agony, the mistrust. Hope that they will realize that without drinking they can still be drunks, addicted to the same old views that led them to slam their heads against the wall in the first place. And when and if they do, have the hand of love ready to give them.

You’ve done it again, Republicans. But I’m still here. And I’ll help you up when you’re ready.