Your healing can begin with Political Junkies Anonymous

By David McElroy · June 23, 2011

I’ve already done the hardest part. I’ve confessed that I was once a serious addict — a political junkie addicted to the highs of winning elections and helping my ideological bedfellows take over part of the world.

But as a recovering political prostitute, it’s time for me to try to help others make a break from their addictions, too. So I’m happy to announce the founding of Political Junkies Anonymous.

If you’re a political junkie, you already know it in your heart — and you know you need help. You’ve found yourself caring more about elections than real life. You’ve made the mistake of thinking that it really mattered whether your favorite candidate won. Worst of all, you’ve taken buffoons such as Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann seriously. Yes, my friends, you need help.

Here at Political Junkies Anonymous, you can meet with other political junkies who have come to understand that majoritarian political systems are just traps that let you compete with other groups to impose your will on everybody else. We can jointly admit that we love the drive for that power — and we can help each other as we seek to learn to leave other people alone to live their lives as they choose. The program has two levels — one for the casual abuser and another for the hardcore cases who’ve turned to political prostitution.

Like any good 12-step program, we have a system for you to work through. Take a look at our steps and see if you’re ready to admit you’re a junkie and begin breaking free:

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless to control our craving for electoral politics — that our lives had become unmanageable from political overload.

Step 2: We came to believe it was only through the power of individual choice that we could be restored to sanity rather than live with the insanity of majoritarian dictatorship.

Step 3: We made a decision to turn power over to individuals to allow them to make personal choices for their lives rather than trying to raise up rulers over them.

Step 4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of the harm that our previous political activities have had on others.

Step 5: We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our coercive political sins.

Step 6: We were entirely ready for God to remove the defects of character that made us believe we had any right to choose rulers over other people.

Step 7: We humbly asked God to remove the shortcomings and delusions that led to getting involved in politics and polluting our minds with garbage from pandering cable TV news shows.

Step 8: We made a list of all persons we could think of who had been harmed by the politicians we worked for and supported.

Step 9: We apologized to those who had been hurt by the politicians we worked for and supported, except in the cases of those who hadn’t yet figured out they were still being hurt by willingly following politics.

Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory and we confessed to each other whenever we felt ourself start to desire power over others or desire to watch idiots argue on TV.

Step 11: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for better understanding of the morality of not forcing our will upon other people.

Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other political junkies and began trying to build a world where everyone could make choices for his or her own life.

If you’re ready to take your life back and quit trying to control other people, it’s time to join us. We can turn off cable news. We can quit working in campaigns. We can quit pretending that we’re doing good things when we send money to politicians. We can start building alternatives that don’t require us to tell other people how to run their lives.

Yes, it’s tough, but we can do it. Altogether now: Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

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