This Really Is An Outrage

I couldn't believe it when I followed this link at Protein Wisdom to Sullivan's An Alcoholic on Bush. Sullivan links to this rubbish attacking Bush for his alleged alcoholism via Yahoo's The Experts.

Having observed the president's behavior in office, I wonder if he might be wrong.  Perhaps not only the president, but also his administration, suffers from alcoholism.

It's posted by this terribly misguided individual.

Patrick Moore

I'll be speaking with you daily about how to use "The Principles," inspired by 12-step recovery programs, to improve your relationships, sex, parenting, and work challenges. I'll also be covering breaking news from a thoughtful perspective and taking a look at the underlying issues that drive American culture and how it relates to 12-step programs.

Eleven years ago, I got sober with the help of a 12-step program. Since that time, I've been writing, in one way or another, about how what I've learned on a personal level can be applied to the larger world.

As I've acknowledged here before, I have some experience in this regard and, God willing, will be celebrating 24 years of continuous sobriety in a short number of days.

Having been introduced to a certain program that number of years ago allowed me to meet and be encouraged by individuals who found a new way of life through working directly with the original founders of the basis for all the modern day 12 Step Programs, before said founders passed away.

They created, not just 12 Steps but also 12 Traditions, particularly for individuals who were able to cobble together some extended number of years of sobriety. And this dilettante, Patrick Moore, is basically violating the spirit of both the Steps and Traditions in his horrible and wholly inappropriate discourse for profit.

I've been watching that kind come and, very often go, for years. Look at this:

George Bush's problems are not only personal.  By necessity, they have become the problems of our entire country.  And our country is like the family of an alcoholic, devastated by the drinker's actions but powerless to stop them.

How utterly ridiculous. Had this ninety-day wonder, become evangelical for the cause, ever had the good fortune to meet a real old timer, as opposed to the new-aged, psycho-babbling idiots who've co-opted one of, if not the only program that effectively treats addiction, they'd have taken him out behind the church and slapped him silly until he stopped lecturing everyone on their rage disorder.

He and Yahoo should be ashamed at propping up such bunk for profit, let alone projecting it into the Nation's political discourse - a province for which it was never designed, nor intended to be interjected into.

Patrick Moore is yet another scam artist in the long line of addiction profiteers looking to score a buck off their stay in re-hab and some new found false-glow of a glorious life they don't have the good sense to get on with; instead, they forever ruminate in and around everyone elses supposed addiction disorder as a means of propping up their usually sad, non-introspective self.

One of the cardinal rules of recovery is that you don't even pretend to diagnose anothers addiction disorder, let alone profess some means of treating it. Yet, that doesn't stop this idiot from attempting to diagnose a country? and an individual who, regardless of whatever challenges he's faced and obviously overcome, went on to be elected President of the United States - twice?

Those facts alone speak to the relative value and accomplishment of those two individuals. Basically all Moore has accomplished is to betray the founding legacy of a noble program and write psycho-babble at a profit for some number of misguided souls suffering under the weight of addiction.

Moore is a charlatan of the worst kind. He and his work should be dismissed.

Comments

[jayhawk]

Um, remind me again...why would anyone bother to read Andrew Sullivan? In spite of some very good essays in the months after 9/11, he's been nothing but an overwrought cheapshot artist for years now. For God's sake, just delete the bookmark to his column and forget about him.

[Janus Daniels]

Have you no sense of humor?
Riehl wrote:
"... they'd have taken him out behind the church and slapped him silly until he stopped lecturing everyone on their rage disorder."