On this day in 1935 — Exactly 80 years ago! — the two most famous drunks in history met and formed the most successful cult in American history. Those two drunks were, of course, Bill Wilson and Dr Bob Smith. I don’t think these guys really meant to do evil in the world. But that’s what they did. Rather than approach alcohol addiction as a health or social problem, they approached it as a religious problem. They explicitly when back to the Oxford Group — a movement of people who considered themselves sinners and who wanted to purify themselves. This is where the vaunted “Twelve Steps” comes from.
If you’ve spent any time actually reading the official AA discussion of the Twelve Steps, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, you will find just how arbitrary they are. While reading the book, about halfway through the steps I had a sudden realization: it was a first draft. You probably know the experience of writing an essay, being about a thousand words in, and realizing that you are making exactly the opposite argument you started out making. It’s a profound experience: discovery through writing. But Bill Wilson and his followers didn’t do that. They just forged ahead, contorting their arguments more and more to get to the end without having to rethink the system.
A Orange (who has written more thoroughly about AA than anyone I know of) wrote, “Those statements imply that the original members of AA looked long and hard for something, anything, that would work to save alcoholics from self-destruction, anything to break the cycle of addiction, and that the Twelve Steps were what finally worked for those pioneering alcoholics.” But that, of course, is not what happened at all. “The truth is that a newly-sober alcoholic named William Griffith [Bill] Wilson — a down-on-his-luck former Wall Street hustler who put on airs of having once been a prosperous stock broker — just sat down, in December of 1938, and wrote up twelve commandments for the new religious group that he and fellow alcoholics Doctor Robert Smith and Clarence Snyder had started.”
None of this would matter, of course, if AA and the Twelve Steps actually worked. But they don’t. In fact, AA uses a kind of tautology, “It works if you work it!” So to them, people stay sober as long as they go to meetings. But the correlation clearly works the other way around: only people who are sober go to meetings. And, at this point, the vast majority of people who go to meetings do so only because they are forced to by the criminal justice system. If it weren’t for this, I doubt the group would attract 10% of its current members.
The other side of this is that Hollywood has pushed AA in a big way. You think Scientology is the biggest cult of Hollywood? No way! It’s AA! And make no mistake: AA is a cult. Some have claimed that it isn’t, because it doesn’t have a charismatic leader. But that is a misunderstanding of the movement. Bill Wilson (“Bill W”) of legend is that figure. He’s the one who wrote the Twelve Steps and they are consecrated. No one is allowed to say, “You know, that ninth step may not be such a good idea. Most people don’t like ex-druggies dragging them into their own little trips.” No. The Twelve Steps are perfect. They can never be questioned, just as the divinity of Jesus cannot be questioned. AA is a cult.
The only credible research I’ve read on AA’s effectiveness found two things. First, it found that AA was exactly as good as nothing in terms of how long it kept people off drugs. Second, it found that people in AA had relapse episodes that were roughly three times as long as those who were not involved in the program. That’s not too surprising. Consider first that AA tells addicts that they are powerless. But even more important, if you fall off the wagon, you know you are going to have to go back to the group and tell them what a terrible sinner you are. I know that would make me keep using for as long as possible.
AA is a great pox on our society — a kind of court mandated torture used on people who like drugs too much. And it has been harming our society for 80 years.
As many of you know, I live here in the Bay Area of California — you know: the good part. And we are in the middle of the worst drought since well before the rise of the Aztec Empire. So we are looking very seriously at building a greywater system. For those of you who don’t know, greywater is wastewater that comes from pretty much everywhere but your toilet. For example, your dishwater is greywater. You wouldn’t drink it, but it is fine for other uses like watering your plants or for your toilet. It’s all about efficiency: using the water that you have the best way you can.
American political life revolves around two mutually reinforcing truths. The first is that our democracy has been severely corrupted by money; the second is that the conservative movement, and hence the Republican Party, is dominated by ideological extremists who demonstrate zero interest in the problems of actual governance. Taken together, these truths not only define our political debate; they ensure that virtually nothing is decided on its merits — up to and including our national elections.
The Devil went down to Beaverton. Or to put more clearly, President Obama went over to 
Tribalism is so important to humans that we almost never think in terms of it. I, of course, am obsessed with the idea. During my lifetime, I’ve seen tribalism get so diced up to the point where opportunity is just not a thing anymore. There was a time — barring a Great Depression — when anyone could have a job if they wanted it. Now, that’s just not true. The rich take care of their own. The middle class is just struggling to survive. And the poor are in the same state that they’ve always been, with the exception that the voices denouncing them are louder and more respected than ever.
Over at The Daily Dot, SE Smith brought my attention to a similar tribal divide, 
On this day in 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state in the Union — squeezed right between two of my favorite states: California and Oregon. The Dakotas would not become states until much later — largely owing to the fact that no one wanted them. Even today, the official motto of North Dakota is, “Keep the hydrocarbons, leave the land.” But we don’t feel this way about Minnesota. Minnesota is an official Good State™ right up there with the good parts of California (northern) and Oregon (Portland). So rather than provide a history of the state and explain why it is surrounded by the wackos in the Dakotas on the west and Scott Walker on the east and yet doesn’t stink, I will just provide a random list of good things about Minnesota.
ST. MARYS, OH—Apparently content to hang around dead people rather than celebrate like a normal person, area weirdo John Mills spent most of Mother’s Day at a local cemetery, creeped-out sources confirmed. “This is your mom’s special day, and you’re supposed to be taking her to brunch or a spa, not staring at some tombstone,” reported the sources, adding that lurking in a graveyard like some sort of ghoul may in fact be the very worst way to honor the woman who gave you life. “Is it too hard to do something nice for your mother just once a year? Then again, with that miserable look on his face, I bet his mom’s happy he forgot all about her.” At press time, sources reported that the freak had tossed some flowers on the ground that would’ve looked so much nicer in a vase in his mother’s home.
Once upon a time, Christians were fed to the lions. Even though that appears to have been political, Christians called it religious persecution. But it shows just how hollowed out Christianity has become that today, persecution is thought to be any instance when the entire society doesn’t accept Christian dogma as The Truth™. The best example of this is the constant complaint about, 
One of the great conservative canards is that the government can’t do anything right. Not only is this wrong, but the government is very often better at offering its complicated services than the private sector is at offering its simple services. But the one area where the government does the worst job is when the operations are secret. The things we’ve learned years later about covert operations are often scandalous in their stupidity. Of course, these are exactly the things that conservatives most approve of with regard to the government. And not surprisingly, they are also the parts of the government that are most controlled by conservatives.