I've followed the career of Glenn Beck for many years and listened to his radio program and watched his TV shows on many occasions. He is, as Donald J Trump has so eloquently pointed out, "a whack job" and proves it repeatedly over and over and over again. Most recently with AC360:
Tim Ferriss nailed it when after interviewing this bumbling jackass for a podcast he decided to title it "Inside the Mind of Glenn Beck, You Find…Walt Disney and Orson Welles?" That would be Fantasia with A Touch of Evil if you want to know exactly what he means. The interview with Ferriss is most enlightening and Beck kicks it off with a personal assessment of his drunken self a about the 8:30 minute mark when he talks about what a "pretty despicable guy" he was and that he was "not a good guy" as he defines "goodness." This direct violation of the Alcoholic Anonymous admonition to "always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films" (tradition 11) - something Glenn does throughout the interview - shows a tenuous grasp of AA's principles, but the declaration that he was "despicable" while suffering under the lash of addiction show's me that he doesn't really understand his own alcoholism and it illuminates his larger problem - he's a God damned moralist. It is true that for most people (80-90% of the general population) drunkards are despicable and not good but that is only because normal drinkers don't understand, and can never fully understand, the strange, unbelievable and dispiriting malady of alcoholism specifically or addiction more broadly.
As it turns out, alcoholics are in almost every case good people trapped by an illness of the body, mind and spirit with no perceivable way out. Once they start drinking or smoking or popping or snorting their drug of choice and craving sets in which is overpowering - hence an otherwise fine fellow can sit down on the couch for a Sunday football game and consume 2 or 3 six-packs of beer. Why? Because he was thirsty? NO - thirst, whatever thirst there might be, would have been quenched by beer number 2 or 3. In this example we're talking about roughly 200 ounces of liquid or 1.5 gallons and if someone drank a gallon and a half of chocolate milk watching the Steelers vs. Cowboys game you'd rightly consider them crazy - not bad. So lock them up, give 'em therapy and keep them away from chocolate milk and problem solved, right? Wrong.
Unfortunately there is a second edge to the sword that cuts down every alcoholic and addict no matter how hard they try, not matter how much therapy they get, no matter what extraordinary measures they employ to protect themselves - They have an overriding (and perfectly insane) compulsion to drink again no matter how much trouble it has caused them in the past. This is not a moral weakness (as it is often thought to be) or a lack of will power - it is a reflexive action like blinking or breathing and nothing, short of God's grace, can stop it. You can imagine how disillusioning this condition is for the alcoholic as he tries again and again to stop drinking only to find that he can not and all the troubles that befall him, as a result of his drinking, are associated with the idea that he's "not a good guy."
This insanity or malady or disease as you might define it is mirrored politically in Nicholas Kristof's "A 12-Step Program for Responding to President-Elect Trump" which is not so much a program of recovery, but a determined plan to keep drinking from the New York Times's poisoned challis until death, sweet death carries you away from this broken world. 12 Steps promoting the Will to Power and a begrudging acceptance of the election results while NOT accepting the results of the election - DENIAL is what they call in in A.A. He even throws in a plug for the paper (Step 5):
A.A.'s 12 Steps can be boiled down to very simple concepts - primary among them are the ideas of Admit and Accept. An idea, concept or insight must first be admitted into the mind and considered with lengthy contemplation leading to Acceptance of this "new" reality. The magic between Admitting and Accepting is called Belief for a person must believe it before they can accept it and belief comes slowly over time - if it comes at all. Many are the alcoholics who admit their condition, but never fully believe it to be true and a simple visit to any downtown street corner or local detox center will show you legions of these unfortunates - every one of whom have been to countless A.A. meetings for coffee and cookies but failed to internalize the truth of their own situation. So it is with the election protesters, the national news media and Glenn Beck. For their benefit I produce a short form 12 Step program on how to "recover" from Trump's election to POTUS - one day at a time people, one day at a time.
BECK: Oh I think he has already stated very clearly where he stands. He doesn't -- I don't know if anybody -- I mean look, Anderson, the word racism has been thrown around, and racist, so much to good, decent people that aren't racist. They're just not. And, please, I know I'm the most imperfect messenger to bring this to you, but the word has been thrown around about everyone. And so it doesn't mean anything anymore. And the problem is, when you throw a word around like that all the time, then you begin to dismiss the actual racists. And we have to have a discussion, aside from politics, about this small group of people and how this European and really pro-Russian nationalism is seeping into our country. It's very disturbing.This from a guy who constantly tells his radio audience to buy gold and freeze-dried food supplies because the end-times are just a few days away. He markets himself as a patriotic prepper and even moved his family to Texas so that they might ride out the coming apocalypse and live to see the "shining city on a hill" reborn under a constitutional republic. His run up to the 2016 election has been hilarious - the Mormon hatred of Trump is baked in - especially his man love for Ted Cruz (a modern day George Washington sent by God by Glenn's estimation) and the subsequent dismay when Cruz endorsed Trump post-convention had me shedding smiling tears of joy. You can't even make this stuff up, but make it up he does... day, after day talking about honor and courage and every other kind of virtue imaginable. Spinning tales of wonder from historical thread worked through his peculiar loom a tapestry of undaunted glory and depraved conspiracy is woven atop a Tempur-Pedic mattresses of absolute earnestness. It "Shouldn't Be Able To Cause This Much Fear", but for me, it does.
Tim Ferriss nailed it when after interviewing this bumbling jackass for a podcast he decided to title it "Inside the Mind of Glenn Beck, You Find…Walt Disney and Orson Welles?" That would be Fantasia with A Touch of Evil if you want to know exactly what he means. The interview with Ferriss is most enlightening and Beck kicks it off with a personal assessment of his drunken self a about the 8:30 minute mark when he talks about what a "pretty despicable guy" he was and that he was "not a good guy" as he defines "goodness." This direct violation of the Alcoholic Anonymous admonition to "always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films" (tradition 11) - something Glenn does throughout the interview - shows a tenuous grasp of AA's principles, but the declaration that he was "despicable" while suffering under the lash of addiction show's me that he doesn't really understand his own alcoholism and it illuminates his larger problem - he's a God damned moralist. It is true that for most people (80-90% of the general population) drunkards are despicable and not good but that is only because normal drinkers don't understand, and can never fully understand, the strange, unbelievable and dispiriting malady of alcoholism specifically or addiction more broadly.
As it turns out, alcoholics are in almost every case good people trapped by an illness of the body, mind and spirit with no perceivable way out. Once they start drinking or smoking or popping or snorting their drug of choice and craving sets in which is overpowering - hence an otherwise fine fellow can sit down on the couch for a Sunday football game and consume 2 or 3 six-packs of beer. Why? Because he was thirsty? NO - thirst, whatever thirst there might be, would have been quenched by beer number 2 or 3. In this example we're talking about roughly 200 ounces of liquid or 1.5 gallons and if someone drank a gallon and a half of chocolate milk watching the Steelers vs. Cowboys game you'd rightly consider them crazy - not bad. So lock them up, give 'em therapy and keep them away from chocolate milk and problem solved, right? Wrong.
Unfortunately there is a second edge to the sword that cuts down every alcoholic and addict no matter how hard they try, not matter how much therapy they get, no matter what extraordinary measures they employ to protect themselves - They have an overriding (and perfectly insane) compulsion to drink again no matter how much trouble it has caused them in the past. This is not a moral weakness (as it is often thought to be) or a lack of will power - it is a reflexive action like blinking or breathing and nothing, short of God's grace, can stop it. You can imagine how disillusioning this condition is for the alcoholic as he tries again and again to stop drinking only to find that he can not and all the troubles that befall him, as a result of his drinking, are associated with the idea that he's "not a good guy."
This insanity or malady or disease as you might define it is mirrored politically in Nicholas Kristof's "A 12-Step Program for Responding to President-Elect Trump" which is not so much a program of recovery, but a determined plan to keep drinking from the New York Times's poisoned challis until death, sweet death carries you away from this broken world. 12 Steps promoting the Will to Power and a begrudging acceptance of the election results while NOT accepting the results of the election - DENIAL is what they call in in A.A. He even throws in a plug for the paper (Step 5):
"And I’ll subscribe to a newspaper as one way of resisting efforts to squelch the news media or preside over a post-fact landscape — and also to encourage journalists to be watchdogs, not lap dogs."No alcoholic has ever surpassed this kind of self-centered delusion even on his or her worst day. As every drunk knows, the key to freedom is the ability to admit defeat - absolute and total loss of control and a rejection of the illusion that control will ever, under any circumstances, be regained. For the DC press people we're just not there yet. But slowly, very slowly it will come to them...
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| Think Different |
- Admit - President Trump. Say it every morning when you wake and before bed.
- Believe - It's real and it really happened and President Trump is POTUS.
- Accept - President Trump exists in our world - he's a real person with normal sized hands.
- Inventory - Why do you feel the way you do about President Trump and where are you at fault.
- Admit - Tell a friend or priest or shrink about your feeling and own them.
- Accept - Accept your part in why you feel the way you do about President Trump.
- Remove - Ask God to remove your petty fears and resentments
- Plan - Organize a way to mend the psychic break you've had with reality and your friends
- Fix - Make an effort to see the world from a different perspective and act accordingly.
- Admit - When old patterns of behavior emerge then name and admit them.
- Accept - Give yourself a break - don't be too tough on yourself because change is hard.
- Love - Reach out to your neighbor and fellow citizen to help them along the new path.
It works, it really does and a wonderful life awaits for those willing to Make America Great Again. Don't cling to the past - it didn't work and made you very unhappy. Let go and open your mind to new potential and opportunity. A world without Glenn Beck or Anderson Cooper and their made up hysteria awaits you if only you'll Believe.
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