Submission #8 to the New Yorker:
1. We admit we are
powerless over politics—that our lives have become unmanageable.
Oh, I'm powerless. What did we get—two lousy swing states? We had MoveOn, and Fahrenheit 9/11, and Martin Sheen (who admittedly isn't the president, but plays one on TV). We even had Jon Stewart saying he'd vote for Kerry. And protests and getting out the youth vote and the President lying in the State of the Union address and weaseling out of the Vietnam war and no explanation for him looking like Karl Rove's puppet during the debates. How did we only get two lousy swing states?
2. Come to believe
that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
What are we
talking about here, Bill Clinton? It's sure not Congress or the Supreme Court
that's going to return me
to sanity. There certainly aren't any world powers greater than ourselves.
Maybe Canada could restore us to sanity, eh?
3. Decide to turn
our will and our lives over to the care of a higher power.
Okay. Which
higher power? The
voters of Iowa and New Hampshire, who thought a stiff Massachusetts liberal
could swing voters away from the ultimate good ol' boy?
Perhaps I'm
not making progress here. I'll register as a Republican as soon as possible.
4. Make a searching
and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Well, I guess
we should have nominated John Edwards, or begged and begged and begged and
begged John McCain to come over to our side. Maybe we should have snuck into
his office and switched his party affiliation when he wasn't looking. In the
middle of the night, or one of those times when he was hugging President Bush.
John Kerry
fought the good fight. Maybe we should have come down hard against gay
marriage? I guess we could have rushed through a constitutional amendment
banning it, so that it wouldn't have been on the polls in those 11 states.
5. Admit to
ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
á
Didn't
want to give massive tax cuts to the rich.
á
Felt
that American schools were leaving quite a few children behind.
á
Thought
that fighting terrorism should involve fighting terrorists, rather than
starting wars that recruited more of them.
á
Wanted
the elderly and uninsured to have access to health care.
á
Doubted
that massive deficits really were the way to grow an economy.
6. Be entirely
ready to remove these defects of character.
Well, once I'm a Republican, I could become a selfish, ignorant upper-class white man, living on a gated estate, occasionally handing out bonuses to the help (in cash, as they're all illegals), but I hear all the country club memberships in Kennebunkport are taken this year.
7. Humbly strive to
remove our shortcomings.
I'll increase
the percentage that goes into my 401K! And I guess I could take a second job in
order to put the extra money into the stock market. Republicans tell me that
Halliburton and the oil companies never go wrong.
8. Make a list of
all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.
á President George W. Bush. All that protesting probably hurt his feelings.
á Donald Rumsfeld, for that letter to the editor calling him a war criminal.
á The stockholders of Halliburton, with my "No blood for oil" bumper sticker.
9. Make direct
amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them
or others.
Um—sorry,
guys.
10.
Continue to take personal
inventory, and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.
I can't seem
to get over wanting a cleaner environment, decent schools, healthcare, social
security, world peace, etc. I admit it.
11.
Improve our conscious
contact with a higher power through prayer and meditation, praying only for
knowledge of what we can change and the will to carry that out.
Does this mean I'm going to have to be born again?
12.
Having had a spiritual
awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to
electorally ill persons and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Schwarzenegger
in '08!