The 12 Steps of Trumpaholics Anonymous
Share this with a friend who needs it, but you can pretend that you just think it's funny.
When I first moved from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1997 to do stand-up comedy, two things quickly happened.
One, I met more gay people than I had ever met before in my life. Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to do. Before I moved I had only met one openly gay person before in my life.
Two, I met more people openly in Alcoholics Anonymous than I had ever met before in my life. That was even less of a challenge. Before I moved, I had met zero people who were openly in AA.
Obviously, people in AA are supposed to be second A (Anonymous) by definition, but that was not how it seemed to work for the people in AA that I met. This was the ‘90s comedy scene in San Francisco. There were two major groups in the scene: pot smokers and people in recovery. (There were gay people in both groups.) This meant people often thought I was in AA because I didn’t smoke pot, and I wasn’t much of a drinker. Without naming names–although many of these people name their own names–some comics were in recovery because years of access to free alcohol in comedy clubs can often become a problem. Other comics were in recovery because they had a substance abuse issue before they started comedy, then they went into recovery. Stand-up comedy became a new, fun (and hopefully more healthy) way to fill their time.
I learned a lot about recovery programs from witnessing people in my life who were in them. I’ve had friends who have been in recovery for years and have stayed away from whatever substance had power over them. And I’ve also had close friends be in what looked like strong recovery and then, seemingly out of nowhere, fall off the wagon… and then clean up… and then fall off the wagon… and then… and then…
I remember getting a call from one of these recovery friends one time. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time. It was clear he was waaaaaaay off the wagon. He wanted to borrow money. I knew I couldn’t give him money, but I called another friend of mine, Bucky Sinister. Bucky was in recovery (and still is). Since I’ve known Bucky, he has regularly been public about his recovery in his work as a poet, stand-up comedian, and author. Back then, I asked Bucky what I should do about my friend. Bucky was clear that I should not give him money. I asked what else I should do. Bucky made it even clearer that until my friend knew, himself, that he had a problem that there was nothing I could do. My friend had to hit rock bottom and ask for help. Help getting clean, not help getting money to feed his addiction. I have never forgotten that. You have to want to help yourself before others can truly help you.
I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Everywhere you turn, another Trumper is claiming that they didn’t vote for something that Trump is doing, even though that something is something that Trump told us he was going to do. Just last week #1 Trump fluffer, Joe Rogan, was confused about Trump–the guy who campaigned on mass deportations–mass-deporting people. This week MAGA Americans are shocked that after all of Trump’s talk about the Epstein list that Trump was able to turn on a dime (and turn on his gaslight), saying to his base, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Meanwhile, I’m only shocked that Trump hasn’t tried to actually sell his base Trump-branded gaslights. Seriously, it’s right there!
Andrew Schulz–human Trump megaphone/comedian/maybe America’s foremost political journalist according to the New York Times–had a moment of clarity when he got a face full of the Trump gaslight. On his podcast Flagrant, Schulz turned to his cohosts, as if looking for a paternal rub on his forehead, and half declared/half confessed, “So we're stupid. Yeah. We're the idiots, guys.”
Yup, Andrew. Yes, you are. Now that knocks you down the New York Times list to maybe the second best political journalist in America.
For many Trumpian Americans, the Epstein thing has become the telephone poll that broke the camel’s back. Trumpers are starting to think that America is not being made great again. There’s open-faced regret from the podcasting bros, the professional MAGA cheerleaders, the regular Americans who vote Republican the same way some people wear Yankee caps just to be associated with the “winning team.” I’ve seen this before. The thing these people clung to–the thing that used to give them a feeling of joy–is now making them feel worse and worse. I’ve gotten this phone call before. These people have two choices.
Continue to make the same bad choice to guzzle the spiked Trump Kool-Aid and wake up every day feeling awful, a.k.a. chasing the MAGA dragon, the Ma-gag-on!
OR…Recognize that they’ve hit rock bottom and get some help.
Whenever I express my own personal brand of sass in the direction of the newly reluctant Trumpers, I am often told that we, on the left, shouldn’t shame them or mock them. Apparently we shouldn’t turn our backs on them now that they have “turned their backs on Trump.” When I hear that I quickly remember Bucky’s message.
I can’t help you until you decide to help yourself.
“Helping yourself” doesn’t mean calling yourself stupid on your podcast and then moving on to the other topics of the day. That is the barest of bare minimums. In Alcoholics Anonymous there are 12 Steps to work through if you truly want to be in recovery. There are other ways to recovery, but the are a great road map to making yourself great again. Today, I have taken the liberty of slightly rewriting them for the MAGA Americans who are bottoming out. (My changes are in BOLD.) These are the 12 Steps to Recovering From Trump. Say them out loud if you recognize yourself.
The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous of Trumpaholics Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol Donald Trump and MAGA — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power Political Movement greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God inclusive, class-conscious, equity-focused political leadership as we understood Him the work of people like Howard Zinn, Dolores Huerta, Yuri Kochiyama, Jane Elliot, Marsha P. Johnson, Krystal Two Bulls, Alice Wong, and Kimberlé Crenshaw.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. (No notes. This is still perfect.)
5. Admitted to our God Facebook, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs political wrongdoings.
6. Were entirely ready to have God our old favorite news websites and MAGA content creators blocked so we can remove all these defects of lies from our character browser history and algorithm.
7. Humbly asked Him Amy Goodman and her show Democracy Now to remove our news shortcomings. We will subscribe and at least listen to the headline section everyday.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. (Again, no notes.)
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others would force them to be reminded unnecessarily of our MAGA nonsense.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. (AND I MEAN PROMPTLY!)
11. Sought through prayer and meditation education and activism to improve our conscious contact with God at least one of the current civil rights movements for justice and equity for all (mutual aid, immigrants rights, LGBTQ+ activism, stopping antisemitism, freeing Palestine, dismantling the police state, coaching youth sports that include trans kids) as we understood it, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. continually acquiring knowledge of newer civil rights movements and incorporating them into our activism.
12. Having had a spiritual political and cultural awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics our former MAGA/extreme right wing/Rogansphere community, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Let us sing.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaamen!
And listen to Black woooooooooooooomen!
Obviously, AA isn’t the only path to sobriety. And obviously there’s more than one way to get out of the grip of white supremacy. But I find that the 12 steps are a helpful way to think through this.
Admittedly, this is not a new way to think about recovering from being awash in bad information and acting on it. I first came across this idea years ago when I did an episode of United Shades of America called “Where Do We Even Start With White Supremacy?” (Season 5, Episode 1, available on HBOMax.) That is one of my favorite episodes of the series and not just because my mom is in it. CNN had been after me to make a sequel to the KKK episode for obvious reasons. I was determined to talk about white supremacy as more than just the KKK. This episode was the “sequel” we delivered, a nuanced treatise on the history of America’s white supremacy.
In the episode I interviewed some ex-white supremacists. One was so fresh to being an ex-white supremacist that he was still, at the time, listed as a neo nazi on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. These men knew that the best way to stay an ex-white supremacist was to work everyday to turn more white supremacists into ex-white supremacists. The way they talked about their old lives as active white supremacists reminded me of the way that my recovery friends talked about their old lives as substance abusers. It is no surprise that some of these ex-white supremacists were also in recovery. Bad programming and bad inputs lead to bad decisions and bad behavior in multiple areas in your life. You have to actively and regularly make good choices and take in good inputs to reprogram yourself. These ex-white supremacists and my recovery friends all agree that there isn’t an end to when you do this work. It continues as long as you live.
My friend who called me for money when he had fallen off the wagon had a recovery phrase that he repeated often when he was actively in his recovery.
“When you aren’t using, your addictions are right outside the door doing push-ups waiting for you to slip.”
Even while you are doing your good recovery work your weakness is getting stronger and stronger. So if you open that door and invite your addiction back in, your addiction is inevitably going to take you down faster and more painfully than before. It is obviously the same way with Trump. After Trump’s acolytes followed his orders and tried to overthrow the United States government on January 6th, 2021, many Trumpers loudly claimed that they were done with him. Many in the leadership of the Republican party stated that they would never support Trump again in any way. Many newspapers wrote Trump's political eulogy, even in the New York Times. How did that work out?
If Andrew Schulz, Joe Rogan, Roseanne Barr, and whoever else is truly done with Trump, I only ask for one thing. Show me. Every day. For the rest of your life. One. Step. At. A. Fucking. Time.
WHO’S WITH ME? FALL COMEDY TOUR
I did my last show of the summer in Durham, NC. It was a great night. My friend Dwayne Kennedy opened for me, and we had a special guest performer, my 14-year-old daughter. She sings and plays guitar. She has done a bunch of shows with me in and around the Bay Area, but this was her very first road gig with me. We had 800 people in the venue. She walked onstage and performed like a showbiz veteran. To have my friend Dwayne—who I met when I was two weeks into my stand-up comedy career—introduce my daughter and then get to watch her sing was almost too much to bear. I had to pull myself together and stop weeping so I could do the show. Here’s a picture of the three of us a few hours before the show.
We have a bunch of dates on the tour coming up in the fall. Get your tickets at the links below.
November 7 (2 shows) - Tulsa, OK
November 8 (3 shows) - Oklahoma City. OK
November 20-22 (5 shows) - Louisville, KY
We are still booking more shows. Two more dates will be announced soon!
Me & Mahogany Mommies & YOU!
I’ve been wearing these Mahogany Mommies political sweatshirts and t-shirts for years now. Well recently Joi, the owner of Mahogany Mommies, brought me on as a brand ambassador, and I couldn’t be more excited. I was happily paying for these shirts, and now she let’s me have a few. YOU even can get in on the deal too! Any Mahogany Mommies shirt you want is 15% off. Just use my code WKB at check out!
People have even been showing up to shows wearing them. Check out the picture below. We look like a crime fighting team! I guess we kinda are though.
Who’s With Me? Merch
Once you’ve got your Mahogany Mommies situation squared away, check out the Who’s With Me? merch selection.
Listen to the latest ACLU podcast!
After the show in Durham, my daughter and I went to New York City so I could do a rare in-person interview for the ACLU podcast At Liberty. I was honored to be able to speak with Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. Although we had never met before, it was an incredible conversation that was breezy, intimate, deep, and surprisingly funny. I want to remind you that Mahmoud was never once charged with any crime during his 104 day detention. He missed the first two months of his newborn son’s life while he was illegally detained. His wife Noor kept his cause in the press while taking care of a newborn. The episode will be out soon. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss it.
In the meantime, check out the most recent episode! I interviewed Emerson Sykes who is a staff attorney at The ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. We talked the difference between free speech and the First Amendment. It’s good preparation for the Khalil conversation. Listen here at www.aclu.org/libertybell
Check out PBS’s CIVICS MADE EASY!
My friend Ben Sheehan has a new, easy-to-digest show about our political system called Civics Made Easy. It is from the good people at PBS. Those good people are having a really bad week because of a Republican-lead Congress. The Republicans pulled seven billion dollars in previously-allocated foreign aid and over one billion dollars in previously-allocated funding for both PBS and NPR. It is all positively ghoulish. Public media is essential for so many people because it is locally focused and FREEEEEEE! Please watch my friend’s new show that was funded by our government and people like you to make us all smarter and feel hopeful. And best of all for your busy schedule, the episodes are less than 15 minutes long. Here’s the first episode.
Ben is going to also be a guest on my July Office Hours next Friday, July 25 at 11am PST. My Office Hours are usually reserved for paid subscribers, but this month we’re inviting EVERYONE. Come one, come all. Everyone needs a civics lesson from Ben.
Brilliant piece…on the Twelve Steps for recovering Trumpites. I love how your mind works!!! Loved your Jeopardy appearance! How do I listen to your daughter’s music?
Been a fan since the days of Totally Biased on FX! As a fellow Bay Area resident(originally from Berkeley), do you have any local gigs coming up in the Bay?