Have you ever been trapped in a bad, dysfunctional marriage or relationship? Have you ever tried over and over again to fix it? Long talks? Trips to couple’s counselors? Fresh starts? That special vacation that will bring back the spark? Prayer? Consults with Clergypersons?
And nothing worked.
When the only thing that you and your ‘partner’ could agree upon was that this relationship wasn’t working? Or perhaps you just gave up and one or the other of you went MIA in the relationship in one form of escape or another: long work hours, affairs? Or worse, have you ever been in or know someone who was ever in an emotionally, verbally, physically, sexually, financially abusive relationship? Where you are constantly berated as though you are the one who is always wrong? No matter how hard you try? And your life just keeps on getting worse?
And the lies and the broken promises. And did I mention the lies? And nothing changed. Except you were blamed for it all? And you tried harder and helped your partner again and again despite the excessive drinking and drunken rants and drunken spending which brought you to the brink of bankruptcy?
And then one morning you woke up and realized that the problem with the relationship wasn’t you at all, but it was the alcohol in the relationship. And so you found yourself an AlAnon meeting and found out how you had been enabling the alcoholic in your life: covering up for him/her, believing his/her lies one more time, believing you could control him/her, believing it was your fault…. And as time passed you realized that you were starting to get better and heal by focusing on rebuilding your life.
And that’s when things got really nasty with your alcoholic? S/he got angry that you didn’t pick up the damage for his/her drunken sprees, either physically cleaning up messes, covering with the boss or covering with money.
You finally had an intervention and told the alcoholic that either s/he go into treatment or that you were not going to stay around and devote your life to maintaining what had become an ESSENTIALLY SICK AND ADDICTED AND ABUSIVE SYSTEM.
And in this case the alcoholic said “FU, I don’t need you, there are many better than you.”
And you seek divorce. Seek to learn what mistakes you made that made you enter into this type of abusive relationship in the first place and dedicated yourself not to do it again, ever again. And you learned how you had essentially enabled that alcoholic to wreck that damage in your life by lying to yourself about them and your relationship. You resolved that you would from now only seek and be part of a non-lying, honest, healthy, open relationship based on mutual respect?
And so you went ahead with your divorce?
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Everything I have just said is what has happened to me politically. I have been made promises by politicians who essentially behave like alcoholics, lying their way to election and then breaking them. In many ways creating havoc with my life with the legislation they pass or refuse to pass. And I enable them by creating excuses, looking the other way and just ignoring them. Telling myself, ‘well they are better than the other guy?’ Or that supreme canard, ‘its the Supreme Court stupid.’ I allow myself to be bought by all sorts of ‘half measures’, crumbs from the political table and tell myself I am lucky. But what I am in, is denial.
It becomes clear that the only real and enduring goal of those politicians is to feed their addiction of money and power. They then get hired by the ‘big boys’ to join the ‘big leagues’ of the ESTABLISHMENT, which is a tightly regulated system built to preserve those who are in power and keep out those who don’t have power. I remain in denial about this.
I believed these poltician’s lies and promises. And then watched them either get swallowed up by that ESTABLISHMENT or run seeking to join it. Time and again. Over and over.
Finally, I got ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired’ of seeing them break those promises again and again and lie about it. I got sick and tired of seeing the system become more and more compromised until with Citizen’s United, there is even no more pretense of what had been happening before: politicians are now the lap dogs of big corporate interests and do their bidding without a thought to the impact on the average citizen.
And it became all too evident that this level of corruption is also present in the Democratic Party not to mention the Democratic National Committee which right now has abandoned all attempts at appearing non-partisan in the nomination process.
BigMoney owns the political system, the politicians and the ESTABLISHMENT. And they are all drunk on money and power and control. They are behaving like drunk alcoholics wreaking havoc on our lives and blaming us in the process.
But I have woken up from my denial.
I thought I was going to give this election a pass. And then Bernie came along. Saying A LOT OF WHAT I WAS ALREADY THINKING: That we cannot get freedom and justice for all WITH THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE. WITH THE SYSTEM OF THE ESTABLISHMENT STAYING INTACT. With the drunken alcoholic establishment staying intact.
The entire political system is hugely corrupt; the media is corrupt; politicians are just bought stooges and are not bothering to hide it anymore as they go begging to the likes of Adelson for money. The whole political system has been turned into a globalized corporate operation run strictly ‘for profit’. What about the good of the citizens? That pretense is only maintained long enough for the politician to get elected. The welfare of the citizens has been usurped by the corporations demanding that they make money out of every aspect of our communal life; to the point of bankrupting the common man, poisoning the environment, stealing retirement, denying healthcare, preventing available and quality education, etc. etc. etc. only feeding their ravenous alcoholic cravings for money and power.
Bernie is the only candidate who is truly for dismantling this very corrupt system that is rigged primary to make profit for the 1%, feeding like vipers on the rest of us. It is the system itself that has become dysfunctional and must be taken back and brought back to sobriety. To take the language of AA, ‘HALF MEASURES AVAILED US NOTHING’; the ESTABLISHMENT SYSTEM can’t be fixed from within. AND IT CAN’T BE FIXED PROGRESSIVELY OR PRAGMATICALLY. That is being part of the sytem. The system itself has to be changed: it needs a serious intervention.
And so I decided that I would not support any candidate who is part of that system or who supports that system. THE ESTABLISHMENT SYSTEM as it is now has to go. It has to be reshaped, it has to recover and become sober. And only ‘we the people’ can give it the Intervention it needs.
Bernie is the one who says, ‘of course we can’t do all of this now with this current congress, but come with me into a movement, a revolution, and we will together reshape that congress into a body elected by the people and serving the people. Not the current corporate paymasters. It will take time, but we will dismantle this current ESTABLISHMENT SYSTEM reforming it to what it was intended; a system of government ‘for the people, by the people and of the people.’ Not ‘for corporations, by corporations and of corporations and their singular instatiable profit motive.’
Bernie says that we should strive to get single payer, and that it won’t happen right away and that it won’t be easy. We understand that we will have to dismantle and reform the ESTABLISHMENT SYSTEM before we do it. Bernie is saying that all forms of the system should be to support its citizens, regardless of their race, sexual orientation or creed, rather than be set up for the profit motive of the the mega addicted craven corporations.
So, I want a divorce from the current alcoholic ESTABLISHMENT SYSTEM. I do not want a candidate who is going to force me to continue this abusive relationship with false promises. Alcoholic lies and broken promises.
And I will continue supporting Bernie right to the end of his candidacy. And if he doesn’t win the nomination, then I won’t give up. I will continue to support the movement he has coalesced and all the issues he has promulgated, because I believe that that is the only way that there will be ‘Freedom and Justice for All.’
And I am sure that this movement will continue and I will be part of it.
Whether or not Bernie wins, the Movement is just getting going. Never, ever again will I go back to that lying drunken betraying political system and believe the lying politicians who try to woo us back to support their maintance of the status quo. To try to get us to support the ALCOHOLIC ESTABLISHMENT SYSTEM.
I now am fully divorced from it. And couldn’t be happier. And am ready to do the hard work of reform and reclaiming the sober ways of government.
Never Again.