America, This is an Intervention (Part 2)
Steps 1-4: Telling the Truth
Welcome to the hardest part: the beginning.
These first four steps ain’t easy and they sure as hell ain’t glamorous. It doesn’t come with fanfare. Just honesty, humility, a flashlight aimed into some uncomfortable corners of our own soul, and maybe a bitter cup of coffee in an old church basement.
But here’s the good news: this is where real change begins.
This isn’t a program to prescribe policy solutions. It’s not a program to figure out the right tax code, foreign affairs, or immigration laws. It’s not a partisan fight - that’s part of what got you here in the first place.
It’s a spiritual program.
We can have those policy discussions once you’re clear-eyed, dry, and spiritually sober - and this is going to help you approach those discussions in a much more constructive manner.
America, if we want you to get better — really better, not just better at pretending — we have to start by telling the truth.
So, let’s begin.
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our condition — that our lives had become unmanageable.
This step isn’t about waving a white flag. It’s about setting down the armor for a bit.
You’re not okay - and if there’s one thing the left, right, and center can agree on, it’s that.
You’ve been living in a cycle of outrage, anxiety, and emotional whiplash for so long you’ve started calling it normal. But deep down, you know: this isn’t how you’re supposed to live.
You’re exhausted. You’re suspicious of everyone. You’re addicted to noise, and you’re afraid of silence. You’ve mistaken control for safety and dominance for strength.
This isn’t just dysfunctional — it’s unmanageable.
And the only way to move forward is to admit it out loud.
I’m not talking about admitting that the other person is dysfunctional and unmanageable - we aren’t taking other peoples’ inventories. France can figure out their own problems. We’re talking about you, America.
This is the first act of national courage. It’s not fixing (yet). It’s not performing. It’s simply saying: I can’t keep doing this.
You can’t exercise the demon unless you name it, first.
Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
America - now we’re in vulnerable territory. Because if Step 1 is about honesty, Step 2 is about hope.
It asks us to believe — not in a political party, not in an institution, not in a flag — but in the very idea that healing is possible. That maybe we don’t have to fix everything alone. That maybe there’s something wiser, deeper, and more enduring than our fear.
You can call that God. You can call it love. You can call it a shared moral compass, or the voice in your gut that says, do better.
You can even call it our national spirit, or the ideas that went into the founding of our country that have served as a beacon for other emerging democracies throughout modern history.
Listen, I get it - you haven’t been perfect throughout your life - but who has? But the beauty of the the 12 Step Program is that it calls for progress, not perfection.
Whatever it is — you need it now more than ever.
Because you’ve tried doing this yourself. And it’s not working.
This isn’t about checking a spiritual box. It’s about opening a window — just a crack — and letting something better in.
The 12 Steps don’t tell you that you have to believe in something right away - just be open to the idea of something greater than ourselves.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of that Greater Power.
This step sounds dramatic, but it’s really about release.
You tried it your way - and your way ended up with you face down in the neighbors lawn with your pants around your ankles and a tattoo on your forearm (I promise you, those characters don’t mean “strength” in Chinese). More than once. Maybe your way isn’t working out anymore.
This is the moment you stop white-knuckling everything. The moment you admit that your desire to control everything — the narrative, the outcome, people’s thoughts and words, the books people read, the “other side” — is driving you into the ground.
What would happen if you let go of the need to always be right? Always be first? Always be loudest?
What if you worried less about your team winning and the other team losing (control, attachment), and entrusted your will to that Higher Power - for the benefit of all?
Step 3 doesn’t demand that we have all the answers. It invites us to let go of the illusion that we ever did.
It invites us to trust more - but not blindly. It means not just asking more from your elected officials, so they can actually earn your trust - but asking more from yourself, too. After all, you are the one who put them there in the first place. You are the one who let them do their polling and then beat the results into your brain for the months leading up to elections, making you think that those are the things that truly matter. You are the one who decide which 24/7 news channel or social media account you tune into, knowing full well you are going to gravitate toward the one that feeds you what we want to hear - because it helps feed your need for control and wanting to be right.
You’re way isn’t working, it’s time to turn your will and power over to something greater than yourself.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
This one’s tough.
It’s not fun to take stock of your flaws — especially when you’d rather focus on everyone else’s. But recovery only happens when you stop deflecting and start reflecting.
This step asks us to go deeper than headlines and history books. It’s about sitting with the real stories — the parts you’ve erased, the people you’ve ignored, the systems you’ve built that cause harm to others even while you benefit. We could even go as far as saying that sometimes, maybe, you overcorrect while trying to fix some of these flaws.
When the pendulum swings too far one way, it’s inevitably going to swing back in the opposite direction.
It’s personal, too. It’s about how you live, how you treat others, what you defend, and what you’ve chosen not to see.
Do you practice what you preach? Do you hold yourself to the same standards you expect from others? Are you a good neighbor, friend, and community member? People that disagree with you, look different than you, or think different than you - are you treating them with the dignity and respect that all people deserve - regardless of whether or not you agree with or like what they’re saying?
You aren’t asking this of other people - you are asking this of yourself. It’s a searching a fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Fearless doesn’t mean emotionless. It means willing. Brave. Eyes open.
No revisionist spin. No performative guilt. Just truth.
That’s all Step 4 asks of you. But it asks for all of it.
Together, these first four steps are a reckoning — not with who we pretend to be, but with who we are.
They’re not easy. But they’re freeing. Just ask anyone who’s gone through the 12 Steps before.
Because when the pretending ends, the healing can begin.
We’re not trying to tear you down, America. We’re trying to help you come home to yourself. To fulfill the “promissory note” created by your brilliant Founding Fathers and encouraged by your American saints like Martin Luther King, Jr. in his “I Have a Dream” speech.
This is how spiritual sobriety begins. Not with certainty - but with honesty. And that begins with the simple, radical act of telling the truth.
Again, we know this is going to be tough - but nothing worth doing is ever easy. It’s not easy to admit vulnerability. It’s not easy to admit our own faults. It’s humbling - but it’s necessary if you really want to transform your soul, America.
Coming Next - Steps 5-9: Confession, Repair, and the Road to Making Things Right