More and more I’m finding myself feeling sad and depressed.  I get to the point that I can no longer listen or watch the news.  It seems as if everything I hear reinforces my feeling that we are no longer the “United States”.  We’ve become the “Divided States”.  We don’t listen to each other anymore.  Hell, we don’t even like or respect each other anymore.  Instead of working together to solve very real problems that are affecting our nation, we settle into our camps, hunker down and seek reinforcements.  We’re no longer interested in coming to a shared and good faith solution.  We’re only interested in power.  And we’ll do whatever we need to garner the power necessary to impose our personal perspectives on others.  All too often this is political power. 

This is a recipe for disaster.  Here is one example of how this works in real time.

Those who are frustrated that Trump won the presidency now want to eliminate the Electoral College and rely on the Popular Vote.  Sounds fair, right?  He or she who gets the most votes, wins.  But is it really?  The truth is that many of those who think this way are very happy to disregard the Constitutional protections afforded states like Montana and S. Dakota in favor of much more populous – and liberal – states like New York and California.  These people aren’t truly interested in what is fair.  They are interested in power. 

And what is the result? 

Those who reside in these smaller Midwest and heartland states become the hardened Trump base.  Of these people, Trump is famous for saying that; “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters”.  But Trump would do well not to take all the credit.  Feeling ignored, disrespected and are under constant threat, these beleaguered masses willingly ignore the flagrant moral abuses of their president.  It isn’t that these people no longer value the “family values” that they’ve long proclaimed as a litmus test for garnering their vote.  They simply value power more. 

So, where do we go from here?  I have a seemingly radical, but proven solution to our problem. 

The founders and members of AA provide a model for how people of disparate socio-economic backgrounds can come together to form a strong sense of community.  The very first step of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is to recognize that what we are doing isn’t working.  That we are defeated and that to get well, we must find a radically new path forward. They do so by humbling acknowledging their brokenness and need for one another.  They seek a “Higher Power” to help them see more clearly their own powerlessness to change their behavior.  When people believe in a higher power, they will usually find it easier to forgive other people who have wronged them. It also becomes much easier to let go of resentments. They seek to change themselves and build more healthy relationships and community with others. 

We would be wise to do the same. 

Because whether we like it or not, those of us who are blessed to live in the United States are all part of the same community.  And while true that those who reside in the United States may not share the same life experience, we demonstrate a profound lack of appreciation for the fundamental reality of community when we are indifferent to the feelings and interests of others.  Despite our best efforts to isolate ourselves within the confines of our own tribe, we are bound to interface with these people on a daily basis.

Democracy demands better of us.

The fact is that we’ve become a very diverse society.  To make a free and diverse society work, we have to make intentional efforts to relate to and embrace those people and groups with share little in common.  Efforts to protect ourselves from this reality is not only completely unsustainable but is fundamentally counter to the miracle of American democracy. 

So, let’s start now.  Let’s begin to form small groups across the United States.  We’ll call our groups “Democracy Anonymous”.  Members can remain anonymous with regard to their political affiliations.  They do not need to state whether they are Democrat, Republican or Independent.  They simply have to love the United States more than they enjoy living in the Divided States. 

What follows are the 12 Steps as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous, slightly modified to reflect a commitment to resisting divisive behavior and rebuilding a sense of community in the United States:

1. We admit we can be obstinate, myopic, divisive and self-centered in our behaviors, are powerless to change and that our voting habits have become unmanageable and self-destructive in nature
2. With a profound sense of humility, we’ve come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves is the only thing that can restore us to sanity
3. We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our Higher Power as we understood it
4. We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves to discover and root out our divisive behaviors
5. We have admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
6. We are entirely ready to have our Higher Power remove all these defects of character
7. We humbly asked our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings
8. We’ve made a list of persons we have harmed, and are willing to make amends to them all
9. We’ve made direct amends to these people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
10. We will continue to take personal inventory and, when we are wrong or revert to our previous divisive behaviors, will promptly admit it
11. We will seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power, praying only for knowledge of our Higher Power’s will for us and the power to carry that out
12. Having had a democratic awakening as the result of these steps, we will try to carry this message to others, to practice these principles in all our affairs and, in doing so, make sincere efforts to build a larger, more inclusive and compassionate community and a more United States