In the book manuscript I’m currently revising, I look at the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous in relation to its political moment in the mid-to-late 1930s, building a case that AA belongs, in quite specific ways, to the culture of New Deal liberalism–despite the FDR-derangement-syndrome of its co-founders. In developing this idea, I have become attuned not only to ideological analyses of AA and its founding, but also to what one might call the political flavors of the popular critiques of the recovery movement. I find myself oddly fascinated with superficial contempt for AA and twelve-step culture, in part because it is so common, but moreso because it seems to spring from that hard-to-pin-down nexus of identity and sensibility that underlies more formal beliefs. That is, people who express this contempt tend to do so in the same terms that inform their political orientations. Sometimes this connection is explicit, but just as often it comes in signs of cultural identity and social attitude.
Leftish and rightish anti-AA attitudes are fairly predictable. The former are keyed to AA’s focus on individual rather than systemic reform or on its insistent theism, while right-leaning folks often express contempt for the disease concept and its apparent evasion of personal responsibility. One consistent form of anti-AA rhetoric that has surprised me, though, is libertarian. Since I’m talking about popular discourse here, it’s more fair to call this “criticism by certain libertarians,” or “criticism with a libertarian sensibility.” > > > > Read More
