Regarding Dave Tieff and AA Gaslighting

Thanks for the history of gaslighting, Dave, but it was unnecessary. We all know what gaslighting means now. It only rounded out your Medium word count while pretending to be meaningful commentary. Nice trick.

Too many nits, Dave. I came to AA because I was dying of alcoholism. That was May 2, 1988. When people like you complain of gaslighting or “The God Thing” or recidivism, I remember and relate that night so long ago. I haven’t had a drink since.

I have never heard anyone, in all these years, question the sanity of another member/attendee. That’s not what happens at AA. I might, and occasionally do, question my own, but not someone else’s. That’s gaslighting, Dave.

You wrote “But…when the program doesn’t work, it implies that you are doing something wrong or didn’t ‘work it’ hard enough.” Well, no shit, Dave. “When the program doesn’t work” is a euphemism for, “When I went out and got drunk despite what I learned in AA.”

You say that you relapsed “many times” despite going to AA. Relapsed being another euphemism for “went out and got drunk again.” Sorry, Dave, but that wasn’t AA’s choice. It was yours. We get to choose, whether we’re in AA or not.

Freedom of choice is an essential part of AA. You can drink or not. No one cares. You can come to meetings or not. No one cares. You can decide what you want from AA or want nothing but a quiet hour every now and then among people who don’t drink. You get to choose. No one cares.

But if you want to stop drinking and change your life for the better, you will find a group of people eager to help you get what they have, a sober life. We all will care.

You say “AA doesn’t work for everyone,” presumably because it hasn’t worked for you. Maybe you’d better examine why it didn’t work for you (i.e., you decided to go out and get drunk) rather than simply blame AA.

Your essays are simplistic. “I’m still drinking, therefore AA doesn’t work.” (“And BTW, I’ve seen the same thing in other drunks.”)

“First thought wrong?” I hadn’t heard that one before. Maybe it’s an East Coast thing, or maybe SoCal. But when you decided to drink again, my guess is that it applied. Your first thought was not your friend.

You wrote, “If you’ve been to as many meetings as I have,” (BTW, that’s claiming false authority, Dave, a discredited debate tactic), “you’ve been told how crazy you are—a million times.” Nope, never happens, Dave, you made that up. And I’m pretty sure I’ve been to more meetings than you have. 

Insanity is not “the connecting thread of AA members” and never has been. Where did you get that insane idea? The desire to live a sober life is our connecting thread. We speak of that, not insanity, and we do not “boast of it proudly.” Never. We just try to live it.

You wrote, “I’ve never been declared clinically insane.” That’s a very low bar for whether one is living a sane, may I even say productive, life. It’s not much of an endorsement for your essays, either.

If you live within fifty miles or so of Cottage Grove, Oregon, let me know when you want to go to a meeting. I’ll pick you up. Call me.

Click-Bait Nonsense for the Addicted

A self-important person wrote an essay on Medium claiming that AA banned certain substances, including weed, sugar, and nicotine. This was my response:

#

This is just click-bait nonsense for the addicted. There are, of course, no AA-approved addictive substances. No forbidden substances, either, not even alcohol. If you want to drink, go ahead, it's none of our business.

But if you want to stop drinking, then AA's Third Tradition is "The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking." Come join us.

There is no prohibition against, say, weed or micro-dosing or heroin or or or. That's none of AA's businesss, either. Or nicotine or sweets.

If you've come to AA to stop drinking and change your life for the better, you've found the right place. If you've come because you're an alcoholic and addicted to, say, meth, it may still be the right place. Or you might prefer NA. They both focus on stopping the addictions that are killing you. Your choice.

You wrote, "If you use marijuana while in AA, you have to start back on day one — at least if you admit to it."

No, you don't. In fact, AA doesn't have ANY "have tos" at all. Live your life the way you want. No one in AA wants to change you. But if YOU want to change, then, as Bill Wilson wrote, "There Is A Solution." AA members are eager to help you change yourself. It helps us change ourselves, too.

As to the ridiculous notion that AA is a religion, I defy anyone to prove up on that topic. AA members are encouraged to find a higher power OF THEIR OWN CHOOSING. It can even be the AA group itself, just someone or something that is greater than the AA member herself, as proven by the fact that they have stopped drinking and she hasn't. Thus, it/they are more powerful than the person alone. If we hadn't needed that, we could have stopped on our own.

I have these suggestions for anyone on the brink of coming to their first AA meeting:

1. Go to lots of meetings, don't drink between meetings, and talk to other drunks.

2. Buy a Big Book, get a sponsor, work the steps.

If you want what we have, do what we did.

See you tonight.

And A Book Appeared

I wrote “An Old Man Decides to Write” in 2022, when I decided to write my memoir. It was my first essay on Medium.

In 2023 I wrote, “An Old Man Wrote,” my fourth essay there.

Two days ago I finally had my big book reveal:

War, Love, and Taxes: A Memoir of an Adventurous Life

Amazon.com: War, Love, and Taxes: A Memoir of an Adventurous Life eBook : Stromme, Charles : Kindle Store

www.amazon.com

Writing the book was a lengthy and often frustrating process. Many times I said to myself, “Nobody will want to read this.” And maybe that’s true. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is. Memoirs by unfamous people don’t fill many bookshelves.

But I’ve done a lot of interesting things. I’ve been a helicopter pilot in combat, I’ve won prestigious US awards, I won a foreign civilian Medal of Honor. I co-founded a charity. I was good friends with the head of the Georgian KGB. That’s interesting stuff, isn’t it?

I also disgraced myself through alcoholism along the way, and finally sobered up thirty-six years ago. There are lessons to be learned.

Though I’m not a lawyer, I wrote, unassisted, and parliament passed and President Eduard Shevardnadze signed into law, a package of laws that reformed a major part of Georgian tax administration.

I worked directly for the man who became the third president of post-communist Georgia. It’s rumored that my late KGB friend murdered the first one. I don’t know and I never asked him.

I’m not educated or experienced in helping the poor, but my late wife and I founded a charity to help orphans in a remote part of Georgia, the Tbilisi Georgia, not the Atlanta Georgia. We did this while I was working as a consultant to the government on tax reform.

That’s interesting, right? Not everyday stuff?

I decided to write my book while I was recovering from surgery for the brain disease NPH, or normal pressure hydrocephalus, formerly “water on the brain.” It’s a permanent condition, so technically I’m still recovering and will be until I die. But, as they say, I can live with it. I’m alive.

You read this far? Thank you very much. You might like my book.

1,520 Russians A Day

 1,520 Russian solders per day. Last month. That's what Ukraine cost Russia in November.

That's the size of my entire high school. The entire student body. All of us, dead, every single day last month. Ghastly.

No wonder they have to pay North Korea to provide soldiers for the Ukraine meat grinder. The North Koreans (NKs) are somewhat trained, it seeems, but vastly overmatched. They're all going to die but no one has told them the truth about anything. In they march, singing the praises of their Dear Leader, until the drones find them. The Dear Leader still keeps the Russian money, of course.

It is within the power of people living right now to stop this carnage. They can just turn it off. And just like that, entire high schools of students don't die the next day. Or any next day in Ukraine.

I fought in Vietnam. Well, to the extent that helicopter pilots fight, which to say, not very much. But this isn't about me, this is about that damned war. 58,000 of my comrades in arms died there or as a result. So, thirty-eight of my high schools over a ten-year period. It's an ugly, depressing thought but it happened. I was there for a year. I saw it.

America wanted the Vietnam War to end. It said so, loudly. But it went on regardlesss. Leaders didn't listen. LBJ and his ilk had no idea what they were asking of their combatants or what they wanted to accomplish there. It seemed so easy from their perches. They held "targeting lunches" to discuss bombing strategy. And they thought is was normal, or, at least, met their definition of normal. 

There have been several wars since mine. None have successfully prosecuted a defined goal except, maybe, to kill Saddam. And what did that get us? America is still adrift in the morass of the military-industrial complex.

Russia is equally adrift in its own morass, the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. He is completely out of touch with his people and his senior miliary advisors. He fires one or two of them every now and then just to show he's still in charge. Then the next one steps and says, "We can still win if we commit more troops," because that's what the boss wants to hear. More Russian children, prisoners, and North Koreans are thrown into the meat grinder. More high schoools are devoured. More families are destroyed.

The world, and the USA in particular, hasn't punished Putin enough. Sure, sanctions have changed some ways of doing business in Russia, but no one has hurt Putin. He continues to act without consequences. 

It's well past time to make it hurt, time to inflict some major pain on Putin and his family and friends. Don't allow billionaire oligarchs to do business with us or our allies, for instance. Stop the oil flow. Block some ports. 

Do SOMETHING or the war will end only on the terms Putin dictates. That is an unacceptable outcome for the world.

From Faith Jones on Medium.

From Faith Jones on Medium. Maybe she's wrong, but I doubt it:

"20,000 children abducted by Russia, the President and the Minister for Children wanted by the International Court of Justice for genocide, 72 percent of Russian missiles and drones fired deliberately at civilian targets, 12,000 civilians murdered, 622 children under the age of 5 murdered, 1,600 Ukrainian prisoners of war taken into custody and then shot, 95 percent of prisoners tortured, endless rapes of women, men and children, 465 uses of chemical weapons, an ICBM fired against a densely populated civilian city, 39,347 international war crimes uncovered so far. Russian politicians and the Russian armed forces had now committed every single one of the same atrocities committed by the Nazis."

Think about those numbers, those families. Putin's wanton killings in Ukraine stagger one's imagination. They demand the expulsion of Russia from the society of nations and sanctions, such as they are, against those involved at every level.

We'll have energy with Trump. Maybe we'll do it then.

Nobody Likes the Georgians… Except Me

There is a battalion of Georgians (the Tbilisi kind, not the Atlantans) fighting for Ukraine against Putin. They call themselves the Georgian Legion, twenty-five hundred or so of them. Putin loses more than that every three days. They’re not really significant to the war but they’re fighting and they’re needed and what more can you ask?

The Legion does not have a storied history, like, say, Patton’s First Armored, rolling through Germany. No, military Georgian ex-pats have historically drifted to the sides we oppose. They were pro-Kaiser, anti-Turk (well, OK), anti-Armenian, pro-Third Reich, then pro-Stalin et al. Sometimes forced, sometimes conscripted, often volunteers. I must also note that they were our partners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I lived in Tbilisi for 3-1/2 years early this century. I like and love many Georgians and I have experienced their love for America and the west. I have witnessed their military and met with military advisors. There was always one constant: “We want to align with the west, not with Russia.”

The October 27 parliamentary elections in Georgia offered a turn towards the west. But, no, the ruling Georgian Dream party seems to have skewed the results toward Moscow. At least, Georgians think so, more than 70% of them. Thus, the massive street protests in Tbilisi and elsewhere. They want free and fair elections, that’s all, not the sham they got in October.

The Georgian Legion (I opened with them, remember?) has threatened to come home, all 2,500 of them, to insure a new free election. There would be unintended consequences, of course. It is easy to imagine the Legion rallying to the established Georgian military rather than, say, the secret police. 

What would rich man/owner-of-everything Bidzina Ivanishvili (look him up) do then? Would he throw his private army and police forces against the Legion and military? If he loses the Legion and his army, there will be only so much blood left. Will he spill it on the beautiful streets of Tbilisi where I have walked so many times? Or will he leave and take his already-hidden massive wealth with him?

Or, given that Georgia is already a Russian-occupied country, will Putin move Russian troops from South Ossetia into Tbilisi and Kutaisi. They are only thirty miles from Tbilisi already. Why not, under the pretext of mutual aid? The streets of Tbilisi have run red with innocent blood before. It was only sixteen years ago that Putin bombed the Tbilisi airport and communications towers. The targets that are thirty miles away by road are only one minute away by air.

Keep an eye on Tbilisi. Ukraine isn’t the only place where Putin is carrying out his USSR reunification plan. It’s working, so far.

 

Lies, Damned Lies, and Presidents

The president can tell us any lies he wants to. Really, there are no limits to his perfidy unless Congress acts, and really, when does that ever happen?

From Sandstone Care: “(A) liar is someone who deliberately tells falsehoods or makes untrue statements with the intention of deceiving others.”

You knew it was coming, didn’t you? I mean, we all did. Joe pardoned Hunter for his myriad of gun and tax crimes. Crimes that would have gotten you and me sent up the river for years. Really big crimes and not-so-big crimes. Hunter was looking at up to twenty-five years just on the gun charges.

The tax charges were even more serious, given Joe’s “Pay your fair share” campaign bullshit, but the sentences would have been more like seventeen years because we really, really don’t like gun criminals. Tax criminals? Well, OK. 

Hunter tossed a gun. In the great scheme of things, it wouldn’t have been he only gun in the landfill, there to rust to eternity unless someone chanced upon it. One more gun out of circulation, not that big a deal. Note here that I am a gun owner and pro-2A. One less gun. How could that be a bad thing? At least he didn’t trade it for drugs and sexual services. One wonders why not.

It's not that Hunter tossed a gun. No. He lied in order to obtain the gun. In doing so, he broke important federal laws explicitly designed to keep guns out of the hands of, well, people like Hunter. Drug users and criminals, specifically. We’ve seen the evidence.

Hunter’s daddy, Joe, is immune from federal prosecution unless Congress impeaches him. And if you’re convicted for any federal crime, from littering in a national park to treason, Joe can pardon you without having to explain himself. A stroke of the pen, you’re off the hook.

As the Biden presidency unravels in the next few months and years, we’re going to discover other examples of criminal behavior by Joe and his henchmen. What was really behind the border invasion, the Afghanistan retreat, the money from China, Ukraine, the end of American energy development and so much more that weakened our country but enriched Joe Biden and his family and cohorts?

There will be more pardons. Joe will pardon himself, of course, a last finger to America. He’ll pardon his brother, too, because what’s a brother for if not to get you out of jams? And hide the truth about your crimes.

Our Biden nightmare is almost over. Will it be replaced by a Trump nightmare? Well, at least Trump doesn’t need to steal from us to increase his wealth. He gives his salary away.

Watch for stories of the WH staff stealing everything that isn’t nailed down over the coming weeks, as did the Clinton and Obama staffs. Precedence, y’know. It’s only taxpayer (your) property and no one is going to do anything about it. Stealing the White House silverware pales in significance and will be forgiven and forgotten. “Hey, Hunter got away with it.” Except, y'know, you have to pay for the replacements.

Watch for Susan Rice and Victoria Nuland to be pardoned. You read it here first.