The 12 Steps of Aspiring Autocrats Anonymous

by Stephen J. Lyons

1. We admit that we are powerless over the mighty sway of Donald Trump—aka “Him”—his enabling lies rhetoric and the glitter of repeated appearances on Fox News.
2. We came to believe that there is no earthly reason to restore us to sanity as long as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron Johnson, Louie Gohmert, Mo Brooks and Lauren Boebert remain in Congress.
3. We made a decision to turn over our brains, our morality and our decency to the care of any lobbyist or right-wing donor as we understand them.
4. Made a cursory moral inventory of ourselves and came up rather empty, but still we persisted. We keep our bar low enough so we can slither beneath it.
5. Admitted to God, er, our forever President Trump—aka Him—to our wives and mistresses, to Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, that judge lady and “Doctor” Oz, but not to the U.S. House Select Committee on January 6th, being the exact nature of our wrongs. Yet, we will gladly admit that we have no wrongs, only rights as we interpret them. We will say again and again, it is not a lie if you repeat it.
6. We are entirely ready to have Him remove all defects of character because, basically, in the Republican Party, there are no defects of character, only talking points of venom and rage, and made-up facts that we found on the fringes of the Dark Web while trolling for porn.
7. On bended knees at Mar A Lago, we humbly begged Him to forgive the hateful things we and Lindsey Graham said about Him prior and during the 2016 election. Even though our statements were forever preserved on video tape for all to witness, we were terribly misquoted by the liberal fake news lamestream mob that wants to transform this great nation into an AOC-style Socialist, open bordered, free health-cared, science-following satellite gulag of Mexico.
8. Made a list of all persons that we perceived as harming our ultimate goal, which is to keep us white, clueless, unvaccinated and unmasked, book-burning, mis-information-conspiracy-embracing, and poor-female-punishing nation, We are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy their careers with slurs, anonymous coercions and falsehoods. We believe in “whatever means necessary.” And we believe John Kennedy Jr. will arrive sooner than later, because, above all, we are patient and kind of deluded.
9. Made direct threats from burner phones to such people whenever and wherever possible, especially to anyone in a blue woke cannabis-toking pro-abortion pro-birth control state who wants to ram critical race theory down our innocent children’s throats and, thus, cancel our glorious white history and make us feel guilty about establishing this great country on the cherished troika of genocide, imperialism and Hillary witch burning. They can go injure themselves, or we can do it for them via the Second Amendment and a guy named Nose Breaker.
10. Continued to amass astronomical untaxable personal inventories, such as yachts and foreign sports coupes, second homes in the Canary Islands, untraceable offshore bank accounts, as well as suspicious stock sell-offs, and when we were caught wrong we promptly blamed Rachel Maddow and other lesbians. We continued to run out the legal clock, ignore subpoenas and all those pesky laws administered by liberal leaning Obama judges that our constituents had to follow, but we did not. So, life ain’t fair. Get over it, snowflake!
11. Sought through prayer (only Christian prayer, that is), threats of violent insurrections and public relations firms to improve our conscious contact with the greatest president since Stalin Lincoln, aka Trump, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out as we stop the steal and restore Yankee race-baiting nationalism in the House, the Senate, the White House and California through gerrymandering and new restrictive voting laws that make it virtually impossible for the will of people not like us to be heard.
12. Having had a sort of spiritual awakening as the result of these Twelve Steps, we will continue to spread this gospel to other aspiring autocrats through social media, 4chan (shout out to our pals at QAnon!), and by planning more doomsday scenarios (January 6th was only a dress rehearsal, y’all), and to impose these principles on our gullible loyal lemmings followers and, if necessary, through a stacked Supreme Court.

Remember: we understood ourselves only after we destroyed others. And only in the process of destroying others, did we know who we really were. Let us drink to that my fellow aspiring autocrats. Oh, yeah, and one day at a time and all that crap.

Stephen J. Lyons is the author of five books of essays and journalism. His most recent book is “West of East.”