The U.S. "Alcoholic" War Game

Games Fascists Play: The Psychology of Supremacy

Sep 20, 2024

-Chris Hedges,

The Greatest Evil is War

“ALCOHOLIC”

The “Alcoholic” game involves multiple players and roles. The person who is “it” is in the Alcoholic role with the game in quotation marks, i.e., “Alcoholic.” This player abuses alcohol to involve themselves in unpleasant situations or altercations: “I’m bad, see if you can stop me.”

The 2009 film Crazy Heart, staring Jeff Bridges, is educational in the “Alcoholic” game. Bridges plays the country singer “Bad Blake,” who undertakes the Alcoholic role. In general, the role of Alcoholic is played by those who drink to create social, occupational, and interpersonal problems: during work, during play, or in homelife. [i]

Additionally, the person makes themselves feel guilty during the next day hangover. Therefore, the guilt feeling is the emotional payoff of the game. For example, after an excessive binge and subsequent hangover, the person experiences extreme internal criticism for what they have done.

The Alcoholic player is “it” and has the plan in their head (even if they do not realize this). The role of Alcoholic is operated from a one-down position to initiate the game. For example, they are a victim of alcoholism: “My dad had it,” or the more contemporary, “It’s a brain disease.” This confusion between vulnerability and helplessness places the gameplayer in the one-down position on the triangle: “I just can’t control myself if I have one drink!”

The “Alcoholic” game has a role called the Connection. Robert Duvall plays the role of Connection. Duvall’s character is friendly and neutral toward Bad Blake’s alcohol consumption and subsequent shenanigans. As a bar owner, he offers Bridge’s character some support and comfort, but he is also a professional: he knows when to cut someone off.

In one scene, Duvall takes Bridge’s character fishing with a cooler of light beer instead of a bottle of hard whiskey. The Connection role is often the most meaningful person in their life. For the Alcoholic (Bridges), the Connection (Duvall) is the direct source of supply for the gameplayer. They provide access to the addictive substance without chastisement, e.g., a bartender or drug dealer.

In terms of War games, we can understand the U.S. as playing the Connection role. The U.S. occupies via their 800-1000 military bases abroad. The U.S. supplies nation-states with the addictive substances for war: armaments. This role promotes U.S. global hegemony via the sale of military machinery, guns, and bombs. Under the guise of “self-defense” and “security,” selling arms is an immensely profitable industry. In fact, the global market for annual military spending is over $2 trillion. The U.S. exports 45 percent of the world’s weapons, which is almost five times more than any other nation. [ii]

With the “Alcoholic” game, there are two sets of people. The Alcoholic sees their world as bad people who persecute them and good people who rescue them. The latter might be a parent, intimate partner, or an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) sponsor who both persecutes them (“You have a disease!”) and rescues them out of trouble “I’ll find a good DUI attorney for you.”). This could be a ride home from the bar or an early-morning checkout from detox as well as defending the Alcoholic in social situations: “They can’t control themselves.”

The important point is that the Alcoholic player maintains a one-down (victim) position and therefore prostitutes feelings and thinking to others. The Alcoholic also provokes the role switches in others within the “Alcoholic” game:

The Alcoholic keeps the initiative at all times, since he can turn his nagging, persecuting wife into a victim by beating up on her, or he can start to defy his rescuers, thus turning them into persecutors. [iii]

In the above quote, the wife feels powerless to control her husband’s alcohol use. So, she acts as a Persecutor when nagging him, which in turn facilitates the husband feeling powerless. The Alcoholic is unable to deal with their sense of powerlessness, so they switch from the Victim role into the Persecutor role. This places the wife in a Victim role whereby she is beaten. This is similar to the Kick Me game.

The War game dynamic of Kick Me is the Victim to Persecutor role switch. Guns and bombs give White (“it”) situational power, i.e., one-up status. The climactic action results in Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch! (NIGYSOB!). This violent revenge is meant to get rid of people. Because White believes themselves to be superior to Black (weakness for the game, e.g., Ukraine), White’s sense of being Kicked authorizes retaliation.

At the nation state level, this authorizes permanent wars, overturning governments, and the promotion of regime change (War games). For example, Israel provokes attacks by Hamas—the political group Israel funded to split the vote with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—so Hamas will Kick them back.

The supremacist government of Israel wears a T-shirt that reads, “Please Don’t [Do] Kick Me.” The Kick from Black (Hamas) appears to be “terrorism” if one does not understand that White maintains the initiative by occupying Black. This authorizes Israel to play NIGYSOB! in the name of “self-defense.” On the social level, this appears to be a two-handed game. Left out of the equation—as with Russia and Ukraine in 2022—is the Connection role.

The U.S. military-industrial complex plays the Connection role to sell arms. Here, the aim is the extermination or to get rid of Black (i.e., Palestinians) via justifiable retaliations: carpet bomb Gaza. The triangulation of White (Israel), Black (Hamas), and the Connection (U.S.) is centered on the economic alliance of Black with the Connection, i.e., “aid packages.” [i] In actuality, the Connection is playing a proxy game titled UGOFIGHT.

“FREE-MARKET WORLD HOLOCAUST”

If fascism is understood as symbiotic process (war, economic system, media apparatus), it is the media (propaganda) and the market that generate the ill-will and profits that drive imperial war.

In the book, Black Shirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, Michael Parenti describes how—during the Vietnam war—U.S. leaders dropped more explosives on Vietnam than were used by all combatants combined in World War II. [i]

The U.S. government’s rhetoric regarding war has claims of a pursuit of “freedom” and “democracy.” In actuality, the American project has been counterrevolutionary since World War II: the global overthrow of Communism. The Marxist-Leninist argument is that the highest stage of capitalism finds imperialism in command:

U.S. interventionism has been very effective in building neo-imperialism, keeping the land, labor, natural resources, and markets of Third World countries available at bargain prices to multinational corporations. [ii]

Parenti (1997) lists the number of individuals slaughtered by U.S. and U.S.-supported forces since WWII. The casualties of this counterrevolution number over 10 million! (not including deaths in the twenty-first century):

2,000,000 North Koreans, 3,000,000 Vietnamese, more than 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia, more than 1,500,000 in Angola, over 1,000,000 in Mozambique, over 500,000 in Afghanistan, 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia, 200,000 in East Timor, 100,000 in Nicaragua, over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 disappeared), over 700,000 in Iraq (576,000 Iraqi children died of starvation and disease from the five years of sanctions during the 1991 Gulf war), over 60,000 in El Salvador, 30,000 in the “dirty war” of Argentina, 35,000 in Taiwan, 20,000 in Chile, “and many thousands in Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, Turkey, and dozens of other countries, in what amounts to a free-market world holocaust.” [iii]

The [U.S.] national security state uses coercion and violence not in support of social reform but against it, all in the name of “stability,” “counterterrorism,” “democracy,”—and of late and more honestly, “the free market.” [iv]

From a game analysis perspective, the U.S. and U.S.-lead surrogates are playing three-handed games (i.e., “Alcoholic”). In Berne’s “Alcoholic” game, the Connection role supplies the liquor or elicit substance to the Alcoholic. The Connection does this without chastisement of the Alcoholic.

As the Connection role, the U.S. militarily arms a country with bombs, tanks, missiles, etc. (“aide package”) and media propaganda to ensure battle. This creates profits for the military-industrial complex. In the original “Alcoholic” game, the Connection—as liquor store clerk or bartender—knows when to stop serving the Alcoholic:

The difference between the Connection and the other players is the difference between professionals and amateurs in any game: the professional knows when to stop. At a certain point a good bartender refuses to serve the Alcoholic, who is then left without any supplies unless he can locate a more indulgent Connection. [i]

The U.S. military is unprofessional in its role of indulgence for warmaking. They do not know when to stop serving Israel or Ukraine because it is part of a Capitalism game. Provocation and accusation are the moves in the War game that allow for indulgence in the sweet nectar of violence and profits.