Relational

We used to think addiction was a moral failing, and you could persuade an addict to not be addicted, but now we know better. I think there's an epidemic of addiction to hostility. I used to find Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter baffling, but they make sense when you start to think of them as drug dealers. Addiction is to some degree self-medicating against hurts, and to some degree quieting the craving even when the addictive substance no longer provides pleasure. Reasoning with an addict gets you nowhere, and addicts will twist and distort reality to rationalize their choice. A lot of what Watzlawick et al. said about family systems used addiction as its example, and systems of relationships are homeostatic and hard to reframe. Martin Luther King, Jr. managed to reframe the system nationwide, but it took a very long time, lots of public confrontation, and a very exhausting commitment to love instead of meeting hostility with hostility.