the intellectual's resistance to swallowing it whole — "This infuriating carrot-and-donkey aspect of trudging…"

The educated newcomer's whole case against AA, brought to the one staffer patient enough to hear it: a Program that seems to demand you swallow it whole and recite it zombie-armed, whose central message at every meeting is the importance of attending more meetings, the carrot forever receding down the road of still more trudging. Day's objections are real and sharply put, and the scene's method is to let them stand unrefuted — the critique of the recursion is correct, and the question is whether being correct about it helps.