It’s time to understand how our personal experiences are connected to larger societal events and create a collective movement for a healthier, happier economy.
Feeling hopeless? You are not alone. But what is behind the feelings of misery and fear we have experienced around the world?
The last six months have been dominated by headlines on domestic terrorism, stripping of rights and the middle and lower classes falling behind. It’s time to understand how our personal experiences are connected to larger societal events and create a collective movement for a healthier, happier economy.
Dr. Harriet Fraad, a mental health counselor, discusses our psychological responses to Roe v. Wade, Uvalde, and so much more, and offers hope for how we can help ourselves and fight for a better world.
Watch Capitalism Hits Home on YouTube or listen to Dr. Fraad on your favorite podcast player.
Fascism is rising, if not arrived already, in the United States. The dinosaurs on the Supreme Court have overturned federal protections on abortion, and gender freedoms are under attack. In one episode, Dr. Fraad shares the psychological, emotional, political, and economic reasons the US is the world leader in mass murder, and what we can do about it.
"Indigenous people, women, poor people, socialists and climate activists uniting. The United States has all those groups, but we haven't united, which is one of the reasons that the right wing is gaining, and we are not gaining as we should. We need a socialist coalition here in order to win all our rights back."
To no surprise, people are upset. Rejecting the disease model of psychiatry which profits off mental health, Dr. Fraad explains how systematic policies of our economy lead people to feel isolated, lonely and afraid. People are influenced to fear violent crime instead of the real crimes of exploitation under capitalism. Maybe people are traumatized and project their feelings onto scapegoats, in the ways that Trump’s followers blame anyone but the owners of our economy.
“Human misery... comes from the society. It comes from unhappy lives, unhappy families, and unhappy adolescents, unhappy college years or young adulthood, and unhappy middle age and old age. Ascribing those things to disease is very convenient if you don't want to help people, if you don't want to recognize that the capitalist society we live in has a lot to do with people's unhappiness.”
Together, we can recognize our feelings are in part a result of our toxic, dangerous economic system. And that means together, we can organize to both end our isolation and create a better system for human rights and justice: socialism.
“This is an amazing time of change... In unity, we have strength because we are the mass of people. The employee class is the mass of people. The employer class is only about one percent, and we can't let ourselves be divided by race or nationality or religion or sex. We have to unite in order to win.”
Watch Capitalism Hits Home on YouTube or listen to Dr. Fraad on your favorite podcast player.
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