Very insightful program. Now I understand better why blue collar workers, though not exclusively, have given Trump so much support. Trump, like Hitler, is promising what people want to hear, not what he can deliver. His arrogance and racism play well to blame the victim and redirect rage towards a visible scapegoat, i.e. so-called foreigners like Mexicans, Middle Eastern people, etc. No wonder that they forget that we are all foreigners except for the Native Americans from whom we stole the land and whom we murdered in the millions.

A brief comment linking this <u>Economic Update</u> program was posted on the World Socialist Web Site Perspective article: <u>Why the CIA is for Hillary Clinton</u>

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/06/pers-a06.html

My comment:

For another Marxist insight into how bitter alienation of white male workers is making Donald Trump a popular candidate, listen to this latest edition of Economic Update presented by Marxist economist educator Richard D. Wolff interview with psychologist Dr. Harriet Fraad.

Thank you for the insight on something so misunderstood in our culture. Dr. Fraad pulled the curtain back to help me see the connection between things I thought I understood but now know I didn’t understand fully. Where before I was disgusted with capitalism, I am now even more so. The ways in which the capitalist system creates negative social consequences then finds new ways to exploit and profit from the subsequent despair is in my eyes truly “insidious”. Then the Albright-Clinton-CIA connection just took this to a new level that I can only describe as horror. Every topic, and there are countless numbers, is like a curtained box which contains the contents of something unknown. Each time the curtain is pulled back what is always revealed is this writhing putrescent abomination that is nothing short of evil. This is the gallery of capitalist horror and we all are captiive spectators and participants seemingly never to escape in its labyrinth of damnation. Let me count the ways of this torment and suffering. What is striking is how the subject matter will start off as a simple enough problem of which a simple solution is evident but then through more detailed exposure and analysis starts to take on a more complex if not impossible nuance. Now, we have crossed over into territory that can no longer be understood as mere economics. It is apparent it is something much more than that. I look forward to more Dr. Fraad insights and the pondering of these puzzles.

Wow, Lewis…that poem says it well! Very upsetting, but thanks for sharing.

Dr. Fraad’s perspective has struck me a couple of times and have heard her a few times… I remember a poem on capitalist society in a 1959 book “Search for Serenity” by Lewis Presnall that sums up what happened to Men in the past… and what now is happening to women as a result of our Neoliberal capitalism on steroids…. here it is…
The Modern Man
Hurry the baby as fast as you can.
Hurry him, worry him, make him a man.
Off with his baby clothes, get him in pants,
Feed him on brain foods and make him advance.

Hustle him, soon as he is able to walk,
Into grammar school; cram him with talk,
Fill his poor head with figures and facts,
Keep on a-jammin them in till it cracks.

Once boys grew up at a rational rate,
Now we develope a man while you wait.
Rush him through college; compel him to grab
Of every known subject, a dip and a dab.

Get him in business, and after the cash,
All by the time he can grow a mustache;
Let him forget he was ever a boy,
Make gold His God and its jingle His joy.

Keep him a hustling and clear out of breath,
until he wins—-nervious prostation and death.
Author unknown

Lewis F. Presnall
Search for Serenity
1959

I found Dr. Fraad’s perspective regarding the impact of capitalistic, economic structures on interpersonal relationships very interesting and disturbing. As a psychotherapist with a specialization in early, childhood development, I’m gravely concerned about economic forces which cause us to see other people as need-satisfying objects rather than as whole people with complex subjectivities of their own. Her description of how economic need is forcing young women to (softly) prostitute themselves with sugar-daddies in order to get tuition to go to school was particularly upsetting.

Part of the problem is the long-standing division of responsibilities which has left boys and men out of the inner circle of mothers and babies. When boys are directed, at very young ages, to deny their need for love and connection with mother, with father, etc. they are required to suppress this deep need for loving, secure attachment relationships. They are, instead, stuffed with notions of power and superiority which NEVER will substitute for the feeling of being truly loved and valued as a member of a family or tribe. Power on the world stage never fulfills the original need to feel important and interpersonally impactful in our earliest relationships.

It sounds like Dr. Fraad is saying that the sociopathic, capitalistic system causes people to commodify one another, creating more I-It relationships and destroying the human connection we REALLY need, while stuffing us with notions that it’s money that will ultimately make us happy. If we don’t know that what we really long for are loving relationships, we’ll be looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places.