Why don’t more victims of depression call for help? Some people who do wind up not with help but a giant medical bill.
Capitalism Kills Mentally Ill Americans
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
14 Comments. Leave new
Money makes the world go ’round, Ted. Jump on the bandwagon….
Henri
Right… somehow I doubt that even Ted could craft a remotely funny pro Kavanaugh cartoon.
Also, like capitalism itself, selling out only appears profitable in the run up to the the crash: in the end, most of the income made gets eaten up by therapy sessions and/or heavy drinking.
Re comic title:
Without doubt but consider the larger picture, along the lines of …
“Economic ‘austerity’: the most efficient and cleanest WMD in human history.”
Suffer depression enhanced by economic austerity and the precarity of one’s life under capitalism, thereby exposing one’s vulnerability to the blood sucking capitalist vultures, and you will be punished for exposing the violence of capitalism, by means of your complaint to the vicious themselves, by incurring more bills, and more debt subject to the state violence of debt collection.
I expect some conservative Democrat will once again want to punch me for speaking too truthfully about life under this constitution, one designed to give great economic advantage to the wealthy.
Capitalism creates creates mentally ill Americans. What? You thought my ‘nym was ironic?
Just gonna point out something …
What capitalism — specifically, end-stage neo-liberal capitalism, devoid of any genuine social safety net and in which almost all profit is funneled upward; I think Arundhati Roy calls it ‘gush up’ economics — does is not a form of mental illness. N-LC doubles the rate of suicides among the unemployed (vs. that of the working). Here’s a link so I don’t have a 65-post back-and-forth about this. But those people are not mentally ill.
When you go through all the correct steps, are then “right sized” repeatedly, end up with a huge pile of student loan debt and approach retirement without any form of income after a lifetime of working, depression is not a mental “illness.” Depression in that scenario is the “correct” response for a rational being to have. By calling depression in that scenario a mental “illness” you shift the blame onto the victim. “if you didn’t wanna be raped by capitalism, why’d you participate in a capitalist society, huh? Pull yourself up by the straps on your fuck-me pumps, you whore.”
I get the point Ted is making, and it’s an important one about how people in dire situations are frequently harmed further by the mechanisms in place, but that’s a discussion about the need for universal single-payer healthcare, even though Hillary Clinton has told us all we need to be reasonable and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But I am tired of the whole “Oh, you’re unemployed and literally cannot even get people to look at your resume because of rampant age discrimination? Have you considered therapy? You know, to develop better coping mechanisms? Here’s a prescription for pills that, once you start taking them, you cannot stop taking them all at once, so I really hope you don’t run out of money for the co-pay because it will totes fuck you up when you crash. And that, of course, will also be your fault because, um, neo-liberalism.”
The unemployed don’t need to learn how to COPE better, They don’t need to continually keep “updating” skill sets. They need jobs. They need a salary that allows them to exist where they live and save for a retirement where they don’t have to eat cat food, and it doesn’t help that the situation that millions of Americans are in is described as a mental illness when it’s completely an economic issue. I don’t blame the people. I blame the politicians who won’t pass USP healthcare, I blame four decades of trickle-down economics.
Good points, Alex….
Henri
And yet, this Constitution, one written by Slavers, is submitted to voluntarily as if it were a holy writ, and in doing so the Submissives reduce themselves to Slaves of the dead Slavers and their present day sociopathic incarnations.
It’s hard for the Submissives to free their mind from this Conservative Hocus-pocus, and claim their rights as a free people.
Try to explain this to the propagators of this CH (Conservative Hocus-pocus) and they will threaten White-on-White crime.
POP QUIZ!
How many slaves were owned by each of the following Founders?
John Adams
Samuel Adams
Oliver Ellsworth
Alexander Hamilton
Robert Treat Paine
Thomas Paine
Roger Sherman
Explain why the states with slaves could count 3/5 of their slave population as persons in order to increase their allocation of seats in the House of Representatives, and thus enabled the passage of pro-slaver laws.
More slaves meant more slave friendly seats in the legislature.
Don’t bother me with your silly quizzes, which prove nothing.
How many of those named persons were participants in the Constitutional Convention?
The Constitution of the slavers was written by slavers, and for slavers.
> silly quizzes, which prove nothing.
Really? Then why don’t you answer?
I mean, besides the obvious: that you are fully aware that you are misrepresenting the facts.
> The Constitution of the slavers was written by …
… James Madison, who also said:
“[The Convention] thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.”
— Records of the Convention, August 25, 1787
“Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves.”
— Letter to R. H. Lee, July 17, 1785
“American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil.”
— State of the Union,1810
“Outlets for the freed blacks are alone wanted for the erasure of the blot from our Republican character.”
— Letter to General La Fayette, February 1, 1830.
“[I]f slavery, as a national evil, is to be abolished, and it be just that it be done at the national expense, the amount of the expense is not a paramount consideration.”
— James Madison, Letter to Robert J. Evans
Go to hell, asshole.
“How many of those named persons were participants in the Constitutional Convention?”
Really? Then why don’t you answer the question of why the Constitution gave bonus representation to slave owners instead of giving me more Conservative Hocus-pocus?
I mean, besides the obvious: that you are fully aware that you are misrepresenting the facts.
> Go to hell, asshole.
ahh, isn’t that sweet. You’re pissing on the graves of the very people who gave you the legal right to tell lies about them, yet I’m the asshole. Why? Because I can count? Because I know the difference between “all” and “some”? Because I remember my fourth-grade American History?
Or is it simply because I disagree with you? That seems to be a common disease in these here parts. I thought it was a republican disease, but it seems to have infected whatever’s left of the left.
> Then why don’t you answer the question of why the Constitution
1) I’m not misrepresenting the facts
2) I asked you first
3) your question is irrelevant (it neither serves to prove nor disprove your falsehood)
That said – the 3/5 number was a compromise.
Think what would have happened if it had been ‘one’ instead. Remember how you were all upset ‘cuz the small states were over-represented in the senate? That move would have made The South over-represented in the House – is that what you want? The South (you know, the people who actually WERE slavers) would have the power to dictate terms, keeping slavery alive and well into the 20th century.
Or would you prefer zero? At least the 3/5 number acknowledges their humanity to some degree. I say that’s infinitely better than zero.
Now, back to your original falsehood – either zero or one would have served the slavers better than 3/5 … so now the onus is on YOU to explain why 3/5.
Not that I expect you to.