Conversation #27: Social Security, Sartre, and Self-care (December 17, 2017)

This week: Grace has been reading the Seed Savers Exchange catalog and three books of sewing projects: Rip It!: How to Deconstruct and Reconstruct the Clothes of Your Dreams by Elissa Meyrich, The Sweater Chop Shop: Sewing One-of-a-Kind Creations from Recycled Sweaters by Crispina ffrench, and Sweater Surgery: How to Make New Things with Old Sweaters by Stefanie Girard.

We watched part of the dumb reboot of Battlestar Galactica, Galactica 1980.

Our walk of the week was in downtown Ypsilanti, ending in a fine meal at Maiz Mexican Cantina.

We have three discussion topics: Social Security, Sartre, and Self-care for the Holidays. Social Security is under attack, but when liberals defend it they often talk about how they deserve to get “their” money back. Their use of these words show a lack of understanding of how it actually works and make it sound like an ordinary pension scheme. If it is an ordinary pension scheme, then there aren’t a lot of arguments to make about why it shouldn’t be privatized — and the defenders have just helped advance the Republican agenda. In fact, Social Security is much more, a truly socialist program, and its radical agenda is precisely why it works, why it is popular, and why it deserves a fully-informed, full-throated defense.

Then Paul leads a discussion about Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought-provoking essay “Elections: a Trap for Fools,” a radical critique of indirect democracy.

Next, we talk about the necessity of self-care during the holidays, what that means for people with depression and anxiety, how we have tried to unplug from the commercialization of Christmas and teach our children about their Jewish heritage as well, and why Christians might as well concede that their participation in the commercialization of Christmas has ceded it to capitalism, and look for other festivals and holy days to express their faith.

Finally, we respond to some listener feedback. And speaking of self-care, please note that we will be on hiatus, working on the podcast behind the scenes, for a few weeks, returning January 21st.

How to Listen

You can find the MP3 file here.

The Podcast feed is here.

The Podcast channel on YouTube is here.

More Information

Here’s the Seed Savers Exchange site.

Here’s the web site for Maiz Mexican Cantina.

Here’s the restored page about Galactica 1980 from the Battlestar Galactica wiki.

Here’s the recent article from The Atlantic about Social Security.

Here’s a source for Sartre’s essay. Note that this version has some typos that look like optical character recognition errors. I recommend picking up a book with the essay in it via your independent bookseller. If you’re interested in reading more Sartre, as I am, you might consider this book.

Here are a few links relevant to previous podcasts. Here’s what became of the confetti that Clinton’s campaign had arranged to fall in celebration of her anticipated glass ceiling-shattering win. And here’s the famed piece about the “ratchet effect” in American electoral politics.