Hello, this is Dr. Harriet Fraad on capitalism,
its home and interpersonal update.
This is a show about the intersection of capitalism,
class and our personal lives.
To continue the discussion on Jeffrey Epstein.
Money does talk and buys silence as well.
There is a syndrome whereof wealthy people
give money, people close their eyes.
It's reported that Jeffrey Epstein had science
meetings, where he invited prestigious scientific
minds to his various mansions or his island
to have scientific talks.
The scientists all saw him; Fondling, kissing,
going to back rooms with his many of five
or six young women at a time.
One scientist asked Epstein about a particular
Baltic woman that he had with him, and he
said, “Oh, I bought her from her parents
in Yugoslavia.”
That wasn't pursued.
All of these people were grantees of generous
gifts.
Not only fellowships but whole departments
benefited from Epstein's largesse because
Epstein considered himself a friend of science.
He even had a project, which I must say a
lot of the scientists did discourage of perpetuating
his genius by impregnating up to 20 women
at a time.
Not in one ejaculation but 20 million and
keeping them at his New Mexican ranch, so
he could bring forth geniuses and improve
the human race.
It was even said that his sexual proclivities
were such that at these scientific gatherings,
there were very few women and those, who were
there, were considered by many scientists.
They were very brilliant women scientists,
who were there to be auditioned as carriers
for Epstein's genetic dispersal plan, so that
he would have a genius woman to impregnate.
But out of trips where there were 24 scientists,
one or two would be women, and they would
be considered quite differently.
How did he get away with this?
It's so interesting.
When you look at how
foundations exist, how universities exist,
they exist on the money of these wealthy men,
and they're always looking for money from
these wealthy men.
For example, Kushner got into Harvard after
his father gave two million dollars to Harvard.
I'm sure that helped.
It's even more direct than the recent bribery
of various Hollywood and other personnel to
get their kids into prestigious schools.
When he talks, you don't look at where it
came from.
You don't look a gift horse in the mouth and
notice the rot.
That is the system.
Once you give money, you are invited to special
events, where you are honored, where you are
thanked, and where you are in Nobel for your
glorious generosity.
One of the things that's thankfully changing
with MeToo and Time’s Up is that
the shame that people have felt for being
on the lower end of society.
These
young women who were desperately poor absorb
the shame of predatory men.
Some of the movements around the world are
movements of people waking up and stopping
that system of transferring the shame for
rich men's and women's predation onto the
people who are their prey.
In Kerala India, a highly sexist society,
5 million women joined hands to create 386
miles of women joining, outstretched arms,
to fight for gender equality in the world.
Some people actually learn from this prestige.
The USHA women's prostitution co-op in India
found that.
Because they became very wealthy and created
their own sanitary napkins, birth control,
and health plans for their prostitute workers,
they amassed quite a bit of money.
Before that, if they'd gone to the bank for
a loan to help their kid go to college, they
were treated with shame, even though these
bankers had had sex with them the night before.
Now with the USHA women's cooperative they're
treated with respect because they have money,
too, and they'll give back bankers’ money
with interest.
However, the way this game is usually played
is not by wealthy co-op members changing their
social status but by the people at the top
who amassed their income through exploiting
other people's labor.
If you look at what's happening, whether it's
the Progressive Democrats, the squad of Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Tlaib and Omar, they
are refusing to be shamed by the dignitaries
in the Senate and Congress.
When those dignitaries lie, they pointed it
out.
When those dignitaries try to shove some kind
of unjust bill through, they call it, they
speak up.
They're not going to be ashamed by a wall
of white men who claim that they have authority,
or their hangers-on like Susan Collins of
Maine who supported Kavanaugh.
They're not afraid to transfer the shame back
on their exploiters.
Movements like Sunrise, mainly young people
who want to stop capitalists from raping Mother
Earth, call out the shame of polluters and
their apologists like Donald Trump.
The yellow vests in France go into the elite
neighborhoods.
They're not like American rioters who wrecked
their own neighborhoods.
They go right to the Champs-Elysées, the
most expensive strip in Paris, where they
scream Anti-capitalist slogans.
They jam up the street, they terrify the elite
buyers who might be in these stores, and they
demand a plebiscite; A different form of government,
so the elites won't have their say, and they
won't have to pay for it.
The yellow vest movement started because Macron,
Prime Minister of France, levied a fuel tax
on these rural people who are truck drivers
and small farmers and desperately depend on
gas.
He said that's because they're indifferent
to ecology that they protested, and they said,
“No, tax the elites who make 150, 500 times
more than us for ecology.
We're all for ecology just tax the top for
it not us!”
They advocate a form of government in which
people go to meetings that are compulsory
and discuss the ideas and programs which are
then implemented, if the majority is interested.
Not the elite people who are elected by other
elite people but the mass of French people.
That movement is approved of by 70% of the
French, even though it often stops business
as usual.
Often subway stops throughout Paris are closed
because the yellow vests are having demonstrations
there and people understand, “Good idea!”
They're all over.
They scream slogans like no capitalism, anti-capitalism,
power for the people, down with the French
elites, down with the fancy shops where they
shop.
They had an expose of the ecology minister,
who accused them of insensitivity to ecology,
having a big state dinner with his friends
and fellow dignitaries, where they served
lobsters and caviar and champagne.
There they said, “We'd like that some nice
meals, too.
This is our tax money.
Don't you dare tax us.
Tax the elites.
Empower us.”
Even Megan Rapinoe, on a small scale, who
was recognized for the women's Olympic soccer
team as the winner accepted her prize and
accepted the speaker position at the ticker-tape
parade in New York City, where she said, “My
outstretched arms are outstretched for equality,
for all people not just some people, all people
because what we stand for as a team is people
working together.
No, one of us could ever have won alone.
It's all of us together on the basis of our
skill and merit, not our family connections.”
The soccer team was greeted by chants from
the stands: Equal pay.
Equal pay for women.
Equal pay.
That's a change at a sports event.
In fact, it's a change to have a sports event,
celebrating women in the United States.
What is key here is a psychological thing.
People at the bottom have been shamed for
having less.
People who are manual workers have been shamed
because they're not doing work that's granted
prestige.
People at the top, people in the 1% have been
given great respect by all those people who
want their money and by our government.
Now people are saying look at how you got
that money.
That's our labor.
Shame on you.
We won't feel inferior.
We won't hold back our demonstrations.
We won't silence our voices because it's you
who should be ashamed.
The Somali worker, who struck Amazon in Michigan
and with whom Ilhan Omar picketed in solidarity,
said we will not let you wreck our lives with
speed up and low salaries, while you have
a $150 Billion and use it to go to the moon,
while we can't even feed our children.
We're not ashamed that we're poor.
Shame on you for exploiting us.
Whether it's sexual exploitation and shaming
young girls who needed money, or whether it's
economic exploitation and shaming people who
have low prestige jobs.
It's time to stop that.
It's time to join all of those people who
are shifting the shame from us to the people
who exploit us.
That's just the beginning in the United States
and around the world.
People are shaming the NRA for putting profit
of the arms industry before lives.
They're shaming church apologists who say
that Trump is a savior.
People like Focus on Family which has a $91
million a year budget and whose head was reported
by Michael Cohen in a deal that he would not
be exposed for investing $3.8 million in a
gay bar, which says no religion, no politics,
while he doesn't even allow women to wear
thin straps or dresses above their knees and
condemns homosexuality as an action of the
devil.
Cohen worked out that Trump wouldn't mention
that he met this man at the Fontainebleau
Hotel at a big pool where tops for women were
optional, whereas this man demands that all
his parishioners and students cover up.
This is a corrupt system where money talks
too loud and gives people the idea that they're
above the law like Donald Trump who brags
that he never pays his taxes.
People have revered him for that.
This is the opposite.
This is saying we won't be ashamed anymore
and we won't revere you who have ill-gotten
gains from ripping us off and lying to us.
That party may be over.
Young people are joining DSA.
They're joining the sunrise movement.
They're joining the feminist movements that
are progressive.
They're having slut walks in which they get
all dressed up sexy and have signs that say,
“Your outfit isn't the crime.
Rape is the crime.
How dare you condemn us?”
They refuse to hold the shame of men raping
them.
These developments are happening all over
the world.
Even in Indonesia where a woman's boss sexually
harassed her, and she reported it and therefore
she was fired.
People protested so much that when she was
jailed for having maligned her boss, she got
out of jail because people demonstrated and
protested not only in Indonesia but all over
the world.
Organizations that are politically trying
to change things have to speak to the shame
that is behind people's obedience and acquiescence
to the rich and powerful.
The shame of being poor, the shame of having
sexuality as a woman, the shame of being raped
which is a crime against you not by you, the
shame of needing money, the shame of having
to work at a non-prestigious job, cleaning
up, wrapping packages, and getting things
off an assembly line at a pace that would
break anyone.
Because, after all, working at Amazon or Walmart
is not a prestigious job.
The pay is low at Walmart.
There's an office in front on how to get food
stamps, how to get the government to subsidize
the low salaries that Walmart pays, and people
are embarrassed that they need food stamps
that they need free lunches for their children.
They shouldn't be ashamed and embarrassed.
The shame is for a society that does that,
that allocates the money to the top, and the
shame is for all those people who suck up
and kick down on refugees, on people without
money, on manual workers, on young people,
on women on, people of color.
If we allow white supremacy or male supremacy
or wealth supremacy, we're turning people
off to their continuity with other people
- to compassion, to connection and its connection
that actually allows for people's mental health.
According to me, mental health is like a table
with four legs.
They're all based on connection.
One is connection with really intimate people,
best friends, family members to whom you're
close.
The second is another level of connections.
Connections with people that you might work
with, with whom you're friendly and to whom
you speak.
Connections with people on a team or on a
project like either a blood drive or a political
project.
A third leg is a wider connection, looking
at how you're connected to the United States
and our government.
What it's doing for you and what you can do
there.
And a fourth set of connections for mental
health is a sense of being a world citizen.
That you are connected to all people of the
world in all the colors and all the genders
out there, so that ridding ourselves of shame
will probably be ridding ourselves of some
of the terrible scourges in our society.
For example, 400,000 people have died of overdoses
since 1996.
200,000 died of oxycontin, which was promoted
by the Sackler family who, like Epstein, gave
generously.
There's the Sackler wing whose name they're
now changing at the Louvre.
There's the Sackler collection that was at
the Guggenheim until people had a die-in at
the Guggenheim, representing all the people
that the Sackler money killed, because they
knew from the start their drug was not as
advertised, adequate for an entire day, that
it wore off, and left people desperate for
more.
They are now shaming the Sackler’s.
They've gotten them off the board of the Natural
History Museum and others.
MeToo and Time’s Up have shown us that,
across the board, we who do the work and are
not in the 1% have to discard our shame and
put it back on the people who deserve it.
Shame on them and all power to us.
Thank you for listening.
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