Conversation #27  Social Security, Sartre, and Self care December 17, 2017
Channel: The Grace and Paul Pottscast
Date: 17/12/2017

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.

The blog post for this show, with a link to the MP3 file, a link to the podcast feed, and any additional show notes, can be found here: http://pottscast.blogspot.com/2017/12/conversation-27-social-security-sartre.html