We Have To Talk About Liberalism And The Leftist Mental Health Crisis In America
Francesca Hong of Wisconsin is a case study of the problem
Francesca Hong, a failed restaurateur and Democratic nominee for governor in Wisconsin, had a mental breakdown at 18. “ I didn’t actually walk at my high school graduation because I had been hospitalized for a week at a child psychiatric hospital”, she told Meal Magazine in 2023. “I just felt like nothing had meaning anymore.”
Hong’s experience is common in female adolescence. “It was a numbness that took over, and a pain that I couldn’t describe. I couldn’t feel anymore, and that scared the hell out of me. And I found myself self-harming to feel something.” She was cutting herself and unable to function.
“I was diagnosed with bipolar disease. I was taking SSRIs and I’d overdosed on lithium. I didn’t know why I couldn’t connect with people deeper, and that pushes you into isolation.” Hong says she got better, and became an independent adult, by working in a restaurant.
There, she found people “from so many different backgrounds and life experiences, and the best restaurant teams take care of one another so that you don't have to think about if you belong here or not.” Immigrants like her own parents, for example. Hong explicitly identifies with the DSA wing of the Democratic Party, the young communists.
“And between women and people who identify as non-binary, there's this group of phenomenally underrepresented folks in the food and beverage industry”, Hong told her interviewer. Hong spoke of her restaurant business as a collective, “we”. “Specifically, women, women of color and non-binary folks who don't often see themselves as leaders in an industry”, Hong responded when asked to explain.
“The most compassionate, hardworking people are just not valued and seen in an industry that's supposed to value and see everyone, because food is for everyone.” Hong ascribed this ‘found family’ identity, this sense of ‘solidarity’, to the galvanizing effects of the first Trump administration.
“He affirmed that we had all been very complacent and comfortable”, Hong told a food magazine(!). “And I don’t think democracy is supposed to be comfortable if it’s operating in the right way. It definitely shouldn’t be comfortable for the folks who have been in positions of power.”
“We need to start giving people money”, Hong said, pronouncing the lessons of covid, for “they will know what to do with it.” We must eat the rich and redistribute their flesh to the masses. As a failed restaurant operator, Hong will be the perfect governor to have Wisconsinites eating each other in no time at all.
Magical thinking
“Restaurants can be a sustainable industry”, Hong said, uttering the power-word of the green new deal. “Community” and “communities” need sustainable restaurants like her own.
Hong’s marriage on the other hand proved unsustainable. “We didn't make enough time to honor each other as individuals because we were so immersed in the restaurant and our child.” The separation left Francesca Hong free to focus on politics.
Her restaurant was also unsustainable. Hong had to rent a restaurant kitchen in order to shoot a campaign ad in her run for the state house. Her solution to the inequalities of the restaurant trade is political.
“I am competing with ghost kitchens, I am competing with fast-casual, I am competing with Mark [Cuban] investing in restaurant tech that I will never be able to afford, and I’m being priced out”, she complained in 2023.
I think the restaurant industry is reliant on income inequality, and it is absolutely reliant on the wealthy becoming wealthier. The nuances of inflation are also that those who are controlling a lot of the supply chains dictate the cost, and consumers absorb that cost. So capitalism has not been working for consumers or workers. There has to be transformative change in those economic structures, and it’s going to come from more people fighting for economic justice. It starts with increasing wages and giving people agency over their wages, and then ensuring that the costs of childcare, transportation, housing, and education are seen as a public good, and that government itself can be used for good. It is a systems change that needs to happen. I am a business owner who is anti-capitalist because I know that for a business my size, I am no longer competing with other businesses my size.
If the reader has encountered an ordering kiosk at McDonald’s, they will already have seen how the economics of wage inflation, measured in higher minimum wages, has played out in the fast food industry. Franchise chains of all types have been squeezed between the rise in supply chain costs and the rise in wages. The results are automation, rebranding, cost-cutting, and the disappearance of the dollar menu.
Of course, by “those who are controlling a lot of the supply chains dictate the cost”, Hong means capitalism. Capitalism is the problem that she intends to fix for Wisconsin (“systems change”).
In 2023, she had evolved beyond the laws of supply and demand because she was no longer in competition with other businesses like her own, somehow. This is an economic theory born of cognitive dissonance, which is to say it is crazy talk. Hong is mad, and mad about her restaurant.
To recap, Francesca Hong began self-harming; was diagnosed as bipolar; had a mental breakdown; overdosed on lithium, and had to be hospitalized. Her adult origin story begins there.
After her divorce, her restaurant failed, so she went into politics, where she can seize the means of food production and redistribute them to marginalized communities. The nonbinaries will be first in line, apparently.
“Wisconsin is what I call a petri dish for authoritarian tactics,” she told her interviewer. She said she was talking about Trump, but I say Francesca Hong was telling us about herself. She gave Wisconsin fair warning of what she really is.
