Everyone from the candidates to the parties to observers and voters are making their respective senses of what the election results mean. Here we offer a psychological and economic analysis of an election dominated by what people were voting against and how they reacted to remarkably divisive claims made especially by the Romney and Republican forces.

Originally appeared on Truthout.org

Three books. Three eye-opening accounts of tectonic shifts in American life. And one extraordinary analysis of the intimate connections between the new economy, the political power structure and the historic rise of one-person households.

More important than pathologizing the individual who killed is the task of evaluating the social and psychological conditions - changeable by collective action - that can explain why his frustrations and failures should take such a violent turn against others. In other words, why does the US have more such violent, gun-using explosions of extreme personal upset than most other advanced countries combined?

  After five years of deepening crisis, failed "solutions," and aborted "recoveries," millions see our current system no longer serving us. It's time to demand a cure big and bold enough to work. Join Richard Wolff to hear that cure presented, explained, and justified.

This evening will also launch Wolff's latest book, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism released September 1st, 2012 by Haymarket Publishers. He will gladly sign purchased copies.

Tickets will be $15 in advance and $20 at the door. All funds go to Democracyatwork.info.

Updates on grim US employment data released June 1, how Europe experiences global capitalist crisis differently in Greece, Spain and Germany, and how "parental leave" in US jobs lags all other advanced countries. Interview Dr Harriet Fraad on fast increase of US adults living alone: causes and consequences economically and psychologically. Responses to questions on Spain, US student debt, economic collapse.

  Over 50 % of today's adults in the US live singly, what a 2012 book by Eric Klinenberg calls Going Solo. We discuss why that happened, the deep loneliness involved, its relationship to modern capitalism, and why basic social change is crucial to overcoming today's isolations.

First marriages, sometimes cynically called "starter marriages" often don't work. Second and third marriages work out even less. Americans marry and also divorce more than any other people on earth. I believe that a prime reason for our remarkable remarriage rate is Americans' loneliness in our time of disconnection from each other.

Harriet Fraad discusses some of the trends related to pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs in the United States, and some of the consequences of these trends.