Pills are often used as metaphors on the internet these days, perhaps because they cause an instant transformation. Take an Advil and your headache vanishes more or less immediately. According to this internet vernacular, taking pills reveals the truth of how things work politically, of who has power and how we are affected. To take a take a “red pill” means adopting alt-right thought, in a reference to the red pill in The Matrix which lets users see reality. The bleaker “black pill” signifies men rejecting women altogether, and has overtones of nihilism and violence, which are core planks of the Incel’s fatalistic world view. In certain feminist corners of the internet, being “blue-pilled” means adopting a progressive, lefty stance. Lately, I’ve seen mention of another kind of pill: the “Jewpill.”

On alt-right frequented message boards like 4Chan, Jewpill is slang for anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medicine, which, these days, means an SSRI—Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, etc. For the record, I’m a Jew and I take Lexapro. By reducing how we suffer from anxiety and depression, 4Chan says, Jewpills rob us of our agency, because anxiety and depression are the symptoms of our bitter, poisoned time, they are telling us we need to change and fight, not continue on our sated path to ruin.

Neoliberal capitalism, the age in which we live, began in the seventies as a rejection of the social safety net which had existed since before World War Two. Under the stewardship of people like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the government abandoned public services to the guidance of the market, with the idea that private investment would rejuvenate the country, it would spill out over everyone like a flood. Instead, the massive wage disparity we see today began to take effect, which, by now, is so entrenched there seems to be no hope of anything else. For a small and lucky few, the experiment worked, but everyone else is basically screwed. Few young people today will be able to buy a home or pay their college loans, if they even go to college, so why shouldn’t they be depressed?

The dogma of privatization feeds American mythologies of individuals and bootstraps, pitting us against each other in the name of competition and free markets. It’s a zero-sum game with millions of losers, and most people are necessarily left out. According to some communities on the internet, examples of this market ideology include Uber, in which we chauffeur strangers in our cars, for barely any money; AirBnb, which is like Uber, but for guest rooms, with the bonus that so many urban spaces have been gobbled by investors that our cities are too expensive for the people who...