Piker: I go back and forth on this. Democrats are failing. Are they feckless because they’re just bad at politics, or is it something more indecent? And that their fecklessness is simply cover for their ulterior motives, which is participating in this grand design. They’re funded by the same corporate lobbyists that Republicans are funded by, especially when it comes to private health care providers, and they have a vested interest in the continuation of private health care. There is consensus in American politics, when it comes to the continuation of the private health care system, that the system must be private. This also touches on something that I wanted to address that you said, Jia: You were saying that Americans are not used to murder, right? Americans are not on board with murder.
I wanted to push back on that at the moment, because I do think we are a profoundly violent culture. In some ways, Charlie Kirk’s assassination was not unique. School shootings are happening all the time, and we have actually decided, almost collectively, that it’s just another byproduct of American existence.
Spiegelman: I know part of the issue is that Americans have lost a lot of trust in their government. I have this other statistic here, that in 1964, 77 percent of Americans trusted the government. In 2025, 17 percent of Americans trust the government. And yet, there’s some political action that feels hopeful, like Mamdani’s policies for New York. Is this kind of change achievable through the mechanism of politics? Does it line up with Mamdani’s politics?
Piker: Absolutely. I think that this global design of capital that we have seems like a behemoth that is impossible to defeat. And that, obviously, discourages a lot of people from taking action. One of the immediate reflections is the fact that we don’t really have a democratic process any longer, and people don’t even have that confidence in the democratic process, because the wishes of the masses are rarely ever represented by our elected representatives.
There are many different instances where this has become reality. There was an election cycle that just took place, only two years ago, where there was a genocide that was happening alongside that. And that was the perfect opportunity to show Americans that your voices do matter, right? And yet, the Democratic Party chose not to lean into that real mobilization — about 3,500 college campus protesters were arrested in the process.
Source:
www.nytimes.com
