Democracy Is Not Well

Democracy Is Not Well

Astra Taylor on our politics, plus Katha Pollitt on travel to Mars.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
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Democracy is not doing well these days—we have Trump, and Brexit, and a host of other examples. Astra Taylor has been thinking about that: She talks about the paradoxes of rule by the people, the many ways it’s being frustrated, and why it remains at the center of our hopes for the future. Her new book is Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.

Also: travel to Mars—now there’s a way to get away from Donald Trump! Elon Musk, the billionaire who is co-founder of PayPal and Tesla, wants to build a colony on Mars. Katha Pollitt thinks that’s not a good idea. Actually, she thinks it’s a terrible idea, but one that tells us something about the world we live in.

Can we count on you?

In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win.

We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives. Our dedicated writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance, and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November.

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Thank you,
The Editors of The Nation

Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


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