Exterminating Angels
The American myth of the progressive prosecutor.
Baffler Archives: Outbursts
Columns
Culture Worriers
The Cato Institute, “a public policy research organization dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace,” was founded in 1977 by the Koch brothers, the anarcho-capitalist economist Murray Rothbard, and former Libertarian ...
Border Profiteers
On a recent sunny spring afternoon in Texas, a couple hundred Border Patrol agents, Homeland Security officials, and salespeople from a wide array of defense and security contractors gathered at the Bandera Gun Club about an hour northwest of San Antonio to eat barbecue and ...
Girl, Uninterrupted
My So-Called Life pictured a slice of middle-class, Clinton-era America. Was it indeed a simpler time?
Heaven Can’t Wait
Make no mistake: Christsploitation is exploitation cinema. Nowhere is there the faintest whiff of sincerity.
Checkers and Wreckers at the Daytona 500
Nothing can prepare you for the enormousness of Daytona International Speedway as it drifts into view.
Believe in Something
Woke campaigns aren’t focused on repairing structural inequities, but on amassing profit for corporate players.
The Innovator’s Agenda
To redeem the free enterprise system, apostles of private property needed a vocabulary for emancipation through the market.
Empire of the Census
The history of the census has always been one of outright manipulation, politicization, and marginalization.
Tales from the Cryptos
Cryptocurrency investors were enticed to Puerto Rico because the money was right and the risks were low.
Taming the Savage White Man
The western’s spirit is everywhere—not unlike one of the mid-twentieth century’s great augurs of the vanishing frontier, the ghost of Tom Joad.
Astrology Year Zero
This essay was due on November 6, 2018, but I didn’t finish it on time.