Speech Defects
With ever-expanding First Amendment prerogatives as protected “speakers,” corporations have become more influential than citizens.
Baffler Archives: Salvos
Columns
The White Man, Unburdened
It was in Thailand that Charles Murray formulated his ideas on small government, community, and the good life.
Big Brother’s Blind Spot
Given the choice, I think many of us—as individuals—might prefer the Kafkaesque to the Orwellian.
Patriarchy Deflated
How silly patriarchy is looking at this moment, as one rich and powerful man after another falls victim to the #MeToo movement.
River of No Return
The swiftboating of everything.
Dispatches from the American Gray Zone
It’s not just that civil wars have increased in number; their lead perpetrators have also become more violently ambitious.
Manufacturing Consent
What is the legal wrong of sexual harassment? Sexual harassment is not simply boorish, immoral sexual behavior on the job.
Send Anarchists, Guns, and Money
Cody Wilson is an extraordinary talker. He speaks in memes, generating sticky phrases off the cuff to capture powerful ideas.
The Screwer and the Screwed
The situation may be OK, but it’s certainly not good.
Exalted Slogans
What if we foregrounded movements, not the cult of personality and celebrity?
After the Afterlife of Theory
These names were like swear words, like drugs, like magnetized tokens in a game played by mildly sadistic immortals.
Blame the Computer
Evidence mounts that the forces of digital civilization have produced a technological dystopia run by artificially unintelligent algorithms designed in the interests of greed for maximum efficiency. And true to the tropes of many a dark sci-fi reverie, these impersonal arbiters ...