Why Work?
How can the left and the right be devoted to the same universal remedy—“Get a job!”—for what ails us?
Baffler Archives: Salvos
Columns
Did the Fun Work?
On the peculiarly American obsession with staying busy—even when we’re on vacation.
Creative Alibis
With Trump now ensconced in the White House, Richard Florida’s blueprint for urban revival is a study in futility.
The Wrong Stuff
When does America’s right stuff turn into its wrong stuff from our unavoidably biased POV, and vice-versa?
You Gotta Serve Somebody
Shouldn’t true-believing Christians be rising up in prophetic, righteous anger against the pharaonic Donald Trump?
People Like That
In American humor, we expect our slob comedians to learn an important lesson at the end of every story.
Death Trips
Dying alone is seen as a character flaw—an imperfection growing somewhere deep inside of you.
Inauguration of the Trumpian Beauty Contest
Purification does little good for political history. For a long while, we in the West have awarded the sash proclaiming World’s First Democracy to ancient Athens. But as imperial power loosens its insistent white fist—in fits and starts—our understanding also opens. Maybe ...
The Revolution Will Not Be Curated
“The era of the curator has begun,” declared the prominent art critic Michael Brenson in 1998. The figures who assembled artworks into galleries, he reasoned, were now “as essential” to exhibits as the artists themselves. Curators were a species of universal genius who ...
Psephology in Free Fall
Sometimes you have to wince. The 2016 election was full of awful, cringing moments: “Pokémon Go to the polls.” The mere existence of Jeb Bush. The strange, silent, static confusion as a whole clutch of Republican hopefuls seemed incapable of walking onstage for their ...
The Hamilton Hustle
As Donald Trump settles into the White House, elites in the political class are beginning to recognize that democracy is not necessarily a permanent state of political organization. “Donald Trump’s candidacy is the first time American politics has left me truly afraid,” ...
Outsmarted
The empty presumptions that inform the cult of smartness across yon political spectrum.