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Take the Knife out of Your Back
It goes against the Hallmark/Riot Grrrl/Twitter sisterhood utopian vision, but the truth is most friendships don’t last. And that’s fine. Never make room for people who treat you poorly; everyone has weak moments, but if someone truly hurts you and doesn’t actually give a ...

Brexit, Pursued by Despair
The referendum was the flame; Article 50 is the fuse. Today, after months of recrimination and fear, the deed was finally done. Britain’s unelected Prime Minister triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, setting the legal machine of international relations on an unstoppable ...

Sorry Liberals, Jared Kushner Is Right
Simply put, if President Trump wants the government to achieve general excellence, he should run the government like a general-excellence factory. A general-excellence factory manufactures general excellence. If the government follows this model, it must guarantee every ...

Daily Bafflements
March 28, 2017
• Baffler contributing editor Astra Taylor discusses power with Jillian Johnson, LA Kauffman, and Jonathan Matthew Smucker: “The people who were supposed to protect us from this failed,” Taylor says, “and part of it is because they had offered mealy-mouthed neoliberal ...

A New City and a National Movement
I was thinking about how I could get involved in Metro Atlanta, in my local area. By the grace of God, it turned out that the area that I lived in, which was unincorporated, decided to become a city. So, here, this place where I was currently living, which is where I was born ...

Daily Bafflements
March 24, 2017
• Variety reports that actress Brie Larson will play Victoria Woodhull in an upcoming film. Woodhull, dutiful Baffler readers will note, was the first woman candidate for the American presidency (in 1872, forty years before women won the right to vote), and her exploits ...

If All You Have Is a Hammer
When you sign up, allegedly, to fight for freedom and democracy and you see nothing of that kind being practiced here in the United States, with the mass surveillance and the reach of agencies like the National Security Agency, etc., this is not what you put your life on the ...

The Two Daves
Critics and comedy fans laud Dave Chappelle for his analysis of American race and social relations, yet his finest skill might be the way he manipulates time on the stand-up stage. You see it first in obvious ways—as, for example, in the contrast between his deliberate joke ...

Open Mike
March 23, 2017
It is with a heavy heart that I must report that Huckabee is at it again. That is, the ex-governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, has tweeted a new joke. Over the last year, Huckabee has gained a reputation as one Twitter’s high-profile joke writers. “High profile,” I should ...