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Pax Trumplandia
Welcome to This American Carnage, your weekly slice of life from the country of Trump. Another February, another Munich Security Conference, a.k.a. the “world’s most prestigious geopolitical gathering.” This time, though, the conference will take place as a ...

The Long Haul
Welcome to The Baffler’s agony corner, YOUR SORRY ASS, where Amber A’Lee Frost dispenses bossy, judgmental advice on how to live your life fairly, kindly, and with good humor. Send us your rants and pleas, please: [email protected].  Dear Your Sorry Ass, Like a ...

Is Trump a Populist?
February 15, 2017
People relate “rightwing populism” to the excoriation of immigrants, demonization of the poor, and railing about high finance on the campaign trail. That criticism never amounts to any actual policies when the candidate is in office. What’s left is simply xenophobia and ...

Deportation Nation
I think we sugarcoat it by making it very procedural, but actually, that night she was kidnapped from her family and there are many of us in the community that took action. We had them waiting outside in vigil for Lupita in hopes that the director would have released her. ...

Old School
February 14, 2017
Anatomist Louis Bolk once called humans sexually mature primate fetuses. (And yes, it sounds suitably disturbing in the original German: einen zur Geschlechtsreife gelangten Primatenfetus.) As Bolk patiently explained, our evolutionary history is something of an arms race ...

Daily Bafflements
February 13, 2017
• “Gerrymandering, in a word, is why American democracy is broken,” claims The Washington Post, echoing David Daley, in his Q&A with Baffler associate editor Dave Denison. “Eight of the ten most gerrymandered districts in the United States were drawn ...

Running Riot
February 13, 2017
In Psychology 101 you learn of those “false binary” or “false dichotomy” situations that crop up where two viewpoints are so powerful they tend to pull all other options into their orbit. If you're not capitalist, you're socialist. In Chicago if you're not a White Sox ...

Flight of the Punk-Pecking Carnage Vultures
February 13, 2017
Let’s face it—unless the consumerist world order crumbles soon, the music we make in protest now could easily, a few decades down the line, end up tinkling over the speakers of an antiseptic big-box store. That’s all the more reason to stop worrying about how our ...

Daily Bafflements
February 10, 2017
• “Society is creating a new crop of alpha women who are unable to love,” warns Fox News. Authoritarian wives everywhere are forgetting which side their bread is buttered on, apparently. As concerned as we are about this development, we’ll stick with the ...

The Defiant I Am Not Your Negro
The film’s promotional poster notably features just Baldwin’s eyes and the title, and all through the film are magnetic images of black people staring, looking off, caught in their own subjectivity. The effect of these eyes turned back on the viewer is breathtaking. What ...

Suits and Ties
February 10, 2017
The alt-right has been going through some growing pains these last few weeks. On inauguration day, the now-notorious Richard Spencer got socked in the face on camera. The assailant is still at large, the celebrations of his getting attacked are viral, and there’s a video game ...

Old-school Organizing in Iowa
There is also a lot of inspiring social organizing in Iowa. It is not to a scale compared to New York City or L.A. or anything, but in 2012 a grassroots community organization named Iowa CCI, bird-dogged Mitt Romney at the state fair and forced him into his “Corporations are ...