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Make American Dystopias Great Again
It was a bright cold day in January, and the blogosphere was awash in the world of 1984. After senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway took to the airwaves to declare that her White House colleagues operated in a world of “alternative facts” it only seemed logical—and ...

Putting Our Bodies on the Line
I am not sure how someone goes from the Women’s March to direct action, frankly. I think the thing that would be closest would be the 350.org arrests that happened in Washington [against the Keystone XL pipeline]. That was people who decided to get arrested for climate change. ...

Office-Droned Out
It can be difficult to balance what you can live with and what you can live on. It usually takes experimentation, trial and error. That’s a luxury most people don't have these precarious days, but creativity helps, and you have a good sense of what will grind your psyche into ...

Daily Bafflements
January 25, 2017
• As Democrats roll over and sign off on Trump’s atrocious cabinet appointees, Donald Trump is pressing forward on his campaign promises. Today, his riotous personal Twitter account informed us, is a “big day” for national security. Planning for the wall will ...

2017: A Spy Odyssey
Trump’s people know they do not have the full support of the security state, and this is why they are making early demands for loyalty. But speculation runs rampant about how much potential insubordination there could be in the CIA.

The Festival of Compromise
January 25, 2017
If, in some counterfactual universe, the Maharajah of Jaipur had married the Queen of England and sent their progeny to study at Harvard, the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival, which ran over the weekend, is exactly the sort of cultural jamboree you’d expect the multicultural ...

Justice for Janitors
If workers don’t work, our economy doesn’t work, their communities don’t work, and it begins to break down for the corporations. I think the strike is such a critical tool because it really is a tremendous amount of power that workers have. The bosses spend hours and hours ...

Dynasties of Neoliberalism
January 24, 2017
Always a spouse, never the president might be how we end up remembering Hillary Clinton, whose near-thirty-year career ended, dramatically punctuated with a period, at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Her appearance was everything we expected: the tight, frozen smile, the deep ...

Daily Bafflements
January 23, 2017
• Harrisburg “mayor for life” Stephen Reed has pleaded guilty to stealing city artifacts. David Gambacorta followed the case for his Baffler no. 33 report, and he’ll be on call on the Baffler Twitter account tomorrow to answer your burning ...

Chelsea Manning’s Existential Threat to American Innocence
January 23, 2017
You know the story: a court-martialed soldier of an unpopular war granted clemency as the very last act of a U.S. president amid great public controversy. I refer, of course, to Lt. William Calley, the soldier of the Vietnam War who on March 16, 1968 led the systematic slaughter ...

Daily Bafflements
January 20, 2017
• Today in presidential aesthetics: commentators weigh in on Trump’s selection of (two!) bibles for his swearing-in and an oil painting takes aim at Obama in a bizarre echo of Trump’s promise that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be ...

Beyond the March
We need things, like national free childcare, paid parental leave like they have in other countries. Two years in these other countries! A minimum fifteen dollars an hour for all women, no exceptions, all sectors of the workforce. We want to save Medicare and expand it to ...