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Faux News Channel
In line with venerable liberal tradition, the disaster known as Election ’16 has bred a slew of culprits behind the surprise defeat of Hillary Clinton, all reassuringly distant from the leadership sanctums of the national Democratic Party: James Comey, WikiLeaks, Vladimir ...

Daily Bafflements
November 30, 2016
• Our lovely readers have weighed in on our Bleak Friday reading list, “Good Books for Dark Times.” Over on our Facebook page, several readers offered their own additions, including: Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Eric ...

Looking Plain, Getting Laid
I am a twenty-one-year-old cisgendered, heterosexual woman, and I am not hot. I don't mean that I am ugly, but I also don't just need a makeover, and I don't have low self-esteem; I just mean that I am not hot. A little fat, bad skin, a bit of a weak chin—that sort of thing. ...

Starving in America
November 29, 2016
In the late seventeenth century, the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather laid out a vision for America in a fiery sermon: “For those who indulge themselves in idleness,” he told his congregation, “the express command of God unto us is, that we should let them starve.” Nearly ...

Daily Bafflements
November 28, 2016
• Angela Nagle podcast alert: “Because all of this stuff is so steeped in irony,” she comments, drawing on her Baffler essay on 4chan, “it’s very hard to know what anyone actually means . . . So for example if you see a swastika being used ...

Opening Doors
November 28, 2016
Scores of volunteers began congregating from activist enclaves throughout the West this summer as word of an ambitious project spread: the building of a new community center in Athens that would serve refugees pouring into Greece. Khora, a new center built by volunteers, opened ...

Good Books for Dark Times
November 25, 2016
Steel yourself for the bleak times ahead. Look backward in order to look forward. Find a good book that speaks to this moment. Or one that gets you through the day. Here's The Baffler's list of a few good books. Themes: comfort, clarity, and the clarion call.

By What Authority?
November 23, 2016
The 1890 massacre of as many as 300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by a U.S. Army regiment was precipitated by a Ghost Dance. The dance was originally envisioned by a Paiute shaman in Nevada, a turning point in a prophesy of his in which Jesus ...

#RIPMyShillaries
November 22, 2016
Political candidacies are like jokes: if you need to explain them, there’s something wrong. Hillary Clinton’s candidacy launched an entire cottage industry of explanation. It’s been two weeks since election day and her supporters and surrogates are still ...

Presenting the New Baffler
November 22, 2016
Hello Baffler Readers! I’m writing to alert you that when the Winter 2016 Baffler hits the newsstands, it will come bearing more than the usual roster of polemic salvos, well-wrought culture critiques, and pleas for incremental upticks in collective sanity. For the ...

Daily Bafflements
November 21, 2016
• At the alt-right confab in DC last weekend, “while much of the discourse at the conference was overtly racist and demeaning toward minorities . . . the focus was on how whites were marginalized and beleaguered.” We know how this one goes. Susan Faludi ...

Begging Pardon
November 21, 2016
Edward Snowden himself has never directly asked for a pardon. The former NSA contractor and CIA employee-turned-whistleblower maintains that he would be willing to return home from Moscow to be judged by a jury of his peers, and even serve time in prison, if there were a chance ...