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Our New War Machines
September 12, 2016
For an institution synonymous with tradition and continuity, the American military is in quite a radical state of flux. In just the six or so years since I left the Army, two major demographic shifts that might superficially appear unrelated (or even contradictory) have taken ...

The Night Phyllis Schlafly Went Over the Rainbow
September 09, 2016
Phyllis Schlafly was one of the scariest people I ever met. I suspect her personal role model was Torquemada. Certainly she was absolutely convinced of her rectitude—while being at least as ambitious as any Spanish crusader prosecuting a holy war. She nearly succeeded in ...

Cashing in on the Culture Wars
September 09, 2016
The University of Chicago’s Dean of Students, Jay Ellison, recently became a folk hero of sorts on the right flank of the culture wars after sending out a blunt warning to the incoming U of C freshman class. To the hand-wringers worried about creeping “political ...

The Fabled and Enabled
We interrupt the cloddish accumulation of campaign effluvia to bring you Nick Bilton’s epic anatomy of the downfall of Theranos, the smoke-and-mirrors Silicon Valley startup that was allegedly poised to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Its very name said ...

From Punk House to Penthouse
Like many radicals, I assume, I burnt myself out in my early to mid-twenties trying to work on activist campaigns full time, and sold out a few years ago for an entry-level job at a software company. There are some legitimately great things about this job compared to being a ...

Daily Bafflements
September 06, 2016
• Last night the planets aligned to give us a celestial new Baffler! Issue 32, “Muzak of the Spheres,” is an almanac that just might help decode the cosmologies and religions attendant on America. Buy one if you want to know how the Broadway hit Hamilton excised ...

Shillable Hours
In a development that has surprised no one, it appears that Corey Lewandowski—the former head of the Trump campaign who was cashiered at the insistence of the candidate’s children earlier this summer—remains a paid consultant of the rampaging bigoted ego atop ...

Daily Bafflements
August 31, 2016
• Today in exploitation: Vice is reportedly “too cool” to respect freelancers and their labor. As one former associate producer on Vice’s HBO series told Columbia Journalism Review:  As Anne Elizabeth Moore wrote ...

Daily Bafflements
August 29, 2016
• Anthony Weiner, sexting extraordinaire, is at it again—this time with a Trump supporter. It’s probably not a viral marketing campaign for the documentary about “Carlos Danger’s” escapades, which Chris Lehmann reviewed back in ...

Gone with the Winds
August 29, 2016
When a hurricane strikes, and is destructive or deadly enough, its name will be retired. For this to happen, the storm will have had to inflict so much damage that to reuse its name would be, according to the National Hurricane Center, a serious faux pas for “obvious reasons ...