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Democracy in Greece, for Now
January 26, 2015
In seven years’ time, Athens has been transformed from one of Europe’s gleaming capital cities to Europe’s version of Detroit—much of it dirty, forlorn, its storefronts abandoned, its population in decline. Graffiti is ubiquitous. There are homeless beggars huddling on ...

Constrained Debate and Distractions at the SOTU
January 21, 2015
David Hume wondered how it is that the many come to be governed by the few—it seems more logical that it should be the other way around. He came to the conclusion that it was elite opinion, disseminated by “the pulpit and the schoolroom” (he was writing in the eighteenth ...

Fear, the Ultimate Trump Card
January 14, 2015
America has a long legacy of dressing up its xenophobia in the cheap costume jewelry of law and order. Read what Harper’s Weekly wrote about the Irish immigrants in 1860: Unfortunately, this should sound very familiar. Even today, anti-immigration rhetoric in America reads ...

Agreeing to Disagree on Torture
December 16, 2014
Reflecting on his brutal interrogation by the Gestapo, the Austrian essayist Jean Améry described torture as a psychic annihilation, an experience that obliterated the social world. In his book At the Mind’s Limits, he argued that humans took for granted an assumption that ...

The Plea and Promise of “Hands Up”
December 03, 2014
On Sunday, five St. Louis Rams football players took the field with their hands up, a message of solidarity with Ferguson protesters as blunt and powerful as the game they play. Afterwards, the St. Louis police officers’ union denounced the gesture, and conservative ...

Election Day Reading from The Baffler
November 04, 2014
Good morning, all you small-r republicans and patriots. It’s election day today, yessiree. How are you celebrating this iteration of our grand small-d democracy? Here’s an idea: why not ignore the pundits and the pollsters and the nerds and naysayers, and return to some ...

Indignation Nation
October 17, 2014
One of the great pleasures in life is indignation. It’s right up there with anger, love, and fear. Technically speaking, indignation is one of the “reflective” or “cognitive” emotions. When something big, metallic, and fast hurls toward you down the road, you feel fear ...

Q&A: Mary O’Hara on Austerity and Inequality in the UK
October 10, 2014
Mary O’Hara, a longtime social justice reporter for the Guardian in London, is preparing for the stateside release of her book, Austerity Bites: A Journey to the Sharp End of Cuts in the UK, which was released across the pond this past spring. The timing of the book’s U.S. ...

Gary Hart and Gonzo’s Ghost
October 09, 2014
A drugged-out shadow hangs over American political journalism: Hunter S. Thompson, spleen of the long ‘60s, id to Woodward and Bernstein’s tag team superego. When he put an end to things in 2005, he sucked his shtick right out the door with him. He was, as Matt Taibbi once ...

Towards a Politics of Delight and Desire
September 25, 2014
When Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, he was looking to expose the dangerous working conditions of the meatpacking industry and bring relief to its workers. Instead, the popular reaction to his book led to new food standards and sanitation laws. (Apparently the worst thing about ...

What “Yes” in Scotland Might Have Meant
September 23, 2014
Looking at a map of the world and seeing the number of places over which the sun of the British Empire has most definitely set, it’s difficult to imagine why, when Scotland was presented with the opportunity to leave the United Kingdom, they did not take it. It goes against ...

Rhetoric Meets Reality for Married Gay Veterans
September 22, 2014
A couple purely rhetorical statements have recently achieved the status of “bipartisan consensus.” “ISIS is barbaric” is one. “Returning veterans deserve our best treatment” is another. Unfortunately, these truisms are too vague to suggest any particular course of ...