“It may be that Hollywood cinema’s gaze no longer extends across the vistas of real-world geopolitics, or there may be no external foe to cast in these roles. America is the imperial, authoritarian ‘Other.’”

What does it mean to burn a flag? To torch a Waymo? To set a police precinct ablaze? Aaron Boehmer considers why these actions pose such an existential threat to those in power.

“Unlike some of the other horror writers who mourn a promised future, Schweblin’s stories often show how the future we are mourning is one we have, or thought we had, created ourselves.”

“Outrage against destruction is an ideological sleight of hand: empty cars are to be protected, the fate of immigrant families ignored.”

The end of the Cold War changed the way Hollywood made its supervillains. So did the sensibilities of the viewing public—so did the needs of the overseas market. Our new baddies look a little different these days.

“Consciously or not, most of us have topics that are off-limits—subjects we stay away from for different reasons, whether moral, aesthetic, or personal.”

In the aftermath of recent high-profile school shootings, the right seems only ever to double-down on its defense of the Second Amendment. From the Archives: @madar.bsky.social on the American obsession with bearing arms.

It wasn’t long ago that the supervillains of American cinema were a sinister smorgasbord of dictators, Soviet saboteurs, and ululating terrorists. But these days, @johnsemley3000.bsky.social writes, we have met the real enemy, and he is us.

For our grudges issue, we made nine photographers show us the kinds of pictures they hate taking.

While the male-dominated, magical-realist literary set sentimentalized the past and distrusted the global present, a new generation of female Latin American writers look to the future with pessimism—and horror.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against anyone who torches the Old Glory. Aaron Boehmer writes on symbolic action and American symbols.

Sleep demons, a bump of K, dead-end drudgery, and a touch of edge play—it’s all in a day’s work in “Female Small Business Owner” by Grace Byron, excerpted from her forthcoming novel “Herculine.”

Crowds, caves, personal exposure—in our latest issue, nine photographers show us the kinds of images they are most averse to capturing.

“As the state continues to enact policies that encroach on our freedom to dissent, the indelible connection between the artist and the protester becomes more prominent.”

As the media works itself into a frenzy about the deadly danger of left-wing politicals, it bears repeating that gun culture has smudged out the boundary between state and non-state violence, as Chase Madar wrote in our pages in 2015.

In our new issue, we asked nine photographers to capture their least favorite subjects: protests, sunsets, single gloves that have been run over.

Back in 2017, @addiestan.bsky.social described how Sinclair pushes right-wing propaganda on your local news broadcaster. The station group is now using its monopoly power to force ABC to kick Jimmy Kimmel off the air.

The Argentina of Samanta Schweblin’s youth was one of disappearances and unspoken political violence. As Andrea Penman-Lomeli writes, her literature is likewise invisible, atmospheric, and filled with psychological dread.

“Consciously or not, most of us have topics that are off-limits—subjects we stay away from for different reasons, whether moral, aesthetic, or personal.”

“There was a time not so long ago that cartoon satires, Hollywood comedies, and even burly boxing dramas took direct aim at specific incarnations of foreign power. Contemporary villainy, by contrast, feels a bit queasier.” thebaffler.com/latest/kneel...

When protesters in Los Angeles burned the American flag earlier this summer, politicians on both sides of the aisle were aghast. This selective outrage obscures the violence that occasioned the protest in the first place.

Tech bros, media moguls, and self-aware AI have become the new antagonists in American cinema, from “The Naked Gun” to “Superman.” Wherefore the supervillains of yesteryear?

“I read Dul wasn’t offed over drill beef but because a weed customer put a bounty on his head. I’ll never know, but if it’s true, it would be like Houdini dying of a burst appendix after hundreds of death-defying stunts.”

“The same politics of fear that has incubated our punitive hyperincarceration state also directly feeds these citizen-protectors’ positive, if delusional, self-image as brave and useful men.” thebaffler.com/salvos/have-...

Drill arrived to Philadelphia not too long before Covid did. School closures and stay-at-home orders changed the street life of the city; so did the rise in gun buying. thebaffler.com/salvos/I-Wil...

The Biden administration failed to provide Venezuelan migrants with the kind of resettlement program it extended to displaced people from Ukraine. Cities like Denver are left to pick up the pieces. thebaffler.com/salvos/Dilem...

“There are now academic studies of drill; YouTubers like Trap Lore Ross make a living picking apart drill lyrics to keep fans cued in to who’s killed whom; there is drill fanfic on Wattpad.”

Melancholy is a never-ending loop and, in “Good and Evil and Other Stories,” Samanta Schweblin’s characters collect dead hair, reincarnate as horses, and mourn the living. Sometimes hanging on to death is all that gives life meaning.

In our new issue, @anathanwest.bsky.social describes the economic and technological conditions that have led to recent violence in the Philly drill rap scene, at a scale unimaginable to previous generations.

This Bafflier piece on Philly drill is outstanding and heartbreaking to read but 10000% worth it. thebaffler.com/salvos/i-wil...

The Cold War supplied a cinematic stream of kooky Soviet scientists and stoic Eastern Bloc enforcers. But American supervillainy now means corrupt politicos with a more-than-passing resemblance to reality. @johnsemley3000.bsky.social asks: “Are we the baddies?”

“Drill has given new life to a long-standing and asinine debate about whether rap music is a cause of violence or merely reflects the violence in society.”

“Democrats could have championed immigration as part of a plan to stave off further price increases and boost tax revenue in a year when economic inflation was at the top of voters’ minds. Instead, they embraced the idea that immigration was a threat.”

“In these stories, evil is not external, but imminent to the self. Her characters don’t flee violence; they often run toward it with open arms.”

Maria Chavez and Adrian Rivero arrived in Denver in May of 2023, fleeing instability in Venezuela like thousands of others. They arrived to a city under immense strain, thanks to Biden’s apathy and Republican cruelty.

In North America, the war of all against all has long been seen less as a problem and more as a solution. From the Archives: Chase Madar on the civic theology of bearing arms.

The Biden administration waffled on where to send migrants arriving at the southern border, responsibility—and power—fell to Texas governor Greg Abbott, who used his authority to intentionally overwhelm liberal cities like Denver.

Arthur Sze has been named the next poet laureate of the United States. He contributed work to Baffler no. 71 back in 2023.

In our new issue, Nick Tabor describes how Denver attempted to navigate recent surges of immigration with little assistance from the Biden administration and open hostility from its successor.

Nick Tabor in @thebaffler.com tackles Denver's experience with Biden-era immigration politics, Abbott's busing mayhem, and Trump's return. Fascinating insights into the daunting logistical challenges, moral imperatives (Biden gets a failing grade, unless you're Ukrainian), & America's dismal future.

If you want to love Denver more and Joe Biden less, boy, do I have the story for you.

The Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin is part of a second, female Latin American boom that looks inward for its monsters. In her review of Schweblin’s new collection, Andrea Penman-Lomeli takes on obsessive horror and unspeakable loss.

From Belén Fernández’s piece on the Darién Gap in the latest issue of @thebaffler.com

“Denver soon found itself dealing with a larger influx of migrants, on a per capita basis, than any other city in the United States.”

U.S. officials describe the Darién Gap as a hotbed of human trafficking and mortal peril. That’s not inaccurate, but it fails to account for just how much of that is America’s own fault.

“The efforts to limit and control handguns and their use will flail until the nation’s growing social and economic insecurity is rectified.”

Like Biden before him, Trump is pressuring Panama to stop the flow of foot traffic out of the Darién Gap. But he’s also using the country as a place to ditch America’s deportees—even ones from Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, and China.

On the Hatfield-McCoy feud and how class war becomes folklore:

In our new issue, Belén Fernández leads readers into the Darién Gap, that treacherous stretch of jungle traversed by many recent arrivals, where smugglers serve as de facto U.S. border guards.

“Could it be possible to imagine a world where questions of difference and identity might be played out among adolescents constructing their inner worlds instead of consigned to the cacophonous echo chambers of 4chan?”