“Many commentators have remarked that the United States is a nation of rank buffoons. Few, however, have carefully measured our nation’s recent and steep tumble into idiocy, much less attempted a unified theory to explain it. In its sixteenth issue, ‘Nascar, How Proud a Sound,’ The Baffler reveals the shocking breadth of American ignorance, and argues that the nation’s mental and moral decline-like that of the Roman Empire-is spreading from the better classes downward. In this highly readable issue, Tom Frank gets to the root of Ann Coulter’s mental infirmity. Nick Cohen examines Britain’s outbreak of millennial lunacy. Paul Maliszewski details the delusional narcissism of ‘the creative class’ and its theorist, Richard Florida. Jamie Kalven chronicles Mayor Daley’s Neronian cruelty to the poor of Chicago…”