Why LI is no radical:

LI has been pondering a question: when Jack White screams “Take… take … take” in the song of the same name on the latest White Stripes album, why is it that I would trade that moment for the collected works of Jorie Graham and Jonathan S. Foer and a half a dozen other writers? Why is it that that scream seems to me to come from the tumultuous collective parasitic heart – the heart that beats in me – in this epoch of the American decay, in this culture that has ensured that your average Babbit can get through, year after year, using up as much energy as the largest beast ever to stalk the landmasses and leaving behind, as his little value added to the betterment of all nature’s kingdoms, excrement and crushed to-go cups?

Oh, and hypocrite lecteur, I’m that beast too, the leech in my heart keeps screaming take… take… take, as if this was the natural order, and I was actually owed. Owed. Nobody believes that it will someday end, that the account will be finished. No, we are the end of evolution, we are going to live nano-afterlives. Right. I don’t really need some putative survivors to tell me that the life more abundant has turned into the cruelest joke that ever stifled generosity in its crib. LI knows it. Every peasant Jesus’ dream is realized, now, in any destination store you want to aim your SUV at; so why is it all so much value added excrement? Why is it that something better didn’t happen?

It didn’t, though. Take… take… take…