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Top Kill. I drive. Do you? My routine on most days of the week involves getting into a petroleum-powered automobile, turning the ignition key, and going about my business as if my actions were morally neutral. Before we pile-on to pillory the evil oil companies and the incompetent government, let's be sure that we keep our thumb off the scales, and weigh this thing as it really is. They're not down there pumping oil for some secret coven of elite blue bloods. They're bringing all that tarry goo up for the benefit of everyone who has failed to figure out that the internal combustion engine is an obsolete technology.

Now, in asking that we accept our part in this crime, I would not want to spread responsibility so thin that no one can be held accountable. Let's be clear: This has become Obama's Katrina and will necessarily tar (multiple puns intended) his nascent presidency. Allowing the military to investigate the atrocities it has committed in pursuit of the war on terror has always seemed a bit dumb to me. By the same logic, we should all be allowed to audit our own taxes, write our own traffic tickets, etc. Leaving BP to clean-up their leak when their monetary incentive to get some of that mess to market runs counter to the interests of the Gulf coast and its life is similarly ass backwards. But they're the only ones with the necessary expertise. It's hard to believe that in this rich world of business, governmental, and academic specialists, the only people with a shot at plugging the leak and stopping the flow of oil are the very knuckleheads that were too greedy and short-sighted to prevent it. Has anyone asked the Chinese?

In the end we are left with a powerful metaphor of porosity and permeability. All boundaries are artificial. All attempts to keep out the dark tides of impurity are misguided and self-defeating. We are the oil. The oil is us. And that's not just sick, it's also kind of slick.

"We rode in among them and I heard my mother's voice. She was singing a death song for me, because she felt sure I had died over there. She was so glad to see me that she cried and cried."
-- Black Elk