I’m just back from Canada where I read Curtis White’s The Middle Mind. It’s quite amusing to see the readers’ reviews they got up on Amazon. It’s like the Middle Mind’s reaction to being criticized heavily (note how one reviewers comes up with the infamous “liberal bias” sticky note - in itself already a sign of how little that particular reader has understood what White’s point really is). If you want to read something that goes beyond the usual left-wing (The Nation) or right-wing (Wall Street Journal) rants get a copy of the book. You might find it hard to stomach to see either various NPR shows or Cultural Criticism or your favourite right-wing ideologue writer (think Dinesh D’Souza) criticized in a totally devastating fashion but that’s exactly White’s point: Neither left- or right-wing rants nor what in Germany is called the “consensus soup” - which I’d term the Suburban Starbucks-Borders-The-Gap School of Inconsequential Emptiness - lead anywhere. White’s book is about the total lack of imagination and what (maybe) can be done to fix that.