Today's Object of Ridicule and Scorn is The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne Jr.
GULF OIL SPILL OFFERS A LESSON IN CAPITALISM VS. SOCIALISM by E.J. Dionne Jr.
So who is in charge of stopping the oil spill, BP or the federal government?
It’s not really a question. British Petroleum is the only one even trying. At this writing, the Top Kill method to plug the leak—an idea generated and executed solely by BP—appears to have worked.
The fact that the answer to this question seems as murky as the water around the exploded oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico
There’s absolutely no murkiness in the answer. It’s clear as day. But admitting clarity would deny Dionne the chance to use that clunky simile.
suggests that this is an excellent moment to recognize that our arguments pitting capitalism against socialism
Less than twenty years after defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, Dionne is actually admitting that capitalism and socialism are battling it out for the future of America. This is akin to the United States having “arguments pitting capitalism against fascism” in 1964 or "arguments pitting monarchy against a republic" in 1802. Socialism is a defeated and discredited ideology. If there are large-scale arguments in the United States between capitalism and socialism, who exactly is arguing the virtues of socialism? Conservatives have been blasted from the left for suggesting that Barack Obama and other members of the Obama Administration were socialists. Is this vindication?
