Trusting the Scorpion: BP, the Legacy of Republican Hypocrisy and Democratic Cowardice

[Joanne98]

by John Atcheson

The progressives are up in arms over the oil spill. Like a scene from Frankenstein, the good citizens are storming the hydrocarbon castle with torches ablaze, and pitchforks held high.
Some demand stricter regulations, some a wiser energy policy, but they're all focused on tarring BP with this heinous crime against nature. Especially now that Obama is starting to get some blame. An inordinate amount of energy is being spent on how we can use this event to "message," with the emphasis here on assigning the blame to BP.

It would be nice to get stricter regulations; certainly a wiser energy policy would be good. But focusing on blaming BP is missing the point. Of course they cut corners; of course they're sleazy. It's what they do.

But they can do it only because we let them. The whole thing is reminiscent of the fable about the scorpion and the frog. If you've forgotten, it goes like this:

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog, afraid of being stung, refuses at first, but when the scorpion points out that if it were to sting the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown as well, he relents. Yet when they reach the middle of the river, the scorpion stings him. As they are sinking, the frog asks why, and the scorpion explains, "I'm a scorpion; it's what we do."

The hydrocarbon castle we would storm is but one building in a vast city as dark as Mordor.

That's why focusing on blaming BP, even in hopes of getting a saner energy policy, is such a waste - it's like worrying about a case of the sniffles (albeit a very bad case) when you've got end stage cancer. Was Exxon - the mot profitable company in history last year -- not blamed for the "Exxon-Valdez?" Did it change anything?

Here's the grim reality: the oil spill is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem, one that is our fault, because for the last 30 years we've been trusting the scorpion.

The fact is, Reagan had it backwards. Government, it turns out, is often the solution and unconstrained private industry the problem. Many of us knew this, but few have had the courage to stand up to Reagan's dangerous, but popular, fantasy, then or now.

Indeed, when the history of the last three decades is written, it will be a story of epic hypocrisy on the part of Republicans, enabled by abject cowardice on the part of Democrats, with consequences that created a legacy far more tragic and irreversible than even this horrendous oil spill.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/27-4

[fascisthunter]

1. they aren't cowards... they are part of the problem

if anything, their cowardice is a front for corruption.