Alternet

Early this summer most of America saw images of houses washing down the swollen Mississippi, logjammed against a bridge. In the following weeks we heard about the humans, libraries and even pets left homeless, but outside Iowa, few people heard about the problem of those houses, or indeed about that bridge itself. Iowans alone were left to contemplate their opportunities: When insurance failed, would FEMA provide? Would charity?

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The Armstrong Williams story that surfaced last week is unquestionably a juicy one: the conservative, African-American commentator was paid a sweet $240,000 (in taxpayer dollars), by the Department of Education to promote President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation.

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Read orginal story here.

Americans have been ignoring the elephant in the room. It's that huge thing that's in front of everyone, but that no one mentions by name. Most people can't see it, while others intentionally disregard it, but many people just have a hard time articulating what it is.

Even its opponents direct little attention to the elephant itself; at best they tend to describe its various parts. Its ears are deregulation, its trunk trickle-down economics, its mouth media consolidation, its tail a pre-emptive war in Iraq, its legs record deficits, and its feet cutbacks in education, social security, America's safety net, even veterans' benefits.

Yet, by only describing its individual parts, Americans fail to grasp the massive weight and dimension of the elephant. The big picture is obscured. We can't see that what's in front of us is all part of the same beast: failed conservative policies.

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According to Robert McNamara in the "Fog of War," the first lesson of life is, "empathize with your enemy." In order to understand the conservative movement's ascendancy in American politics, progressives should take McNamara's advice and try to view the world through the business lens of conservatives.

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