Mountain Blog

Maybe it's the smirk

My first reaction to Don Surber's Blog telling me I, and most Americans, are wrong about George Bush was anger. How dare anyone tell me that I am wrong? How dare anyone say that the vast majority of the American people are wrong about how they feel about their president?

But I didn't react immediately. And I'm glad I didn't.

I asked my wife to read the blog and she did. She said it's not that she has lost faith in the president because of his botched war in Iraq, althoiugh she has (and so have I). It's that smirking smile he wears when he addresses the press, the people and apparently everyone. I wonder if he has what we West Virginians call that "shit-eating grin" when he talks to his cabinet behidn closed doors.

I had teachers in high school and college who had that same smirk. I never trusted them either. I learned little or nothing from them. I couldn't. I was always wondering why they smiled that way? Did they think they were better than I? Were they thinking how dumb I was? What were they hiding? Nothing good, I was sure.

But back to Bush.

First and foremost, I am not a fanatic about anything. Despite the fact I am a columnist, I do not rage against every news story that I read. Heck, I don't even rage about Bush every day of my life. People who shouldn't be dying in Iraq are dying because of his intractable path. We need to get out of that country because it's not in our interest or the world's interest for us to be there. In due time we will get out and we will chalk the war up to another mistake, one of the many this coiuntry has made in the last 200-plus years.

I am not alone in the way I feel. About 60 percent of the American people feel the way I do and we believe Don Surber is wrong. Some of us scream that belief in the streets and on Internet blogs. Others just believe it and wait till the next election to let our feelings be known. It will all work out, perhaps not soon enough, but eventually.

Meanwhile what about the smirk and what it represents? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. A documentary I recently saw on TV said that, during the era of the robber barrons, one-eighth of the population controlled seven-eighths of the wealth. I wonder what it is now? Maybe not as out-of-kilter as that but it's getting there.

I see Bush and his ilk as enabling the rich while hobbling the poor. History says that America won't put up with this forever. We'll change it. We have to. Equality has what has made this country strong. Not unbridled capitalism. Not fear. And certainly not smirking politicians.

So tell me I am wrong. No problem. If I go down beause I am wrong, I can be cheered by the fact that the vast majority of Americans are with me. For some, it's just an uneasy feeling that things are not the way they should be. For others, it's a certainty that a smirking president is not what we want or need.

posted by Dave Peyton @ 4:59 PM