"I Don't Change"

One more point before I try to stop shooting the downer cow named George...

I keep hearing pundits and real red-wing reverers like Michael Deaver credit Mr. Bush yesterday for showing how much of a "regular human being" he is and how wonderful it is to have someone who said he doesn't change, doesn't change his mind.

First, whether the "folksiness" is an act or not with Mr. Bush, I don't know. But what I do know is that George is NOT one of us. He was born in Yale-New Haven Hospital to privileged parents and living in one of the wealthiest communities on the CT Gold Coast: Greenwich. Not Crawford. Not Dallas. Not Houston.

He's never worked a regular job, he's never had the ordinary tough demands of work and family that most of us have had, and he's been handed everything - from stellar educational opportunities (that I'm not certain he used well, btw), to an officer's position in the Guard that his record did not merit, to bailouts for his many failed companies, to a part ownership in a Texas team that he paid less for than anyone else.. right through to the Supreme Court handing him the presidency and 9/11 handing him an excuse to reshape the world in his image.

But what offends me far more than pretending you're "one of the people" when you're not is that Mr. Bush should be credited for not being able to change or change his mind. The New York Times editorial today said it well: it's scary to have the leader of the free world be someone who cannot change his opinion even when the intelligence and the evidence indicates he's wrong. Someone who can't change even when much of the rest of the world has had to change since 9/11.

Thinking, learning, participatory people are apt to experience changes over a period of time, and are apt to change their minds on subjects occasionally. This happens as a natural consequence for learning, growing, and truth-seeking.

Anyone who flatly says that cannot happen is not someone I would want to trust with anything, from my super dog to my country to my world. As I recall, the DSM-III has a mental illness named for the condition Mr. Bush cited yesterday.