I have this friend.

He's a bright guy, my friend. Articulate and open-minded. But lately, he's been leaning towards Bush, pushed, I think, by fear of terrorism and the dual distractions of family and work that cause him to be admittedly less informed then he should be.

Lately, I've been trying to talk to my friend, to send him easily digestable, relatively un-biased information on a variety of issues which I think show that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party are committing egregious and systematic offenses against the American people. When he has time to read these articles, he tends to see them as isolated incidents that have little direct reflection of Republican/Bush Administration policies, and are rather the work of "typical governement mishaps" or the noxious deeds of a few bad apples.

Below is one of a series of emails I've sent to my friend recently, to try to get him to see a bigger picture.

OK, I'm back from one of my two negotiated nights per week at the gym. Ran a quick 4 miles on the treadmill and did just enough abs to convince myself that I'm making an effort to chip away at this tire around my waist. Luckily, Asher and Sarah are both blissfully sleeping, which leaves me some free time to share a few hopefully lucid thoughts with you. I. I am not traditionally a left-winger. I consider myself to be a fiscal conservative. I believe more in capitalism and less in socialism than your average left-wing Democrat. I'm glad we kicked the shit out of the Taliban, and when my representative Barbara Lee was the only one to vote against action in Afghanistan, I was not happy. Living in Berkeley made me want to become a Republican. They're pretty extreme out there. II. Bush is under the complete control of factions of the Republican party that scare the shit out of me. Republicans these days basically fall into four broad categories: 1) Fiscal conservatives who may be strong on defense, but are likely more moderate in general. McCain, Specter, Hagel, Rep. Shays, Snowe, and so on. There are definitely differences (ie, McCain is much more socially conservative than Snowe), but I'm grouping them together for argument's sake. I can dig these folks. I could conceivably vote for these folks. Unfortunately, they're a dying breed. And they have very little power. 2) Social conservatives Santorum, Inholfe, Coburn, etc. This group seems more concerned with what's going on in your bedroom and in your doctor's office than what's on the radio/tv/big screen. They freak me out. Personally, I believe that the government has more right to regulate what's in the public space (radio/tv/big screen) than the private space, though I'm not a big fan of either, of course. Because of Bush's religious pretentions, these folks are a pretty powerful contingent, sharing control with group #3. 3) "Free marketers" Cheney, etc. These folks have explicitly stated that they would like to roll back government's social and economic programs to a pre-New Deal era - perhaps all the way back to before income tax was legalized in 1913, and before the Sherman Act was passed in 1890, which served as the basis for later anti-trust laws. They believe that education, social security, health care and the like are not fundamental rights and that the government shouldn't provide for them. This really troubles me for two reasons: First, I fundamentally disagree with them. Second, most are pretty large hypocrites and have been caught using their positions to manipulate the free market for their personal gain, which leaves their intentions suspect, to say the least. 4) Power for Power's sake Delay is the king of this group. Really bad dude who breaks tons of laws simply to shore up his hold on power. Talk about unethical. Even the Democrats in their 40 years as lords of the House never pulled half the shit he has. III. Zero oversight. No checks and balances. That's bad. When Clinton was in the White House, he was under investigation for something new every session of Congress. The biggest one - Whitewater - went on for 8 years. No investigation ever turned up any wrongdoing on Clinton's part, save lying about getting a blowjob from Lewinski. The media was crawling up Clinton's ass, too,with nothing to show in the end. But he was investigated. There was oversight. That's Congress and the media's job. Under Bush, literally dozens of things cry out for investigation. But since we have a Republican House and Senate, nothing is ever investigated. And the media has been manipulated/cowed into submission, which means no fourth estate oversight. With no investigation, stories like the ones I sent you in an earlier email, and statements from group #3 above, I really do think that the administration is cynically distracting us with terror talk and Christian issues while they systematically dismantle all the social progress this country has made in the past 100 years and pay off their friends/financers in the process. IV. The Republican financial stewardship sucks. Don't need to get into this. I think you and I agree. Okay. Enough for tonight. I'm going to go stare at my sleeping son. Best, isaac