{"id":6899,"date":"2021-05-17T01:33:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T01:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6899"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:01","slug":"my-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6899","title":{"rendered":"MY SIDE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a vague memory from my childhood which related to me an important lesson about politics (and really all of life). I suppose Ronald Reagan was president at the time and I knew enough about politics to know that my parents were pretty firmly in the Republican camp. On one occasion,\u00a0 I remember hearing my dad say something critical of Reagan. I could not hide my surprise: I thought we were Republicans &#8211; how can we be critical of a fellow Republican? Dad explained that sharing a political belief with someone does not automatically insulate against criticism where it is warranted.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even though I was young and hardly paying attention to politics, I had already picked up on the basic framing of American political discussions: my side must always be portrayed as right, smart and good, the other side as wrong, stupid and\/or evil. No criticism of my own team is allowed, and not an ounce of generosity to the other team.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dad&#8217;s willingness to call out failings on his own side of the aisle deeply impressed me. It is something today&#8217;s political climate could use a whole lot more of.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a vague memory from my childhood which related to me an important lesson about politics (and really all of life). I suppose Ronald Reagan was president at the time and I knew enough about politics to know that my parents were pretty firmly in the Republican camp. On one occasion,\u00a0 I remember hearing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6900,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6899\/revisions\/6900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}