I talk with my dad every Sunday evening. Usually we talk about computers, birding, family members, our respective churches, photography, books we’re reading, courses we’re taking — things like that. Tonight we somehow got to talking about politics. It’s not good for us to talk about politics, for while we basically hold similar political views, part of our shared political outlook is that we don’t like the political direction of the United States. Finally dad said, “I’m getting all worked up. Let’s talk about something else.” But by this time it was after ten, and time for me to get ready for bed so I can go to work tomorrow. “I’m not going to sleep well tonight,” said dad. “Neither am I,” I said. “I’m going to make a hot cup of Ovaltine to calm down,” said dad. I’m going to go down and make some nice chamomile tea.<\/p>\n
I hate talking about politics. I don’t understand it, I know I’m being manipulated, and it all makes me feel powerless and hopeless. So there’s going to be a politics ban in effect on this blog for the next few weeks, or maybe longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I talk with my dad every Sunday evening. Usually we talk about computers, birding, family members, our respective churches, photography, books we’re reading, courses we’re taking — things like that. Tonight we somehow got to talking about politics. It’s not good for us to talk about politics, for while we basically hold similar political views, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[309],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}