Every time I turn on a news channel (for reference, I typically watch CNN when I watch the news at all) I find myself tuning out the program I intended to listen to closely. Why? Because all I hear when I do listen is interruption after interruption.

Pundit A is told to speak on issue 1, and not even thirty seconds into Pundit A's analysis, Pundit B is interjecting his or hers, often on another issue that is linked to that first issue.

If that sounds confusing, it should; listening to two grown adults speak over one another is jarring at best. At the worst, the constant interruption shows the breakdown of civil American discourse on politics.

I don't personally believe that the ability to talk as civil, respectable people is completely absent from America in 2018. I don't think, or at the very least don't want to think, that American adults are completely unable to talk to one another about difficult issues without a shouting match ensuing.

But even with that optimism, it is becoming harder and harder for me to find examples and instances of people respectfully talking to one another.

I do, though, find plenty of people bemoaning the inability of adults to talk to other adults who happen to have different political mindsets.

The more I notice the lack of civil conversation on news programs the more I also notice the lack of a willingness to listen.

It has led me to ask one question of myself and those who complain about the lack of conversation: how can we talk to one another if we can't listen to one another? The short answer is simply that we cannot.

A conversation is as much an exercise in listening as it is in speaking. If either of those exercises falls short of the requirement, the entire act falls apart.

Thus, when Pundit B is too busy trying to interject his or her own analysis into the conversation to first listen to what Pundit A offers, the resulting product is less of a conversation and more of a shouting match between two or more sides of an issue.

This isn't just evident in cable news programs. It seems as though any discussion about politics, whether it is about immigration, the economy, the president, or anything else, falls apart minutes after it begins.

Across the country, people are digging in their heels and sitting firm in their beliefs, no matter what the other side presents to them.

This is only furthering the inability of individuals to listen to one another. In America in 2018 politics is a deeply tribal institution. A liberal individual is a Democrat and that is that; good luck ever getting them to listen to a thought that offers praise or even acceptance to a conservative person. The same principle is true the other way around.

Ultimately, politics has become so deeply entrenched that people are no longer on opposite sides of an aisle, but rather on the two poles of the planet.

No wonder we don't talk or listen to each other; sometimes we just ignore that the other side exists because we've become so distant from the people that occupy the side.

This matters. A lot. At the end of the day, politics aside, Americans occupy the same spaces.

Democrats and Republicans and the people still stuck somewhere in between (yes, they do still exist, but they often are lost in the noise) will all have to live with the policies of both sides and the impacts they will have.

Democracy, good governance, and the general ability to live without feeling like your head is spinning all depend partly on the public discourse in the country.

In the era of far-left and –right politicians and their avid followers it can seem as though the side against you has no logical points to make; that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to them anyways.

Listen to them, have them listen to you, and then engage in a debate-not an argument, but a factual and logical debate- about the issues our country faces today. We'll all be better off as a result.