When everyone is shouting, it’s hard to hear anything, or anyone.

Something about modern politics seems to create rigid ideological frameworks, in which the loudest people are also the least flexible.

Anyone who has some experience in life surely realizes that one side never has all the answers; each side has something to offer; and the common ground, when they can find it, provides the best path to progress.

But if everyone is shouting, and no one is giving ground, we get nowhere except even more divided.

Can we just stop? Listen to each other? Cut out the quick negative reactions? Talk to each other? Try to soften the raw edges?

Without trying to find understanding, then everyone is talking in different languages and no one even hears what the other side is trying to say.

Stop the shouting. Listen.
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