The way that contemporary society is breaking apart over political differences is not good for its general well-being. And the general tendency to avoid engaging in conversations with people on the other side removes an opportunity for respectful communication which could help begin to mend this breaking apart.
Unfortunately, after the years of formal education end, there is very little backing for this kind of dialogue at all. Sometimes religious institutions manage to cultivate it, but it is not, by a long shot, widely taught or practiced.
We now have TV channels and websites that support any and all of our different and views and, far more frequently than not, we tend to tune into those to get confirmation of our particular viewpoints rather than actively engaging others with different ones.
At family events and in other social contexts in which people with strongly differing views might mingle with one another, political talk between people on opposite sides is generally regarded as likely to get out of hand and is frequently avoided.
Though one can listen to talking heads take on opposing sides on television, radio or the internet, watching or listening to that is very different from oneself having a live discussion with someone else. Such live, one to one, connection allows one to think actively in a way that listening to experts debate the issues does not do. Listening to the experts argue is our journalistic norm and certainly to be applauded for what it offers. But such “thinking by proxy” is not a replacement for personal, direct thinking through the issues in one-on-one discussions.
As well, the direct give and take of a one-to-one phone call, video encounter, or face-to-face meeting in real time is very different from engaging in a text chat online. Though chat enables a presentation of views, there is something about that format which is very different from live conversation in real time, with one standing there, so to speak, “on one’s own feet” in the presence of the other.