The state of political discourse today

We see two types of discourse in politics today, certainly not invented by this generation of political players. 

Less often, we see intelligent civil conversations where all sides are sincerely interested in learning and discovery. More often, we see games of unintelligent uncivil positional offense and defense that serves continuous campaign advantages.

Most of us have no level of influence over which type dominates any level of politics. Those of us who feel a social responsibility to keep political discourse at its best can model and invite intelligent civil converations in whatever media we can.