What happened to civil discourse?

I guess I am getting old, since I now find myself reminiscing about the old days, when things were better. Mind you, I am still young enough to remember rolling my eyes when my parents did this, but that is beside the point. My point today is: why can we no longer disagree agreeably? Our (so called) leaders in politics and the media are setting a poor example for the rest of us. There was a time when we could honestly disagree with another person’s point of view without vilifying them and calling them names. Civil discourse was the process by which we could exchange points of view – sometimes leading to one party having a change of heart, although that was not always the case, to be sure. But the disagreement was limited to the issue at hand and if I disagreed with your view on topic it did not mean I considered you a complete idiot, a reprobate, or an imbecile. It just meant we had different views on that issue. So, we could agree to disagree and move on. No longer does that seem to be the case. This is a shame.

Whichever “side” you are on I hope you can at least agree that our current partisan gridlock is counter-productive and counter to the history of our great nation. If we are not even able to discuss issues how will we ever deal with them? Sadly, we are doing neither these days. I hope we can change that.