Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.
America is run by the rich and powerful in their own interest. To an extent that I think is hard to exaggerate, the intellectuals - academics, journalists and so on - are bought off. And that's a big change that happened in the United States in the last 30 or 40 years.