My mailbox recently has seen plenty of people talking about Donald Trump, Joe Biden and, by extension, much of what they think is wrong with America. The email resulted from the confluence of a weekend column I wrote about the Associated Press Stylebook and the saturating national conversation about the presidential debate, where Biden battled the vicissitudes of old age and Trump repeatedly lied. The emails I receive put me in an unusual position these days, in that I hear from large numbers of people on both sides of our ever-widening political divide. That’s a benefit of being at the main source of regional and state news. Regardless of whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, if you want to know what is going on locally – in news, sports or entertainment – you pretty much have to be on our platforms. Both sides drink at the same local news trough. What might surprise people, especially those who express their panic at what is ahead, is that people on the other side feel the same distress. People on the right are as passionate as people on the left, convinced the United States is teetering at an abyss. And they think people on the other side are to blame. Because I have this rare vantage point, I feel a responsibility to share it. Perhaps the best way to begin is with the style change in the news media four years ago to capitalize Black. The AP changed its style where Black is used in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense. The use of white as a race descriptor remains lower case, and a lot of people who write to me don’t accept that. I’ve explained that white is not a descriptor of ethnicity, but for the people who object, they see nothing but unfairness in capitalizing Black but not white except to be discriminatory. That sentiment is widely held. Every time it comes up, I hear from people about their objections, and I heard from many about my column. They don’t see it as fair, and they want fairness from their news source. They think the change creates inequality. I get the same sentiment about the evolving use of pronouns, particularly the use of the word “they” as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. I think it was the speed of this change that bothered some. For all of their lives, “they” was a plural pronoun, and seemingly overnight, the rules of grammar and usage changed without much discussion. Capitalizing Black and using “they” for gender neutrality might seem to you to be small issues, but for some people I hear from, they are the symptoms of national decay, in the same sphere as the government paying off student loans or immigrants flooding through our borders, So, they take solace from a candidate like Donald Trump, who talks about making America great again. They appreciate someone who says he sees the same decay they do and vows to stop it. Yes, those Trump supporters have obviously blinded themselves to what a monster the man is. He’s the worst human being ever to hold the office of president, an amoral criminal who lies with most every breath he takes and has a vision for a fascist nation. His followers don’t see it that way. They see a guy who yearns for the America of old. Intolerance exists on the left as well. I took flack recently because of a discussion on our weekday Today in Ohio podcast, where we discuss and analyze the news. The story at issue was school districts that allow students to leave for part of the school day for religious instruction, with parental approval. Some see the practice as an inappropriate insertion of religion into public schools. I said on the podcast that I didn’t see this as very different from the Sunday school of my youth. I was a Catholic school kid who had friends who attended Sunday school for religious instruction. Life is much busier for families today than it was then, and I suggested that some parents might find convenience in replacing arts or music instruction in their schools with religious instruction off campus. If the parents approve, I asked, what’s the harm? People wrote in to answer that question. Some fear the practice is a stepping stone for approved religions to get a permanent foothold in classrooms. They were dead set against it, even if parents approved it. More and more, it seems from my email, minds are closed. A colleague blames the breakdown of social norms. Where we once gathered in churches, social clubs, civic groups or, even, over picket fences, we now sit isolated in our homes, gathering information from the angry, free-from-the-rigor-of-facts universe of social media. We don’t talk to each other, so we see each other more as stereotypes than people. I think about my dad when I was growing up, and how he talked to everyone. I never hesitated to accompany him to a hardware our auto parts store for whatever repair he was making, because he’d end up in extended conversations with the owners, leaving me to wander around and examine all the gadgets or hit the gumball machines. My dad was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-educated guy with some fervently held viewpoints that surely were at odds with those of some people he struck up conversations with, but that never got in the way of the conversations. (I’d give anything to go back in time and listen to those conversations today.) I wish, seeing the commentary that so many offer in their emails and text messages, that I could bring the two sides closer, to spark conversations like my late dad had with strangers. The two sides aren’t hearing each other. They’re not even trying. Should we start with small steps to start bridging the divide? Capitalize white as well as Black? Come up with a true gender-neutral singular pronoun? Could we get Trump supporters to acknowledge that the U.S. president should be someone of high moral fiber? “Absolutely not,” will be among the answers I receive in response to this column. For so many who write to me, compromise is capitulation. Winning is the only acceptable outcome, and the winner takes all. So many people turn to our newsroom to express their opinions and thoughts, because they see us as approachable. With our unique role, how can we get them to talk to each other? I'm at cquinn@cleveland.com Thanks for reading | 