I’ve said before that neither of the presidential candidates in 2016 were great options, and that I even considered voting for a third party candidate. However, as a swing state voter, I felt obligated to eventually chose a side. While it would’ve been novel to see our first female president, I felt like Hillary Clinton was too corrupt and too entrenched in the Washington muck: she didn’t seem trustworthy. Donald Trump was not the first person I would’ve chosen to be president, nor would he have been the first pick for the vast majority of people when he announced his candidacy, but I did end up choosing him (fairly enthusiastically, I might add), and I felt surprised and vindicated when he pulled off an upset that nobody saw coming.

There were a multitude of reasons that I ultimately chose to vote for Donald Trump in 2016. He was a political newcomer who clearly wasn’t going to use the typical Washington playbook, and it seemed like he may have been able to shake things up. He was irreverent and spoke his mind, and while he was often rude or uncouth, it was a breath of fresh air to hear a political candidate tell you what they really thought. There was also the allure of his business background: we’ve had decades worth of career politician presidents, so perhaps giving the reigns to someone whose successful career was based on savvy business dealings could give the economy a revitalization and make things better for the middle and working classes. There was also the issue of the open Supreme Court seat in 2016 following the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, which would be filled by whoever was elected president and swing the court to the right or the left.

If I’m being honest though, there were also some unsavory aspects of Donald Trump that appealed to me. The fact that most politicians on both sides of the aisle seemed to strongly dislike him made me want to play devil’s advocate, and it seemed to indicate that while he may screw up some of the systems ingrained in American government, he could bring real change to our politics. I believed (and still do believe) that the U.S. needs to do something major to overhaul our immigration system. Donald Trump’s proposal of a wall spoke to me on multiple levels, some practical, some silly, some subtly cruel. On the one hand, a large physical barrier seemed remarkably effective at reducing illegal immigration from Mexico. I was also just a fan of large, government projects in general; I saw them as monuments to a country’s power (think something like the massive, dystopian concrete walls and other structures from the “Hunger Games” movies), and I wanted the U.S. to have something cool like that (not just one wall though, I also wanted one on our northern border because the asymmetry of only having one massive wall separating our country from the rest of the continent bugged me in a sort of OCD-ish way). But there was also an aspect of the wall proposal that was subtly race based, and fell back on the notion that immigrants from Central America were second class people who didn’t necessarily deserve to live in the United States. I don’t think this was ever a conscious thought I had, but it certainly provided the bedrock for some of my isolationist, pro-wall views. While I did support the idea of a wall, I also wanted the legal immigration system to be updated to make it easier for people to come here legally, but that wasn’t as enticing for potential voters as the wall was, so Trump didn’t really spend a lot of time talking about that.

All in all, my vote for Donald Trump was a devil’s advocate vote. To borrow a quote, it was a vote to burn the house down and start over, in many regards. Perhaps I was a bit of an anarchist.

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If you’ve always considered yourself a Republican or a conservative and feel repulsed by the idea of voting for a Democrat no matter how much you dislike the Republican, I know where you’re coming from. I was raised in a staunchly conservative Christian household, and for a long time, nothing made me question any of my positions. But like most Republicans, the past few years have probably left you feeling at least a little bit of internal conflict. You’ve seen our president and the leaders of the Republican Party make arguments in bad faith, you’ve seen them flip flop and change their “beliefs”, and you’ve seen them support positions that don’t reflect the views they claimed to hold when you voted for them. It’s okay to be concerned, and it’s okay to admit that voting for someone wasn’t a great choice. I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and in hindsight, I can admit that I made a mistake. 

If you’re a Republican or a conservative and you don’t have ANY qualms with how your leaders have been behaving lately — even deep down, secret things you’ve never told anyone because you don’t want to risk being painted as a liberal snowflake — there’s a decent chance that your beliefs are founded on racism, homophobia, xenophobia, general bigotry, or a perverted and oppressive theological doctrine which you likely call “Christianity” but which doesn’t actually resemble the teachings of Jesus Christ. If you are in that camp and you see no issues with the behavior of Donald Trump and his “Republican” allies, you need to take a long hard look in the mirror. If that’s you, then stop reading, because this article is not for the close minded. But my guess is that if you’ve read this far, you have had at least some doubts about Donald Trump.

Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like Hillary Clinton, but the last four years have shown me that voting for Trump and encouraging others to do so may have been one of the most destructive decisions of my life. That said, it took me a long time to reach that conclusion, and it was not a comfortable journey. I spent a long time trying to justify my vote for Donald Trump. I convinced myself that even though he was unconventional, America could use someone who would turn over a new leaf and shake things up in Washington. “Drain the swamp” was a remarkably appealing message. Allowing Donald Trump to burn the house down doesn’t sound like the worst option until you realize that he doesn’t have a plan to get you out of the house before he sets it ablaze.

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By 2018, I was beginning to seriously question my decision. There was no progress being made on any of the issues I’d cared about when I cast my ballot for him. On top of that, while I still appreciated his candor and unfiltered thoughts, I couldn’t justify some of the things he said or did, like his remarks about “very fine people” who happened to be torch-carrying white supremacists and Nazis. He was beginning to cross red lines, striking matches and pouring gasoline as he went.

Another point of inflection for me was when I found out how exactly he had managed to pull off his 2016 upset. I’m not talking about Russian interference (though I do now believe that they did try to influence voters), I’m talking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, wherein the Trump campaign used personal data from millions of Americans to target individual voters in specific counties in specific states to help them win an electoral college majority without trying to win the popular vote. They understood the weaknesses of the Electoral College, and they used modern technology and unethically collected personal data to influence only the voters they needed with disinformation, and they also used that data to conduct racist voter suppression, showing ads to black people to discourage them from voting. They gamed the system. They cheated.

Unflattering as that may have been, I could’ve looked the other way if he had been delivering on his policy promises. I could’ve told myself that he was technically playing within the rules, and that it was just an example of why the Electoral College was an outdated system that needed to be reformed or abolished. But he wasn’t delivering on anything, and he continued to cross red lines.

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When I voted for Donald Trump, I expected him to be a champion of our military. I expected him to respect them and appreciate their sacrifices, but he’s shown time and time again that he simply does not care about them. He’s a draft dodger, and he’ll never understand or revere our troops the way a Commander in Chief should, and high ranking military leaders in his administration have condemned his actions that take advantage of our troops.

I’m a big believer in the second amendment, but Donald Trump is not doing what a responsible Republican president would do in this day and age. With the incredible frequency of mass shootings, it’s clear that something needs to be done: the curriculum for our children’s first day of school each year should not include where to hide in case of a shooting. Yet, Trump refuses to address this problem because of the overwhelming support he receives from big donors like the NRA. Respecting the second amendment means not only respecting the right of the people to bear arms, but also respecting the specific aspect of that same amendment that calls for thorough regulation.

Climate change is an issue that a lot of people — young people in particular — care a lot about. We are seeing the effects of climate change from wildfires decimating the landscapes of California and Australia to record numbers of hurricanes brutalizing the east coast. Yes, the earth goes through periods of warming, but the evidence that humans have accelerated global warming is incontrovertible. Donald Trump just refuses to acknowledge it because it’s unpopular among big donors whose businesses rely on lax environmental regulations. To those who don’t believe in climate change, I say this: let’s apply a common theological argument used by Christians to convert non-believers. If climate change is a hoax and we waste our time trying to prevent it by transitioning to clean energy and less harmful manufacturing processes, then no real harm will be done. But, if climate change is real and we do nothing to address it, the consequences will be dire. Even if you don’t believe the evidence, we can all agree that there is no harm in making our environment cleaner and less polluted. Donald Trump apparently can’t follow this logic, becasue he’s been rolling back environmental protections throughout his term.

In regards to immigration: it doesn’t take four years to build a wall, and it certainly doesn’t require eight years, but despite having Republican majorities in both chambers of congress, Donald Trump didn’t build a wall. In fact, he’s only put up a few miles of fencing (nothing like the “Hunger Games”-style wall I was imagining), and sections of it have been cut through, sections have blown over, and the people he tasked with building the wall actually tore parts of it down to sell the scrap rebar on craigslist. It flies in the face of what I wanted when I voted for him. And of course, there have been zero improvements to our legal immigration system. 

Racism has been a hot topic this year, and Trump simply hasn’t met the moment. He’s stoked fires rather than trying to extinguish them because he knows that division is good for his re-election odds. What he clearly doesn’t realize is that America’s strength is in our diversity. We’ve always had issues with race in this country, but while he tells the Proud Boys to “stand by” and says that white supremacists are “very fine people”, real patriots recognize that this behavior is not the best America has to offer. The pursuit of justice and equality is not a zero sum game in the greatest country on earth, but Donald Trump would have us believe that it is.

Abortion is another important issue for a lot of people, and while there are tense disagreements, there are a few things that the majority of people do agree on. Most people believe abortion should be an option in cases where the mothers life is in danger, and most people also agree that the fewer abortions we collectively have, the better. Unfortunately, this is an issue that Trump has flip flopped on several times, so we don’t really know whether he agrees with those things or not. He’s described himself as pro-life and pro-choice, he’s said that he thinks partial birth abortion is terrible yet that it should be legal. It’s impossible to trust anything he says or does in regards to abortion at this point. Personally, I want the number of abortions in this country to go down, but Donald Trump has done nothing to make that happen. We know that better sex education and increased access to contraceptives and birth control can reduce the number of abortions: Trump has made no effort in any of those areas.

When it comes to healthcare, Trump has accomplished nothing at all, and he knows it.  He’s tried and failed to undo Obamacare. He’s still trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (which ensures coverage for people with preexisting conditions) but he has nothing to replace it with. He simply doesn’t have a plan, yet he’s trying to kick tens of millions of Americans off their current plans in the middle of a pandemic. It’s stupid and it’s cruel.

Speaking of the pandemic, yes, Trump banned travel from China and that was a smart move, but even that was too late. He didn’t ban travel from Europe until even later, which is where almost all of the United States’ cases came from. And what has he done since then? He’s pushed back against relief efforts, stalled stimulus checks so they could print his name on them (as if he were dispensing them from his own personal fortune), and suggested we ingest bleach. He’s undermined the scientists in his own administration because he thinks telling the truth is a bad look for him; he habitually avoids and discredits science and facts that are inconvenient for him. He’s been so reckless that not only has he allowed more than 8,000,000 people to contract COVID-19 and 220,000+ to die, he’s been so ridiculously stupid that he contracted it himself.

As far as the economy goes, Trump’s potential to make life better for middle and working class Americans was clearly just an illusion, because he drove the economy into the ground. Donald Trump is not a great business man, he’s a tax fraud. As was recently pointed out, he’s spent a great deal of his career exploiting tax laws in an attempt to hold on to the money he made as a result of other people’s successful business ventures. His tax records showed us that most of the business dealings he managed directly lost exorbitant amounts of money, and he’s personally in debt to the tune of $400M-$1.1B. The notion that he’s a successful businessman whose business acumen would benefit the greater American economy simply has not proven to be the case. After all, companies spend unbelievable amounts of money each year examining and mitigating various risks, and the greatest risk to the American economy, COVID-19, was by and large ignored by the Trump administration because the president found it unflattering. Ignoring your problems isn’t exactly a great business strategy or a good P.R. move.

Now, it’s not uncommon for a president not to accomplish everything they intended, but it’s not common for them to accomplish virtually nothing. The Trump administration accomplished so little that they aren’t even telling you what they would hope to do during a second term, if re-elected. For the first time in history, the Republican Party didn’t even put together a party platform, presumably because they know that Donald Trump is so erratic that anything they could possibly write down as their official agenda for the next four years would be swiftly and completely abandoned by the schizophrenic old man at the top of their ticket. Even Trump’s own website doesn’t list anything he hopes to accomplish if re-elected. They’re asking you to elect them without a plan. 

You know who does have a plan? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They have a lot of good, moderate plans that are supported on substance by a majority of Americans. Do you want to elect someone who will respect the second amendment and pass common sense gun legislation to reduce mass shooting? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect a president who has the resolve to stand up to white supremacy? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want a president who will empower and respect our military rather than denigrating and disrespecting their sacrifices? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will put measures in place to allow greater access to contraceptives and birth control and subsequently reduce the number of abortions, while ensuring that it remains a safe option in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will improve our immigration system in meaningful ways so that we know who’s entering our country? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will create thousands of well paying clean energy jobs to get us out of Trump’s recession and turn the tide on climate change? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want to elect someone who will finally get the pandemic under control and get our economy firmly on the path to recovery? Elect Joe Biden. Do you want someone who will bring kindness, honesty, empathy, and strength back to the Oval Office? Elect Joe Biden.

You maybe thinking, “well I don’t really like Donald Trump, but isn’t Joe Biden a socialist?” Fortunately for America, the answer to that question is no, Joe Biden is not a socialist. In fact, the reason he won the primary and became the Democratic nominee is specifically because he was not a socialist. He ran against a socialist, Bernie Sanders, and he beat him. By a lot. Despite what you might hear on Facebook or Fox News, the vast majority of Democrats, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, do not want socialism. Many people are trying to paint this election as one where we’re having to chose the lesser of two evils, and while that was the case in 2016, it’s not the case now. Joe Biden is a good man — even many Republicans agree, including Lindsey Graham — and whether you like all of his plans or not, at least he has plans and he’s honest about them.

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Again, regardless of what you think about the aforementioned policies, we should be able to agree that preserving our democracy should always be our top priority. However, in recent days, members of the Republican Party have begun to abandon even that foundational principle of our nation, seemingly preferring rule by the wealthy elite.

For a long time, people have been tempted to call Trump an authoritarian and a dictator, ready to dismantle our democracy at the first opportunity. He certainly has those autocratic, fascistic impulses, and he would love to be the strongman dictator of the United States for years to come, but the truth is that he isn’t strong enough or intelligent enough to follow through on those desires. 

No, Donald Trump is not a dictator. He’s a weak, dumb, self conscious old man who stumbled into the presidency and whose only skill is taking advantage of the people around him. Unfortunately, the president’s ineptitude doesn’t mean that he isn’t still a fundamental threat: his haphazard abandonment of political norms, outright corruption and nepotism, and blatant disregard for the rule of law could very well be setting the stage for a true dictator in the United States. The most progress he’s made when it comes to tearing down our democracy was more or less a coincidence: since he announced his candidacy five years ago, he has been attacking the press and trying to discredit them when their coverage is critical, and he’s succeeded in creating an alternate reality with “alternate facts”. He’s also cracked down on peaceful protestors, authorizing force to be used against them without provocation. Even these fundamental threats to our freedom of the press and freedom to peaceful assembly were byproducts of his narcissism as opposed to deliberate attempts to undo the First Amendment. Imagine how much worse things could be if a real, competent dictator takes his place.

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I noted earlier that the Trump administration has no plan, but it’s not entirely true that they have nothing they want to accomplish in a second term, it’s just that their aims are so corrupt that they can’t say them out loud. Following the leaked tax information from a few weeks ago, we learned that the president is in a massive amount of personal debt. The entire time he’s been in office, he’s refused to step away from his businesses, and has illegally exploited political relationships with domestic and foreign agencies and investors to make more money for himself and his family, ostensibly to reduce the burden of the personal debts from his many failed business ventures.

We were correct to assume that a businessman in the Oval Office could make a lot of money, but we were wrong to assume he would be interested in using those skills to the people’s benefit. Donald Trump’s business savvy served only himself and his family during his term, not the American people. From the start, this has been all about him, not us.

He sees his life as a tv show: he’s the main character, and the only thing that matters is how many people tune in to watch the show. He’s found a fan base in the Republican Party, a bloc of voters who were so fed up with politicians that they were willing to elect a reality television star.

Dont let a reality tv show host convince you that he’s a Republican president of the same caliber as Ronald Reagan. There’s a growing list of well-known Republicans who have denounced Trump, and while he has tried to label them as RINO’s (Republicans In Name Only), he’s the real RINO. He doesn’t actually value conservative ideas, he’s just playing the part—it’s a performance.

The scary thing is that not only is he not a true conservative, most of the officials in the Republican Party aren’t either, because he’s coopted their allegiance. There are instances where Republican congressional candidates have been required by the party to vocally support Trump despite not actually liking him. His presidency is destroying what’s left of the Republican Party: to be a Republican today, it’s not enough to simply have conservative beliefs, you have to be a vocal advocate for Donald Trump. There is no room for debate. You fall in line, or you aren’t a Republican. Group think like this — “herd mentality”, if you will — would be cancerous to any organization, but especially to one that prides itself on individual freedom.

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In 2016, a vote for Donald Trump wasn’t just a vote for Donald Trump, it was also a vote for the future of the Supreme Court. This time, though another seat came open very soon before the election, the seat has already been filled, and the court now has a solid conservative majority of 6-3. The prospect of an open seat being filled by the winner of the election was a strong motivator for people; the high stakes in the court helped the vote for Trump go down a little more smoothly for conservatives who didn’t like him. The odds of Trump getting to replace another liberal justice in the next four years are exceedingly low, so the only reason one would vote for Donald Trump this time is if you like his personality or his literally nonexistent policies.

Furthermore, you shouldn’t want Trump to appoint any more justices. He’s slowly shifting the court away from a liberal or conservative tilt, and appointing justices whose loyalties will lie with him specifically. It’s corrupt, it’s not what the judicial branch was designed for, and it’s going to cost people their rights. In the next few weeks, the court will hear a case that could strip insurance coverage from millions of people with preexisting conditions, and they may potentially rule on the outcome of the election, should it be contested. The nonpartisanship of the judiciary branch is unraveling at the seams, and Trump continues to pull the loose strings because it benefits him personally.

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My decision to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 wasn’t a difficult one, but it was a mistake. However, I believe it’s a mistake that history will judge as being a forgivable one. Nobody can be right 100% of the time, but the closest we can come is to acknowledge when we make mistakes and correct them. The time has come for America to correct one of our greatest wrongs, for the sake of our rights.

Voting for Donald Trump in 2020 will not be a mistake future generations are likely to forgive. It’s not a mistake that many people today will be likely to forgive either: in my view, anyone who has lived through the past four years and still decides that voting for Donald Trump is a good decision is a racist, a homophobe, and a xenophobe. Point blank.

That’s a strong statement, but I want to reiterate that while I have my own biases and discrete life experiences, as we all do, this isn’t about partisanship for me — I’m a registered independent and most of the candidates I’ve ever voted for have been Republicans — this is about preserving the foundations of American democracy for generations to come, and demonstrating to the world that the United States of America is truly the greatest nation on earth by rebuking hatred and division in favor of empathy and honor. The decision to choose Trump over Clinton was not very difficult for me. But the decision to choose Joe Biden over Donald Trump — to choose honor, truth, integrity, science, and democracy — that was a much easier choice.

Vote.

We’ve known Samsung will copy just about anything Apple does, including reusing Apple’s symbols and logos rather than just making their own, but it’s always been tech related. Now it seems that Samsung has even ripped off Apple’s in-house designed face masks.

Apple’s mask on the left, Lee Jae-yong’s mask on the right

Apple’s design was fairly unique, with multiple panels assembled to create a more fitted, ergonomic mask. I have more than five years of experience in the healthcare field and used plenty of PPE, including masks, and I’d never seen a design like the one Apple came up with. I think it was an original.

Nonetheless, here is Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong wearing a mask that looks strikingly similar to the Apple mask, shown in a screenshot from an Unbox Therapy video.

The complete lack of respect for intellectual property is gross. These Asian companies have no shame.

Most people first heard about Chris Taylor back in February when he garnered a few national headlines. Eight months ago, Taylor was running as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for Arizona’s 1st congressional district, but he dropped out of the race when it was reported that he was struggling from a drug abuse relapse that resulted in a traumatic heroin overdose. Check out his interview with a local Arizona news channel to learn more about his personal story.

Now, CopyrightBro has some original reporting to contribute which adds color and context to Taylor’s story.

Following the news of his overdose and withdrawal from the race, we decided to poke around his campaign website a bit. As you might imagine of a Republican campaign site for a congressional seat in a swing state in 2020, it was extremely Trump-y. Every opportunity to name drop the president was taken. They opted for utilitarian fonts that appeal to men with militarized concepts of masculinity. The policy section was light on specifics but used plenty of inflammatory language and relied on common tropes one might hear from Tucker Carlson or Rush Limbaugh. It was extremely polarizing. Interestingly though, the website offered up Taylor’s personal phone number. I decided to reach out to him, personally.

To be frank, my initial intentions in contacting him weren’t entirely innocent and devoid of political influence. I did want to wish him well, but in doing so, I wanted to demonstrate that empathy is more important than dying on political hills, and that connecting through our shared humanity is a good way to traverse the widening ideological boundaries that plague our country and are often exacerbated and exploited by Republicans. I truly did want to wish him a swift and successful recovery, but I also intended for my message to serve as a subtle indictment of the way his party has abandoned honor, empathy, and respect in recent years, as well as their inaction when it comes to addressing America’s opioid crisis. The message I sent read:

Hi, my name is Broc. I’m from NC and may not have been a fan of some of your political views, but I just saw your story online and wanted to say I hope you get the help you need and that your recovery goes well. The opioid epidemic doesn’t discriminate based on political parties, and well wishes for folks trying to overcome that challenge shouldn’t either. 🇺🇸🤟🏼

To my surprise, he responded. And his response shocked me. He said:

Thank you so much! And I bet we aren’t too far off, politically. I actually can’t stand Trump.

Wh.. what? I was blown away. I didn’t expect a reply, and I certainly wasn’t expecting him to say that. My response was a bit incredulous:

Dude really? Your website is very ride-or-die Trumpian haha. I guess you gotta play to your audience a bit. […]

Again, Chris’s reply struck me:

Yeah, I had to, but it’s not worth selling my soul for his hatefulness.

Hatefulness and selfishness are not only afflictions that ail Donald Trump, they’re endemic to the friends he’s found in the Republican Party. The only politician to contact Chris while he was in the hospital recovering from his overdose was his Democratic opponent—no one from the Republican Party reached out to him. He recently announced that he is now supporting that Democratic candidate who was his former opponent. That’s not the only Democrat he’s supporting, though.

In further conversations, Chris revealed to me that he was privately supporting Pete Buttigieg in the presidential primaries, and even told me that Mayor Pete was the only candidate he had ever donated money to. I was also a big fan of Pete, and I personally donated to and volunteered for his campaign, in addition to endorsing him here on CopyrightBro. It was remarkable for me to learn that we really were on the same political page, as he had suggested in his first message to me. It gives me a little bit of hope that not every Republican in office right now is as bought into the performance as they seem.

If you’re a lifelong Republican, it’s worth considering how many more Republican politicians may be running under that label whilst being manipulated by the puppet masters of the Republican Party. How many others’ commitments to Donald Trump self serving, devisive antics are simply a facade they’ve been forced to erect for the sake of receiving support from the Republican Party’s political machine? For people who truly hold some conservative beliefs, considering this paradox for more than a few seconds will lead you to an uncomfortable mental place.

Do your allegiances lie with Donald Trump? If so, you should be offended by the prospect that many Republican politicians don’t actually support him, and are taking advantage of your votes by riding his coattails.

-or-

Do your allegiances lie with your conservative principles? If so, you should take note of the fact that Republican politicians who share your beliefs are breaking from Donald Trump, and consider that Trump is more of a demagogue than a true conservative.

The Republican Party is in disarray: they’re corrupt, they lie, they’re running out of principled stances. That doesn’t mean that the same is necessarily true for conservatism; not all conservative principles are useless or harmful. America’s political system is being ruined by the two party system, and what we need is more parties, not less. For the sake of the future of American politics, let’s hope there are more people like Chris who could build new, righteous political parties that incorporate some legitimate conservative principles once the current Republican Party inevitably implodes.

Today, Chris Taylor tweeted a message announcing his endorsement of Joe Biden. In the wake of his endorsement this morning, we reached out to Chris again, and he provided the following statement regarding his decision:

I swore an oath to the Constitution, I will defend it with my life. There is a reason we don’t swear an oath to the President, but that’s where the allegiance lies today in the Republican Party and that’s why I can’t be a part of it anymore. We need to defend all of the constitutional amendments as vigorously as we defend the Second Amendment: especially the First Amendment, all of it. Freedom of religion means all religions, not just Christianity. Freedom of speech means that athletes have the right to kneel in protest during the national anthem, that people have every right to peacefully protest racial inequality and police brutality, that businesses have the right to mandate masks during a pandemic. Freedom of the press means not discrediting and disregarding reputable news organizations by calling them fake news and “the enemy of the people” simply because the coverage is unflattering.

With all the different serious fires raging in our country right now, the ideal situation would be to elect a once-in-a-generation kind of leader. A professional firefighter, figuratively speaking— a fire science expert who knows exactly what to do to put the fires out and who possesses the courage needed to advance the firehose to the seat of the raging inferno. Someone to finally close this devastating chapter in American history and ultimately heal and unite our wounded nation.

How we long for the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, the talent of JFK, the energy and compassion of Bobby Kennedy, the tenacity of Teddy Roosevelt and the steady crisis leadership of FDR. I don’t pretend to believe Joe Biden will be that caliber of leader. But I know in my heart that Joe has the love, empathy, compassion, and courageous soul needed to at least attempt to put those fires out. 

With the current occupant of the White House, the little hope I ever had that he would even try to do the right thing in any given situation is lost completely. I’m endorsing Joe Biden because I know at the very least, he won’t start anymore fires. Donald Trump has and will continue to light new fires, and he will keep pouring gasoline on the ones that are already raging. He’s unfit for office of any level, and his repeated, disgusting remarks about America’s war heroes wholly disqualify him from continuing to serve as Commander-in-Chief.

It’s evident that Chris’s decision to support Joe Biden did not come as a result of him being a closeted Democrat. He made this decision because Joe Biden is a better vessel of many true conservative ideals than Donald Trump. 

In any case, publicly endorsing Biden is an incredible, courageous conclusion to his 2020 character arc of political reckoning and personal growth. I don’t know Chris terribly well, but if I know anything about him at all, these three things are true:

1. He has massive balls.

2. He gives me hope for the future of responsible conservative ideas.

3. He makes me proud, and whether he gets back into the fray of national politics or not, he’ll make you proud. Anyone in America would be lucky to have a Congressman like him.

I’m choosing light over darkness, hope over fear, honesty over deception, honor over disgrace, unity over division, love over hate, empathy over narcissism. In other words I’m choosing @JoeBiden over @realDonaldTrump. Character is on the ballot.The soul of our nation is at stake. pic.twitter.com/WHQxAUhIR4

— Chris Taylor (@taylor4arizona) October 23, 2020

Quotes from text messages have been lightly edited for grammar and clarity.

Sam Fossum, reporting for CNN:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced Saturday that she will ultimately vote yes on Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Four weeks ago:

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said on Sunday that she will not support President Donald Trump’s nomination of a replacement to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before Election Day.

“For weeks, I have stated that I would not support taking up a potential Supreme Court vacancy this close to the election. Sadly, what was then a hypothetical is now our reality, but my position has not changed,” Murkowski said in a statement.

“I did not support taking up a nomination eight months before the 2016 election to fill the vacancy created by the passing of Justice Scalia,” she added. “We are now even closer to the 2020 election – less than two months out – and I believe the same standard must apply.”

Of course she changed her mind. Did we expect her to actually do the right thing? No, but still. Fuck Lisa Murkowski.

There’s a good chance that the Senate will soon confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump quickly nominated Barrett to the court following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, in hopes of rushing through another SCOTUS appointment before the election. Amy Coney Barrett is a devout catholic and a member of People of Praise, a Christian faith commune that believes women shouldn’t hold positions of leadership (a source of internal conflict for her, I imagine).

I’ll cut to the chase: if the Senate confirms Barrett to the court, it will be a disaster for the United States. Supreme Court Justices hold their positions for life, so this would cause a drastic imbalance on the court that would last for decades.

In her confirmation hearings (which have been taking place over the past few days), she has been asked how she would rule if presented with cases that would give her the opportunity to overturn previously decided cases, and she’s shown a blatant disregard for precedent. She has indicated that she would be open to reversing several important Supreme Court decisions, including ones that determined the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, upheld the Affordable Care Act (which prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to Americans with preexisting conditions), and established the trimester framework that dictates the legality of abortion.

And she will have the opportunity to do those things and more. There’s a case scheduled for just four weeks from now which could deconstruct the Affordable Care Act, and there are also likely to be cases that could determine the outcome of the election if Trump continues down his path of feigning voter fraud because he knows he’s losing. If she is appointed to the court, Barrett could very well be the justice who hands Trump four more years in office despite the will of the people.

While Democrats are doing what they can to delay her confirmation until after the election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has shown on multiple occasions that he’s perfectly willing to change the rules as he goes and punt this nomination through, no matter what. There is only one way to stop it for sure, and that’s for enough Republicans to vote against confirming her. While that may seem like a lost cause, history shows us that phone calls and emails from constituents can influence how senators vote, and this close to an election, they have to be especially considerate of what the people want. Our only chance to prevent Barrett’s confirmation is to flood their phone lines and email boxes with messages making it clear that the voters want the next elected president to nominate the next SCOTUS Justice.

Click here to find out who your senators are and let them know how you feel about this.

Not sure what to say? Whether you call and get a voicemail box or a real person, or whether you’re sending an email, here’s an easy script you can follow:

Hi, my name is _______, and I live in _______. I’m reaching out to share my thoughts about the pending confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.

Given that voting has already began for the upcoming election, I believe that it should be the next president’s decision as to who should be appointed to the court. It’s not right to rush a nominee through at this point, and efforts to do so make the Republican Party look corrupt, morally inconsistent, and disconnected from their constituents.

Please vote against the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett and allow the people’s voice to be heard in this matter by waiting to let the next president fill the vacancy.

Thanks for your time, and I’ll remember your decision in this matter when I make my decision at the ballot box.

This is going to be one of the most important things that happen in American politics this year, possibly even more important than the election. Do your part and reach out to your senators, because at this point, we are our own last hope.

Just about everyone in America realizes that this election is going to have massive consequences for our country for decades to come. What a lot of people don’t realize is that as of today, there are only three weeks left until the end of the election. It’s time to rally.

The polls look good right now (I’m knocking on wood, trust me), but things can always change and the stakes are too high to take our eye off the ball. There are a variety of ways for you to get involved and help Joe Biden and Kamala Harris snag a dub (as well as other candidates down the ballot), and it’s time to kick it into high gear.

The first and easiest way is to donate. South Carolina Senate challenger Jaime Harrison’s campaign actually set a record for the most money raised in a quarter by a senate challenger, but that record could galvanize big Republican donors with millions of dollars to spare hoping to keep Lindsey Graham and other slimy Republicans in power. Now is the time to donate, if you have the extra cash; we can’t afford to cede any fundraising ground. Click here to donate to Joe Biden or here to donate to the most competitive Senate races.

Now is also the time to be talking to your friends to make sure they have a plan to vote early. Get the word out and make sure the people around you know what they need to do. In 2016, Donald Trump won one state by just two votes per precinct. TWO VOTES!!!

I’m usually not one to encourage social media use, but we also need to be sharing lots of pro-Biden and pro-democrat content. Everyone already has their mind made up about whether they like Trump or not, but they may not have decided yet whether they think it’s worth their time to vote for Biden. We need to be spreading content that highlights his humanity and his plans, creating a marked contrast with Donald Trump’s campaign of aimless vitriol.

You should also be volunteering: you do things like calling and texting voters, or you could sign up to work at a polling place.

We have the power to change the course of American history and kick Trump and his cronies out of office before their weakness and corruption cause more harm to our democracy, we just have to use that power. Now is the time.

I spoke to @vmagazine about why I’ll be voting for Joe Biden for president. So apt that it’s come out on the night of the VP debate. Gonna be watching and supporting @KamalaHarris by yelling at the tv a lot. And I also have custom cookies 🍪💪😘

📷 @inezandvinoodh pic.twitter.com/DByvIgKocr

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) October 7, 2020

Taylor — Thanks for your support and for speaking out at this crucial moment in our nation’s history.

Election Day is right around the corner — are you ready for it? https://t.co/eoxT07d7QB https://t.co/TLHRYSjbTx

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 7, 2020

Voting never goes out of style. Thank you so much for your support Taylor.

P.S. Please share your cookie recipe.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 7, 2020

You love to see it.

My last round of predictions and gut feelings was astoundingly incorrect, but there are a few things that have been on my mind leading up to this event, so here they are.

Obviously, we’re going to get iPhones. 5G seems inevitable. The rumors are suggesting there’ll be four new models this year, which in my opinion is too many. The rumors are also suggesting that between the two pro models (both of which are rumored to be getting bigger, which sucks), the Pro Max is going to get better camera improvements than the Pro (non-max), which really blows. I’m not a huge fan of massive phones, but I am a huge fan of great cameras, and with four new models, and that doesn’t seem like a compromise I should be forced to make.

AirTags seem to have been shelved yet again, but the HomePod mini rumors have been swirling up. I don’t know how excited I am about a smaller HomePod. The HomePod has always focused on quality sound over it’s smart capabilities, and frankly that’s been a good play because Siri is quite a disappointment these days. I don’t see why they would introduce a smaller, cheaper HomePod that ultimately will not sound as good (and again, sound quality is the only area the HomePod has excelled in), unless they’ve got some serious Siri improvements up their sleeve as well. But my god, don’t count those chickens yet.

It doesn’t seem likely that we’ll see Apple Silicon at this event, but that would be a nice surprise. I can’t wait to see what they’re capable of doing in that arena.

I came across a tweet last night while reading replies to the screenshots of the disgusting remarks make about the death of Elvia Ramirez that I thought was worth sharing. It said, “freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of that speech”.

Falling back on “free speech” as a defense when someone says something and doesn’t like the consequences demonstrates a complete ignorance of what free speech actually means. As the tweet says, crying “free speech” does not shield you from the publicly enforced consequences of that speech, it’s a defense from government censorship.

Here are my thoughts on cancel culture: cancel culture is generally harmful to society, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to cancel people for things that they

1. Sincerely apologized for

2. Said or did more than two or three years before

3. Said out of context

That said, actions have consequences, and so does speech.

Here’s the point: if you say something egregiously bigoted, racist, or downright hateful, the public has every right to hold you accountable by spreading your name around, informing your employer or educational institutions of your conduct, etc. Whether those entities hold you accountable is their prerogative. Of course, this is case specific and requires nuance, but the public outrage over an action will naturally (in most cases) be proportional with how bad the action was.

Republicans, take note: cancel culture is not as simple as “the left is out to get white men”. If you don’t want to be a victim of cancel culture, state your opinions as respectfully as you can, and ask genuine questions when you don’t understand something. Nobody is perfect, but it doesn’t hurt to try for a little empathy.

i can’t even explain how much this hurt me. pic.twitter.com/nl5HRySXLG

— 𝓤𝓾𝓽𝓽𝓮 𝓲𝓲𝔀𝓪𝓪𝓬𝓱𝓮 (@dessiemaeliyah_) October 11, 2020

If you think this needed to be said, if you think they had a point, if you think what they said was funny: fuck you. These people are cruel, racist, and self-serving, and they lack any capacity for empathy. They’re a good example of the worst type of human beings our country is capable of producing.

Also, their grammar was predictably atrocious.

---

Read the original story from the Grand Forks Herald about Elvia Ramirez’s beautiful life and tragic death.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

“The Social Dilemma” is a new documentary on Netflix that talks about the dangers posed by social networks and other big tech companies who draw large portions of their revenue from advertising. It details how the people who created platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and others intentionally designed features to exploit human psychology and make their products addictive. It’s a good follow up to “The Great Hack”, another incredible documentary that explores how dangerous these companies are through a more political lens.

“The Social Dilemma” features a long list of ex-silicon valley inventors and programmers confirming the fears I’ve had about social media for a while now. The whole problem boils down to greed. Companies that make their money from advertising are greedy, and they deal in the business of selling human attention. The more of your attention you give to them, the more they can predict and influence your behaviors, and they’ve demonstrated that they have no problems auctioning off your attention to the highest bidder, and subsequently allowing those bidders to use your attention and the mountains of data they have on you to manipulate your feelings and your behavior. We saw what this can lead to with the Cambridge Analytica scandal; political polarization is only getting worse, and it’s already to the point where people are practically experiencing separate realities because algorithms — that very few people understand, even within the companies — are presenting them with inflammatory ads that offer “alternate facts” based on what they think will keep them engaged with the platform. The more time you spend on a social media app, the more ads you see, and the more money they make. Their goal is to capture 100% of your attention, and they have more than a few unsavory tricks up their sleeves.

The picture this film paints is bleak, but we do have a chance of brightening it up. People have to understand what’s going on, how if affects them, and where the path we’re currently on will lead us so that we can start a real conversation about these issues and demand that companies like Google and Facebook be regulated. On an individual level, the best thing you can do is to delete your accounts. Personally, I’ve deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts, and I’ve switched to using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine instead of Google.

I’ll admit that deleting your social media accounts is easier said than done. Many folks are afraid they’ll lose touch with people or that they’ll be less informed. While I am in touch with fewer people on a regular basis, my connections with those people are much deeper and far more fulfilling. I’m more informed than ever, and my opinions are more reasoned and less reactive. I recognize that not everyone has the self control to delete their accounts, but there are some things you can do to reduce their influence over you. For starters:

• Never share anything that you haven’t personally fact checked from at least one other source (by the way, your friend who also shared it isn’t a source).

• In services that allow it, opt out of receiving personalized ads. Never click on ads.

• Turn off notifications so you’re less tempted to log on.

Most importantly, watch this documentary, and familiarize yourself with the tactics these companies use so you can reduce their influence over you. For many people, the stakes seem low: “okay, they got me to watch a few extra cat videos, so what?” But the stakes have never been higher. Social media has led stable democratic countries into complete political turmoil, and we’re showing many of the same symptoms they did. It’s a bit like Stockholm Syndrome; you can’t solve a problem if you don’t realize that it is indeed a problem.

#deletefacebook

UPDATED: 10/12/20, 16:57

Two days ago, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that they were cancelling the second debate, originally scheduled for this upcoming Wednesday, October 15th.

After news of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis broke just nine days ago, the commission had announced that they were transitioning to a virtual event, presumably to protect the moderators, participants, and staff safe from the infectious Trump campaign.

He refuses to "waste his time" in virtual debate. Thousands say virtual farewell to dying family. Millions of teachers & students forced into virtual school; millions fortunate to work virtually; millions worship via virtual services; millions fortunate to virtual doctor visit.

— Patricia Maguire (@PatMag7) October 8, 2020

But that just wouldn’t do for Donald Trump (who was hospitalized with COVID just a week ago). He refused to participate in a virtual debate, calling the proposal “ridiculous”. According to Trump’s rent-a-doc physician Sean CONley, Trump is no longer contagious. Even though he had the virus just a few days ago, it seems to have just disappeared. Like a miracle. The standard time for quarantine has been fourteen days all along, but somehow, Trump is a-okay in less than 10? Interesting.

No, no. Don’t be fooled by the blurred line between medicine and politics. Trump is still contagious, and he should not be returning to public events for several more days. I’m positive he pressured Conley into telling the press that he would be fine to return to business as usual. His campaign had to know the Commission wouldn’t allow an in-person debate so soon after his diagnosis, and having Conley give the all clear was a tactic to give Trump some wiggle room to at least pretend he wanted to debate in person; Trump never would’ve agreed to a virtual debate because it highlights his failure to contain the pandemic. Best case scenario for Trump, they cancel the debate altogether, or refuse to move to an in-person debate, giving Trump latitude to back out. Worst case for Trump, they allow the debate to happen in-person, and he has the opportunity to infect Joe Biden with Trumplague.

Donald Trump may have walked away from the first debate thinking he won, but he was the only one. Even others in his campaign came away realizing how much more sane, reasonable, and likable Biden was than Trump. They know he’s weak, and they don’t want to showcase his weakness on the national stage again, if they can prevent it. The possibility of Trump refusing to debate has been lingering for months, and now it’s coming to fruition. Add that to the list of our destroyed democratic norms.

As of right now, the next debate is scheduled for October 22nd. We’ll see what excuse the Trump campaign comes up with for that one.

I hate headlines that ask a question, so if you want the baby and not the labor, I’ll spare you a few minutes of reading: no, trans people don’t seem to be murdered at a disproportionate rate.

It’s common for trans rights advocates to assert that trans people are being murdered violently and at a higher rate than other groups in America, offering anecdotal evidence to support their claim. This goes without saying, but nobody deserves to be murdered on account of their gender. Murder is a heinous crime, and anyone who kills a trans person because of their gender deserves to be charged with murder and a hate crime. That said, the argument that they are being hunted down simply doesn’t hold water when you look at the numbers.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, this year is tied for the highest year on record for number of trans murder victims in the United States. Upon reading that, I expected them to report a number in the hundreds or thousands. The number they reported was 31.

According to the FBI, the United States has roughly 16,000 murders each year. If you do the math, the percentage of those murder victims who were transgender would be 0.1%. Surely, the HRC and trans rights advocates aren’t saying that’s a disproportionately HIGH number? That would mean the average number of trans and gender nonconforming people in America is less than one in one thousand, and that certainly doesn’t seem to fit within their narrative.

Of course, the HRC does offer the caveat that the number of trans murders goes underreported. I’m sure thats true to some extent, but I doubt that’s causing such a drastic discrepancy. So which is it?

Based on the numbers, it seems like either the trans/gender nonconforming community is fortunate to be murdered disproportionately less than everyone else, or the number of trans people is so tiny that 31 murders is a proportionate figure. But to say that 31 is disproportionately high and that they’re being viciously hunted down because of their gender would indicate that the number of trans and gender nonconforming people in the United States is microscopically small.

Of course, it again goes without saying that each of those 31 lives had value and that people don’t deserve to be murdered for something as inconsequential as their gender. However, if trans rights advocates hope to bring people on board with their cause, they should use claims that are backed up by statistics; we get enough attacks on science and data from the far right, we don’t need them from the left, too.

The final episode of “Ted Lasso” was released last Friday, and it was a great conclusion to the season. If you haven’t heard of “Ted Lasso”, it’s a new TV+ show about an amateur American football coach hired as head coach of a premier league soccer team in Britain. It’s a terrific concept and it’s absolutely hilarious, but not quite like the trailer presents.

While it is extremely funny, it’s also dynamic and the plot doesn’t shy away from heavier topics affecting the characters. It celebrates open mindedness and healthy expressions of masculinity; it feels like a boys club, but an inclusive one that’s happy for you to a part of it.

“Ted Lasso” is my favorite TV+ show so far, and my favorite show of this year. Check it out.

The United States has a uniquely backwards relationship with sexuality that can be traced back to the Puritans, and it’s something that most other developed countries aren’t plagued by. Anything relating to sexuality is shamed and considered taboo. There’s a willful ignorance when it comes to the sexuality of teenagers and young adults. Harmless, natural expressions of sexuality are actively repressed, especially in kids and teenagers. Anyone whose attractions fall outside of the “normal” heterosexual variety are shamed and compelled to hide their sexuality. Some preach abstinence for these groups, even though mountains of data exist proving that abstinence-only sex education leads to increases in STIs and unwanted pregnancies. Still, many states have abstinence-only sex education, or sex education that’s so inhibited by what the instructors are allowed to tell the students that it’s effectively useless.

Because we’re trained to see any topic relating to sexuality as impolite and shameful, the problems we face with regards to sex education naturally aren’t something that we talk about very often. I think it’s an important conversation to have for a plethora of reasons, so I wanted to offer my personal experience with public school sex ed as an example of how inadequate it is and why things need to change.

The school system I attended (shout out to Gaston County, whose interstate welcome signs aptly read “Welcome to Gaston County, Please Don’t Litter”), offered two opportunities for students to receive a watered down version of sex education, which, in both cases, required a signed permission slip from a parent for the student to attend.

Fifth Grade

The first course, offered in the final weeks of fifth grade, was a single, sex-segregated, two hour presentation called “family life” (a name that none of the kids in the class really understood before or after the course). Even though it was specifically tailored for a room full of of boys, the class spent almost the entire two hours teaching us about the female reproductive system. One of the two hours was devoting to watching videos of how a babies grow in the womb. And periods! My god, did they tell us about periods. They probably spent thirty minutes telling us about periods and thirty seconds telling us about ejaculation, but hey, why would we need to know about the fluids that would eventually be produced by our own genitals?

I came away from it having learned very little new information about my own body, and nearly nothing I hadn’t already guessed. It was all very hypothetical and entirely divorced from any degree of specificity. A lot of it didn’t make sense, but the atmosphere was so tense that nobody asked questions for fear of getting in trouble. They devoted about ten minutes to covering the male body. The extent of the knowledge presented about what changes we should expect was:

• Soon enough, you’ll get taller and your voice will change.

• Some hair is gonna grow in new places: in your pants, on your legs, your armpits, maybe even your chest in a few years, if you’re lucky.

• You may need to start shaving soon.

• Your penis won’t necessarily look like all your buddies’ because a lot of you had the tips chopped off when you were born but some didn’t. It’s called “circumcision” but it doesn’t matter or make a difference either way.

• For roughly the next decade, it’ll be normal for your dick to get hard at random times throughout the day and no you can’t control it but you should be embarrassed by it and do everything you can to hide it. (Why does it get hard, you may wonder: so did we, but they never told us why erections happen.)

• At some point, your balls will start to make sperm, the ingredient that combines with a female’s egg to make a baby start to grow. (You may wonder how it combines with an egg: again, so did we.)

• Deodorant is EXTREMELY important. The teacher probably mentioned a dozen times how essential it was to start wearing deodorant.

And that was pretty much it. They did curtly ask if we had any questions, and I presume everyone had so many questions that we didn’t have a clue what to ask. One brave soul did raise his hand to mumble a question about condoms, which the instructor refused to answer. I had no clue what “condom” meant; the instructor hadn’t mentioned anything about them (the boy who asked the question must’ve heard about them from an older brother or something). No further questions were taken.

I did walk away with a goody bag, though, after being sworn to secrecy and threatened with a trip to the principal’s office if we discussed any of what we had just learned after the class had ended. What was in the goody bag, you ask? A tiny stick of deodorant, some paperwork, and a signed card promising I would wait (though they never explained what it was I was waiting for). Certainly no condoms or anything useful, but rumor had it that the girls’ bags had pads in them.

Naturally, my parents asked what I’d learned, and I told them it was mostly about girls and deodorant. Some of my male friends’ parents had apparently received similar responses from their sons, because I specially remember overhearing several phone conversations between my parents and my male friends’ parents about the course, wondering why they’d chosen to exhaust the two hours focusing primarily on the changes girls could expect rather than boys.

Seventh Grade

The second course was actually a series of three, hour-long classes worked into the health class curriculum and taught by the PE coach, so it was also segregated by sex. It was certainly more informative and frank than the first course, but it was still very inadequate. This time, the class focused on puberty and maturation a bit more broadly, with the first day being dedicated to how our bodies would develop, from height and musculature to our nutritional needs and safe ways to exercise. There were only brief mentions of deepening voices, growth of body hair, and genital development.

The second day focused on the science of reproduction, explaining in great detail how a fertilized egg becomes an embryo, a fetus, and eventually a baby. Of course it’s important for prospective parents to understand that process in detail, but is it necessary for 12 and 13 year olds who don’t even know how the process starts? Most of us were quite bored and uninterested that day.

The last day was only half the length as a result of our regular class schedule, so it was primarily used to answer questions. Middle schoolers are certainly less innocent than elementary school kids, so there were a couple questions fielded by the health teacher that didn’t come up in the fifth grade class. The funniest and most memorable question was when someone asked if the penis was a muscle, to which the coach emphatically informed us that it is NOT a muscle and, as if he could read minds, urged us not to try to stretch it or otherwise exercise it with the goal make it bigger (he offered us a consolation prize though, promising us that they’d get bigger with time and that no partner worth having would care how big it is anyway). We were all ready to leave the class after that. Nobody was brave enough to ask the biggest question we all had.

___ Ed.

You may have noticed that none of my sex education addressed anything to do with sex, the verb. Never any mention of what happens during sex, what consent means, how to put on a condom, how to avoid sexually transmitted infections, etc. There was certainly no mention of oral sex or what options may be available to the boys in the class who were attracted to the same sex.

There was absolutely no reference to sexual intercourse at all, much less as something that people would ever do for fun or for emotional benefit. The closest we came to an acknowledgment that sex is not exclusively for reproductive purposes was when the PE coach told us (in response to a rather blunt question about the definitions of “ejaculation” and “orgasm”) that ejaculation and orgasm sort of the same thing, and that that’s what it’s called when semen comes out of your penis and that it feels really good. The coach was kind of a bro.

You may be thinking, “well, by middle school, some kids are going to know what sex is”, and that’s true. Some of my classmates did know what sex was by that point, but the problem lies in that the coach wasn’t allowed to define it for the majority of us who didn’t know what it was, and that resulted in most of us feeling like we were on the wrong side of an inside joke most of the time.

Call me a late bloomer, but I was in ninth grade before I realized what sex actually was, and that a penis had to go inside a vagina for the sperm and egg cells to come together, and I only learned that when I discovered porn (I guess up until that point I thought naked cuddling was sex). The sex education I received was so inadequate that for four years after my first sex ed class and two years after my seventh grade sex ed class, I honestly thought sperm crawled out of a man’s penis, across the bedsheets, and into a female’s vagina like sticky, microscopic inchworms. Laughable. But not actually that funny when you consider the theoretical consequences.

The sex education my classmates and I received was woefully incomplete. As a matter of fact, though, the consequences weren’t all that theoretical. One of my classmates missed a few weeks of class in eighth grade following the birth of her daughter, and now, there’s a little girl running around somewhere named after a “twilight” character because she was born amidst a teenybopper, pop culture phenomenon and her mother was a thirteen year old girl. Talk about consequences.

The first presidential debate was widely regarded as a shit show, but that wasn’t entirely how I felt about it. Calling it a shit show implies that everyone involved detracted from what the event could’ve been, and that isn’t what happened. Rather than type ad nauseam about the many aspects of this debate that could be analyzed, I’m just going to give my thoughts on some key moments and how I perceived each candidate and their debate strategies.

BIDEN

Biden’s strategy seemed to be to ignore Trump’s petty insults, fact check his most egregious lies, call out his hypocrisy and his ineffectiveness, and to communicate his own plans when possible. It was a tall order given Trump’s behavior, but he faired well enough, and I think people recognize that most of the incivility and interruptions were coming almost exclusively from the other side of the stage.

He did a great job of not lingering on Trump’s baseless attacks and moving back to the issues he wanted to talk about, at times looking at the camera and speaking directly to the viewers about what he intended to do if elected, ignoring Trump’s antics and interruptions in the background.

You could tell he was trying to remain calm, and while he never lost his cool, it was evident that he got annoyed a few times, but that annoyance led to several good lines:

• Early on in the debate where it became clear that Trump had no intention of allowing anyone else to talk, Biden said to a flailing Chris Wallace: “You’re not gonna be able to shut him up.

• At one point, fed up with Trump’s aimless interruptions, Biden exclaimed “Will you shut up, man?” 

• In response to Trump’s cavalier attitude toward the number of COVID-19 deaths: “It is what it is because you are who you are.”

• He flatly called Trump a clown and a racist.

• "You're the worst president America's ever had."

TRUMP

Donald Trump had roughly two coherent responses, and spent the rest of his time making blunt interjections, tactless interruptions, and talking over not only Joe Biden, but over moderator Chris Wallace as well. His conduct was so bad that Wallace had to remind him during the debate that he was breaking the rules he agreed to. He behaved like a playground bully. 

Trump is behind in the polls, and this was a good chance to make up some ground. His debate performance against Hillary Clinton was a huge boon for his 2016 campaign, so I’m sure his 2020 campaign was hoping the debate would boost their poll numbers this time, too.

Despite the significance of this event for Trump’s campaign, there isn’t very much to analyze in the way of his debate strategy: his only goal seemed to be to talk over Biden and the moderator as much as possible, and the “points” he made were nearly all ad hominem attempts to destroy Biden’s character. It was a similar approach to the one he took in 2016, but with one key distinction: this time, it didn’t work.

Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. Biden wasn’t in the center of the national spotlight for decades before ending up on the debate stage, and while he’s less well known, he’s generally more likable and people find him honest and sincere. Blaming the muck of the D.C. swamp on Hillary Clinton was easy for Trump to do as a political newcomer. It was nearly impossible for him to do this time, now that he’s been in charge for the past four years and virtually nobody (except the top 1%, perhaps) is better off than they were in 2016. The only argument Trump can make is “yeah things suck right now, but they would be worse with Joe Biden”, which isn’t exactly a home run message. I doubt anyone who wasn’t already in Trump’s base watched this debate and came away from it thinking he was the more reasonable candidate.

KEY MOMENTS

As expected, Wallace raised the issue of Trump paying just $750 in federal income tax. Trump’s response was that he paid “millions of dollars” in federal income tax, and that “you’ll get to see it” as soon as he’s able to release his tax returns. He claims that he can’t release his tax returns  right now because he’s under audit, but it’s worth noting that he used the same excuse in 2016. Also worth noting, being under audit does not prevent you from releasing your tax returns. Every president is required to be audited by the IRS, and they all managed to release their tax returns. 

At one point, Joe Biden was talking about his late son Beau Biden’s military achievements. Trump interrupted Biden, saying “I don’t know Beau, I know Hunter” and proceeded to antagonize him over Hunter Biden’s prior struggle with cocaine. Joe acknowledged this, saying that like a lot of people, his son did have a drug problem but that he overcame it, and that he was proud of him. In the midst of the opioid crisis, it was an extremely tone deaf and downright cruel interjection from Trump, and it teed Biden up for a heartfelt moment that would resonate with millions of Americans who’ve been affected by substance abuse and addiction.

The biggest takeaway from this debate was when the moderator asked Trump if he would condemn white supremacy. Trump initially said that he was prepared to do so, but he immediately tried to change the subject. When pressed by Biden and Wallace to actually denounce white supremacy, Trump’s response was to tell the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”. It was less a denunciation than a call to arms. The Proud Boys like his message to them so much that they put it on t-shirts. It goes without saying, but whether Trump is truly a white supremacist or whether he feels he can’t afford to alienate even a single, fringe member of his shrinking base is not the point.

WHAT’S NEXT?

In the wake of Trump’s COVID diagnosis, it seems hugely unlikely that the second and third presidential debates will go forward as planned, if at all.

Reports indicate that Trump knew he had been exposed prior to the first debate, yet refused to warn the Biden campaign or give anyone a heads up that he could’ve been contagious; it’s criminal negligence. It’s also disrespectful and irresponsible that the Trump family didn’t wear masks for the duration of the debate: if they take them off next time, kick them out. Better yet, just don’t allow them inside the venue in the first place.

If I were running the Biden campaign, I would insist on much stronger health precautions if more in-person debates are to occur.

Two weeks ago, Apple announced the Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE at their online event.

The Apple Watch Series 6 boasts a few new features over the Series 5, but it’s certainly more of a refinement than a revolution. It now includes a sensor capable of measuring blood oxygen, an always-on altimeter, a processor that’s 20% faster, and the always-on display is now 2.5x brighter while inactive outside. It also comes in a few new aluminum and stainless steel finishes, with two new styles of bands.

The Apple Watch SE is a combination of features from the Series 3, 4, 5, and 6, made to be a bit more future proof than the older models while coming in at a lower price point. There’s nothing new here, so we’re going to focus primarily on the Series 6’s new features, and then offer some comparisons at the end of the article for people considering which model they may want to upgrade to.

The blood oxygen sensor is the most advertised new feature, but in my opinion, it doesn’t deserve to be. It’s a nice feature to have and it seems to be fairly accurate, but the sensor is quite temperamental and doesn’t always produce a reading if your wrist isn’t perfectly flat and still. Even if the sensor was a lot more capable, it still just doesn’t have a lot of utility. More data is always better than less, and I’m sure it will be used more frequently than the ECG sensor (mostly because it only takes half the time and it’s something the watch can do on its own throughout the day without user initiation), but I still can’t imagine that it will be used except by people experiencing medical emergencies, or perhaps very serious athletes. I’m sure it’s for legal reasons, bit it’s important to note that Apple includes a disclaimer in the blood oxygen app that the pulse oximetry readings it provides are not intended for medical use, which raises the question of what they actually are intended for.

The story on the display is short: the display is noticeably brighter while your wrist is down. It’s nice.

The altimeter is a nice feature to have and it seems to be fairly accurate, and I’m excited to toy around with it on a hike. I imagine it will make the “flights climbed” metric in the Activity app a bit more precise.

Apple claims the S6 chip is 20% faster than the S5 (which was exactly the same as the two year old S4), and I beliebe them, but 20% honestly isn’t enough of an improvement to be noticeable. It’ll just make this watch a little more future proof.

My overall experience with this watch has not been terrific. WatchOS is a fairly simple operating system (relative to iOS), and I’ve never had problems with it being buggy or feeling undercooked in the past, but that’s a big issue with this one. In the first two days I had to power cycle it four or five times to resolve various bugs. I encountered an issue during setup where 90% of the usual complications available to you when creating a new watch face simply weren’t available. At seemingly random times, it becomes impossible to access Notification Center and Control Center. 

Another thing I don’t like about this watch (well, less about this watch and more any watch running WatchOS 7) is the lack of Force Touch. For some reason — I presume to be more consistent with the current iPhone models — Apple has removed the watch’s ability to detect a more forceful press on the display as opposed to regular taps. The feature on the iPhone was called 3D Touch, but it was the same thing, just less widely implemented and not as necessary to operating the device. They finally got rid of 3D Touch on all the new iPhone models last year, and now with WatchOS 7, they’ve taken the ability to use Force Touch away from every Apple Watch. The new watch models don’t have the hardware necessary to detect those more forceful presses, so it’s clear that it isn’t coming back. I’m personally quite upset by this. Force touch was an integral part of the watch experience from day one, and it added a lot of convenience and depth to an operating system that was hugely restricted by a tiny display, effectively doubling the number of controls that could be accessed from any given screen. Now, if you want to end navigation directions, you have to tap a back arrow several times and find a new “end” button that’s difficult to locate, as opposed to force touching one time and then tapping the “end” button. If you want to clear all the notifications in Notification Center, you now have to scroll all the way to the top and tap an ugly button that says “clear all” rather than force touching to be presented with that button. Changing watch faces now takes a few extra seconds, because you have to long press on the face to enter the editing mode, and then again to get out of it. It’s a markedly worse user experience.

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If you’re wondering whether it’s worth your money to upgrade, the factors to consider are: 

1. Which model do you have now?

2. How much do the Series 6 specific features appeal to you?

If you have a Series 4 or Series 5 and the always-on display, always-on altimeter, and blood oxygen sensor aren’t of critical importance to you, then the Series 6 is only a modest upgrade, and the SE wouldn’t really be an upgrade at all, so you can feel good about holding on to your watch for another year.

If you have a Series 3 or older, you may want to consider upgrading, but perhaps not to the Series 6. There’s a good chance that the Apple Watch SE will be a better (and more affordable) fit for you if the display isn’t a huge factor for you. The Apple Watch SE has the same physical design with the larger screen, and it can take advantage of all the new watch faces with richer complications. It uses the S5 chip, does NOT have an always-on display or an always-on altimeter, and it can’t take ECGs or blood oxygen measurements, but otherwise, it’s the same as the Series 6, and it costs quite a bit less. It’s also worth mentioning that for people interested in a cellular watch, you can get a cellular SE model for only a $50 up charge, as opposed to the $100 up charge for the Series 6 models.

No matter which model you currently have, if you’re hugely attracted to the always-on display, then you’ll obviously want to go for the Series 6. If the pulse oximetry capabilities or the always-on altimeter are important to you, then again, you’ll want to spring for the Series 6.

Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020

I wouldn’t wish sickness on anyone, but Donald Trump isn’t just anyone. He’s the man trying the hardest to unravel our democracy for personal gain. He’s spent countless hours denying the gravity of and spreading misinformation about the pandemic which now ails him because he thought it made him look bad, and the optics were more important to him than the 200,000+ lives lost as a result of his negligence. Karma is a bitch, and Donald Trump deserves this.

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This news raises a few practical questions and concerns for the next few weeks. Will Trump get a boost out of pity? Will his base see this news as a national tragedy and rally around him, potentially pulling in some undecided voters? I doubt it. I don’t see how news of Donald Trump getting infected with the virus he played down for months will do anything other than make him appear weak to his base, or force them to believe he was lying the whole time. If anything, I think this will raise concerns about Trump’s longevity and help Biden. After all, Trump’s beloved stock market doesn’t seem to have a ton of confidence in him.

Some people have suggested that the president may not have COVID-19 at all, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think any “look how strong he is for beating COVID” bump he may receive would be extremely small, and the people who would say that are almost certainly in his base already. It could drive turnout a little bit, but I doubt it. A campaign’s most valuable resource is the candidate’s time, and even if Trump wanted a get out of jail free card for the last two debates, having to spend half the time between now and the election quarantined is an astronomically high price to pay.

If his case is asymptomatic or very mild, he could actually take this as a chance to say “look, I had it and it wasn’t bad, so it was smart of me to downplay it”, which could be more influential for undecided voters.

However, reports indicate that Trump is already experiencing mild symptoms, which raises the question, if his sickness progresses and becomes more debilitating or even life threatening, what happens? Surely, Trump won’t participate in the next presidential debate in person. Could the rest of the debates be cancelled altogether? If Trump’s sickness progresses the point of requiring ventilation, what happens on Election Day? Mike Pence will be in charge of the country while Trump is incapacitated, and presumably, votes for Trump will be counted as usual and he will resume power after he comes off the ventilator. What if he were to die before the election; do votes for Trump then count as votes for Pence? Can the Republican Party nominate someone else in the days before the election? Can votes already cast for a Trump/Pence ticket then be converted to support the new nominee? I don’t think so.

Another important question: what if Joe Biden gets sick? He spent nearly two hours on stage with the man yelling like a maniac. Fortunately, Joe Biden and his wife Jill have just tested negative, so we won’t wander too far down the path of hypotheticals, but man, there’s a lot to ponder.

For more articles about the United States’ failed federal response to the pandemic, check out CopyrighBro’s COVID-19 Roundup.

UPDATED: 10/02/20, 16:44