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The Eastern Echo Thursday, May 22, 2025 | Print Archive
The Eastern Echo

Columns



The Eastern Echo

Stop preaching abstinence only

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In highly religious cultures throughout the United States, it is a practice in some school districts to only teach abstinence, regarding sexual health and education.


The Eastern Echo

The NFL is a leech on society

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It’s football season again and, for me, that means it’s the time of year when I pick the football team I follow in order to appease my modern-gladiatorial-game-watching friends.

The Eastern Echo

What did Donald Trump say about John McCain?

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“Word and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz—perhaps best known for pushing the use of the terms “death tax” and “climate change” instead of “estate tax” and “global warming”. Luntz, like Michael Moore, Tim Sebastian and Sean Hannity, falls neatly under my definition of a propagandist—one to whom the possibility that they could be wrong is completely alien and who propagates their gluttony of confidence via mass media.







The Eastern Echo

Sanders and Trump are competing populists

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Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are not opposites, but rather they are competing populists. Candidates who, as libertarian Glenn Reynolds writes, “have come forward to claim the orphaned vote.” To paraphrase Marine Le Pen, president of the largest third-party in France, modern political struggles are no longer between left and right but between globalist and anti-globalist.


The Eastern Echo

Separate no more

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History was made on Friday, when the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 vote that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage.





The Eastern Echo

Media needs to stop sensationalizing mass shootings

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Wednesday night at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, nine people were shot and killed by domestic right-wing terrorist and white supremacist Dylann Roof—a horrible and terrifying act of pure hate and violence brought down upon the black community— and, while I absolutely and wholeheartedly share the feelings of disgust and sadness felt by many following this event, it’s time that we stop neurotically fixating our attention on these mass shootings, because it is unhealthy and creates the right atmosphere for further extremism to come slithering out of the mist and rear its ugly head. Certainly, we cannot ignore these senseless acts of viciousness—nor should we avoid the much needed conversation on normalized racism and the fanaticism that stems from it in this country—but we need to have a dramatic shift in the way we deal with and report on occurrences like the shooting in Charleston, because, under the current system, we glorify acts of absurd violence and produce an environment of vicariousness, as, to most Americans, this tragic event is nothing more than a conversation piece. Yes, it must be said that this was an absolute heartbreak and it should be reported on and discussed—especially in this case with the very poignant issues of racism facing the nation—but we should never allow stories like these to rise to the level of absurdity that they often do.


The Eastern Echo

Government ruins capitalism

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Capitalism is an ideology and, like many ideologies, it requires multiple factors that only exist in a textbook to ensure it works 100 percent of the time with 100 percent efficiency.



The Eastern Echo

Democracy and capitalism are incompatible

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When I think of democracy, I do not think of the pure incarnation of the political system wherein the majority rule, but rather the philosophical term in which all people, no matter their differences, are considered equal and possess all of the same rights.


The Eastern Echo

Accepting authority for authority's sake is dangerous

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Authority in the United States is given too much room for error and interpretation. Allowing authority figures, paid for by the American tax dollars, too much leniency is like two parents telling a child not to open the cookie jar, but then leave him unattended for a week.

Renowned journalist Beimeng Fu recalls her COVID-19 reporting experience on this weeks episode of Women Journalist COVID-19 Experiences. Check out this latest episode on Spotify! Or you can listen to their full unedited conversation at the Eastern Michigan University Archive website.