VIEWS

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October 15, 2020 VIEWS

“It is better to debate a question without setting it than to settle a question without debating it ” - Joseph Joubert

Marrying without a prenup can cost you Celebrities dish out $30,000 a month in spousal support

ASHLEY HAYNER

OPINIONS EDITOR

Love is said to be a beautiful thing.

If you find it, don’t ever lose it. Many adore the idea of marrying their high school sweetheart or finding their significant other right after high school. Having a fairytale wedding is ideal for a lot of young women.

But what happens when you’ve spent what seems like an eternity with your lover and things just aren’t working out and you’re forced to call it quits? You should be able to walk away and that’s that.

But that’s not always the case.

An annoying law in place called alimony requires a person to continue to support their spouse either before or after marital separation.

Dr. Dre, founder and CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics, is currently

ERIK GALICIA

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

It has been seven months since businesses shut down, people began suffocating to death and the world changed for the long run.

Yes, COVID-19 is here to stay. One of the main reasons it seems like it will never die is our undergoing a ghastly divorce battle with his wife of 24 years. Nicole Young demanded that Dr. Dre pay her $2 million a month in alimony. Dr. Dre isn’t the only victim when it comes to outrageous demands. Other celebrities, including women, are ordered to pay ridiculous amounts in spousal support as well.

Kevin Dillon pays $7,214 a month to his ex-wife Jane Stuart. Singer and Grammy Award winner Mary J. Blige, who doesn’t even have children with her ex-husband Kendu Isaacs, is ordered to pay him $30,000 a month. Isaacs even asked for an increase of $65,000 a month due to his alleged inability to find decent work.

TV host and actress Aisha Tyler has been ordered to pay her ex-husband Jeff Tietgens $31,250 a month over the next four years, along with an additional $500,000. Actress and Comedian Sherri Shepherd pays her ex-husband Lamar Sally $4,100 a month. The two were married just four years and share a child that Shepherd is not even the biological mother of.

Comedian and actor Mike Epps pays a hefty monthly spousal support totaling $109,000 a month due to his ex-wife Mechelle Epps having to pay for their three daughters’ private schools and birthday parties. She claimed that, at 36 years old, she is too old to find a job and foot the bill completely.

Most people get together uncoordinated response.

Take a look around the world. Several developed countries, even ones hit hard by coronavirus early on, began a coordinated reopening long ago.

Germany, like the United States, runs on a federal system that delegates much of its governmental decisions to provinces and local municipalities. Like in the U.S., there was bickering and blame thrown around. But Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a sciencebased emergency federal mandate on COVID-19 safety all the way back in March.

German children were back in school at the start of the fall 2020 semester.

But there’s no place like home, where the president calls a virus that has killed over one million people worldwide a “Democratic hoax” and ends up catching it himself — don’t take

PHOTO COURTESY OF STEVE BUISSINNE | PIXABAY According to the American Psychological Association, 40-50% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce.

because of romantic, mutually shared feelings for one another. But in many cases, spouses have other motives.

When getting romantically involved with someone, you should be with them because you love them, not because of the money. No one should have to pay thousands of dollars for wanting to go their separate ways, let alone any amount.

You must be cautious investing your love and time into anyone before you set anything his word for it though, he’d fake a heart attack to get you to forget about the $750 he paid in taxes a few years ago.

The problem here is the rise of the fringes of society into the mainstream. While the left and right exist everywhere, science is not as politicized in other countries as it is here. For example, scientists in other countries can lean right and still in stone. Opt for a prenuptial agreement to protect your own assets and belongings.

A lot of people argue that opting for a prenup means that the love is not real. In the end, if you really love someone, why worry about a prenup? The material things “owed” to you should be the least of your worries.

Don’t end up like others who let friends and family influence their decisions. You know your relationship better than anybody.

IMAGE COURTESY OF FRANKUNDFREI | PIXABAY agree that climate change is real. In the good ol’ USA, “science is the devil” is now a prevalent belief.

President Donald Trump — the demagogue with a personality cult comparable to that of Jim Jones — failed to issue a federal mandate on masks, social distancing and other precautionary measures, instead allowing states, counties and If there is no trust, get out while you still can. If you got with them when they were broke, you can leave the relationship broke.

If you’re leaving that person and no longer want to be with them, you leave the fancy cars and lifestyle too. Granted a man should pay child support even in the case of a divorce due to his wife’s infidelity. But he should not be charged with maintaining his cheating wife’s lifestyle.

Don’t be a victim of alimony.

Lack of COVID-19 plan stalls reopening efforts

Trump’s cult of personality buys into politicization of science

The CDC reports 215,194 people have died of Covid-19 in the U.S.

Get a prenup. cities to decide for themselves. The move was well-played when considering his motives: reinforce that Trump means freedom and Democrats mean totalitarianism.

Different states have taken different paths, as have cities and counties, due to the lack of leadership from the top. The fear of an overbearing federal government is perfectly rational and exists on both sides of the political aisle, but we are living through a pandemic. If anything should have united our country, it should have been our COVID-19 response.

No one wants to be home. It is a fact that working class people are struggling financially and we should be finding ways to return to work as quickly as possible. But, without a uniform effort — and with winter around the corner — experts say we will continue to see setbacks.

PHOTO COURTESY OF PEXELS Black Lives Matter disingenuous Activist organization hides true political motives

DIEGO LOMELI

STAFF REPORTER

The United States of America is more divided now, in 2020, than ever before. We turn to the news and what do we see? Rival factions layered in either makeshift or military grade body armor fighting in the streets of our nation.

As amusing as it is to consider American policemen as enforcers of some grand Orwellian scheme designed to keep a firm choke-hold on the population, it is their primary contenders that should be hoarding everyone’s concern.

I am referring to the Black Lives Matter organization.

Before anything, it is important to acknowledge those who simultaneously participate in the informal variant of the movement and prioritize a peaceful approach to protest.

The organization has been largely condemned by many Americans, and although its underlying motives are troublesome, I think we can all collectively stand behind the inherent meaning of the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”

BLM, as an organization, is disingenuous about the wellbeing of Black lives. Its fundamental ambitions center on revolution, specifically a call to replace the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” for “‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” These claims were once proudly displayed on the Black Lives Matter website’s “What We Believe” page.

As of Sept. 21, that page has been removed and no longer exists. What remains is a much shorter list of goals that goes on about inclusivity — tackling oppression, liberation, narrowing nationalism and a few more things.

Aside from that, the BLM organization, co-founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, has roots in Marxism.

“We are trained Marxists,” Cullors has said. “We are superversed on, sort of, ideological theories.”

Marxism, by definition, is a worker-led revolution that aims to overthrow capitalism in favor of communism.

Just from that, we should have quickly realized that BLM is adamant about inciting civil unrest in order to achieve a specific agenda. Not only that, it also has no clear intention of creating “a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise,” as their website claims.

If you’re paying attention, you cannot look past the obvious evidence that a shockingly large number of BLM members and affiliates have adopted and continue to employ violent behavior.

Following the death of George Floyd on May 26 was an ongoing series of protests that began in Minneapolis, Minnesota. With that came the destruction of property, vandalism and arson. By June, the property damage was an estimated $55 million, and at least 220 buildings were set on fire, according to the Associated Press.

The destruction of property was not exclusive to Minnesota however, as small businesses in cities like Austin, St. Paul, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York have also been directly affected. Not to mention the various American flags that BLM has burned and the many people they have physically harmed.

This kind of behavior is severely counterproductive to what they claim to achieve some day.

BLM has effectively neglected the civil approach to reaching a rational consensus, instead using violence and disrespect.

This is all an aggravation incited by the radical left and it fuels the raging fire that is pent up frustration and resentment from the BLM organization.

Has any progress that genuinely benefits our society actually been made? No, none at all.

Even then, why would BLM actively try to work towards a better society? They rely on things like controversy and White guilt to expand their superficial narrative to young minds. Many young people hesitate to express their criticism regarding BLM because we as a society have deemed it wrong to do so.

It is safer to join them than it is to criticize them. The organization that preaches inclusivity and social justice is the same that quickly calls people racist, bigoted, privileged, bootlicker, transphobic and much worse.

Instead of real progress, we devoted our time to developing a comprehensive checklist that, if checked off entirely, confirms that you are undeniably on the right side of history. If you disagree with it in the slightest way, then obviously you are apathetic to racial justice.

When an argument erupts between two opposing groups, the ideal outcome would be both groups eventually leaving the discussion more knowledgeable and open-minded than before. Logically, this can only work if both groups are reasonably open-minded to begin with.

Arguing has several tacit rules that make sure the contention does not derail itself and turn into something more extreme. BLM embodies pretty much everything that is detrimental to a productive argument: things like egotism, condescension and sheer lack of respect for any point of view that doesn’t match up with theirs.

We need to call it out for what it is: a form of contemporary fascism, and it is spreading at a terrifying rate.

It is clear as day that this is an attack on freedom of speech. Without the constant exchange of conflicting ideas, ignorance and backwardness begin to prosper and, consequently, genuine knowledge is suppressed.

To exemplify this attack on free speech practically, we can turn to the incident at Loyola University Chicago. On Aug. 29 and the days that followed, Loyola University Chicago’s student newspaper, The Loyola Phoenix, covered a series of protests supporting BLM at the university.

Seven people, six of which were Loyola students, were arrested for refusing to disperse after the police had instructed them to do so. The protests took place on and around campus and called for the university to provide better support for Black students and cut ties with the Chicago Police Department.

Things turned for the worse when The Loyola Phoenix published videos of the protesters being taken into custody on their Twitter page. The student publication was subsequently contacted and berated by numerous people, calling for the videos to be taken down and going as far as saying that the publication brought participants unnecessary trauma.

Somehow we are becoming accustomed to letting emotion defeat logic and to letting political figures encourage irrationally vile methods of keeping many Americans from speaking their minds.

We need to call it out for what it is: a form of contemporary fascism. It is spreading at a terrifying rate.

Hopefully soon, we can learn from the world’s history and devise a counter-measure based on logic and freedom.