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OPINION: New Year's resolutions stemming from toxic diet culture have to end

Welcome to 2021. The year is off to an exciting start, with a vaccination program struggling to get off the ground and a president facing a second impeachment after inciting a domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. After a year that saw Americans eating and drinking more to cope with isolation, loss and almost ubiquitous uncertainty, a New Year's resolution to be healthier is perhaps more relevant than ever. 

This is My Opinion!: the DW Opinions podcast

This is My Opinion! is a weekly Daily Wildcat podcast that raises popular questions and picks the brains of our opinion staffers. Hosted by Lauren Borelli and produced by the Opinions desk at the Daily Wildcat. "Online all the time, at dailywildcat.com." Listen anywhere you stream podcasts including Spotify or Apple Podcasts! Share, Rate and Comment!

OPINION: "Merit" scholarship allocation needs to change

On Nov. 25, 2020, I received an email from the University of Arizona notifying me that the required GPA and number of credits to maintain my academic scholarship was being decreased. The university said they recognized the adversity that students are facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students have been displaced and learning interrupted. People are getting sick and struggling to make ends meet and the university observed that and took action. 

OPINION: In order to fix Thanksgiving, we must acknowledge and teach its blood-stained origin

The United States has experienced an unprecedented reckoning with racism in the past sixth months. Sparked by the horrific murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in June, protests have made harsh realities about racism and white supremacy hard to ignore. States changed flags and tore down statues, an NFL team changed its name and companies large and small signaled their commitments to fight systemic inequality. 

TOPIC OF THE WEEK: Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the threat to reproductive rights

As a person with a uterus, it is terrifying to realize that Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the newest addition to the United States Supreme Court, has the power to reverse the progress that has been made in terms of reproductive rights for those with uteruses. Abortion accessibility is a major concern of mine. A person’s right to elect for an abortion should not be infringed upon by politicians. Abortion accessibility is vital for everyone, no matter what their background may be. Abortion accessibility is not about aborting every pregnancy but about being given the freedom to choose how a person would like to proceed with their pregnancy. Abortion is not murder and whoever says otherwise is absolutely not educated on the topic whatsoever. Pro-lifers, I implore you all to look into fostering or adopting the already born 400,000 children in the American foster care system instead of imposing your beliefs on those who did not ask for it. Our bodies are not political playgrounds for legislation. Let's begin to acknowledge and respect that. 

OPINION: 'Defund the police' and the case for engaging in a national discourse

OPINION: The election may be over, but the work is not

I am a middle-class white male. I check nearly every box for privilege, and I haven’t faced societally-driven adversity or institutional discrimination. I am also a Democrat. I believe in progressive social programs, police reform, prison abolition, cooperative and constructive foreign policy, abortion rights, gun control, more welcoming immigration laws, higher corporate and wealth taxes and a massive expansion of voting rights. On Nov. 9, 2016, I woke up in a state of existential dread. Donald Trump’s victory seemed like the end of the world to me — but it wasn’t. He went on to be the most disastrously incompetent, blatantly corrupt and terrifyingly authoritarian leader the U.S. has ever had, but it wasn’t the apocalypse I was prepared for. 

OPINION: Trump could have used the pandemic to his advantage. Except he couldn’t.

President Donald Trump has been acting like an authoritarian since the moment he rode down an escalator in 2015 to announce his campaign for president and began one of the most erratic and constant exercises in "othering" the world has ever seen. Othering is the practice of defining a group of people as different — in other words (pun intended), "us vs. them," when "them" is any group that disagrees with or is different than "us." It has existed for as long as complex societies have, but it has come to a head in the past half-millennia as authoritarians have used it to make certain people out to be threats. Prominent examples include the enslavement of African people, the Holocaust, Mao’s cultural revolution and segregation in the United States. In an article from the journal "Othering and Belonging" out of the University of California, Berkeley, John A. Powell and Stephen Menendian described othering as the defining problem of the 21st century.

Topic of the week: What's at stake for you in this election?

This story was produced as part of the Daily Wildcat's "Election Guide" special print edition, published Wednesday, Oct. 21, and available on campus or online.

OPINION: America, you have the chance to vote out a dictator. Don’t squander it.

This story was produced as part of the Daily Wildcat's "Election Guide" special print edition, published Wednesday, Oct. 21, and available on campus or online.

OPINION: Follow-up, Texas grand jury indicts Netflix over “Cuties” again completely missing the point

This is a brief follow-up to a longer article discussing the controversy around “Cuties” published on 10/06/20. Read the full story here.

OPINION: Ignorance and hypocrisy in the response to "Cuties"

The film "Cuties" — "Mignnones" in French — premiered internationally on Sept. 9 on the streaming platform Netflix. It drew immediate backlash in the U.S., where a number of conservative politicians have called for courts to take action against Netflix. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called for an investigation of the film on the grounds it violated child pornography laws in a letter to Attorney General William Barr. It didn’t take long for Twitter to latch on to "Cuties" with #CancelNetflix trending on the platform after the film’s premiere. The consensus seemed to be that the film sexualized the 11-year-old female dancers it was about.

Topic of the Week: What Pride means to our staff

Geraldine Espinosa

OPINION: My favorite things about Tucson, and how my life changed when COVID-19 hit Arizona

I moved to Tucson in late January 2020. I left a cold, snowy, windy and lonely Flagstaff, AZ to immerse myself in the mild Sonoran Desert winter and train as an aspiring elite cyclist. Every winter, dozens of the world’s best endurance athletes converge on Tucson, taking up residence in host housing and short-term rentals. 

OPINION: The news is biased against Donald Trump. That's a good thing.

According to fact-checking organization PolitiFact, only 13% of the statements made by President Donald Trump they have checked are true or mostly true. The remaining 87% range from half-true to “Pants on Fire” — the designation used by PolitiFact for statements that are inaccurate to the point of being ridiculous. Those statistics don’t include opinions and give license for a certain degree of hyperbole when used in political rhetoric. Even with those considerations, Trump misleads the public a rather startling three-quarters of the time.