With a little more than a month left in the presidential election cycle, President Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden prepare for a heated argument over Police reform, domestic terrorism, and in very American fashion, white supremacy.

It is difficult to not feel that presidential debates in the election cycle are merely a formality.  Afterall, the last debate to decide an election was in 1960 where a charismatic Kennedy went up with Nixon, unfortunate enough to not be very photogenic while almost sweating through his suit in front of the studio lights.  However this debate was far from decided by mere appearance, or even decided at all.

Our two geriatric candidates ended up spending most of the time shouting over each other as the moderator, Chris Wallace, fought for president Trump to yield time to his opponent.  Though I doubt this debate came as a shock to any viewers.  From the very beginning, it was clear Trump was ill-prepared as he repeated popular talking points he uses on his campaign.  For instance, fracking (which he claims to bring jobs back to but ended up doing the inverse), anti-fascism as a terrorist “organization,” and more effectively Hunter and Beau Biden.

The highlights of this debate in particular (if it is even worth mentioning) are Trump’s response to Chris Wallace prompting him to denounce White Supremacy in which he shifted to discussing antifa, and Joe Biden’s appeal to BIPOC communities amidst COVID-19.  For those who do not know about the latter, Biden cited a statistic by the APM research lab that every 1 in 1,000 black people die due to COVID-19.  But this column will focus on Trump’s comments.

Once again Trump threatens the first amendment and cites antifa as a terrorist organization when in fact antifascism has been an ideology around for nearly a century, long before it was ever in the American conservative vernacular, or preached about every night by Sean Hannity.  And more alarmingly, he gave the Proud Boys, an actual terrorist organization designated by the SPLC, a new slogan: Stand Back and Stand By.

As this column often does I would like to warn all readers the dangers of Trump’s actions.  With everyday that passes our freedom of speech is constantly threatened and the platforming of white supremacists is accentuated.  It started early on with the establishment of his base, and is now its strongest with very little centrists ever seen with a Make America Great Again hat.  We are polarizing ourselves which is normally healthy for democracies, but is instead shifting to the polarity between Neoliberalism and Fascism.  It is our choice whether we continue to organize and raise hell for the powers that be, or lay complacent and allow our country founded on principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to steamroll our civil rights.