The household I grew up in, for better or worse, taught me to not speak my mind. Not because there’s anything “wrong” with having your own opinions and thoughts, but because anything that didn’t coincide with a hard-right Republican point of view was aggressively dismissed and shot down as “wrong,” In school we’re taught that an opinion can’t be wrong or right because it’s a belief that you yourself hold; they may hold truth and they may hold falsities, but regardless of that they’re not actual facts.
An opinion is only a thought that those around you possibly agree or disagree with.
This unfortunate habit of being silent when faced with actual issues that require a voice is something that’s still stuck with me today. I’m a mute. I can’t talk about things that I don’t feel I have an appropriate place or understanding of to speak about, which tends to be almost everything because you can never say you have a full grasp of a situation. There are two sides to every story which perpetually crushes me between a rock and a hard place almost all of the time since I can always see both sides of the issue.
But this is different.
I will admit that I’m not the world’s best writer and I sure as shit am not equipped for soapbox preaching, but the decision to not indict in the case of Eric Garner is, for the purpose of brevity over length, completely fucked.
Jon Stewart will take it from here.