Who is allowed to speak out?

You don't need to be an expert when things are this broken.

I've always lived under the assumption that I'm wrong. That I'm missing some vital piece of information that won't just make me look stupid, but may actively harm others if I don't have all the facts.

For this reason I've always relied on two things - indisputable truths, generally composed of reliable science, physics and solved problems, and other's expertise to tell stories. I feel much more comfortable compiling information from trusted experts who devote their entire lives a single topic versus amplifying what I feel is probably the case. For the 99.999% of things going on in the world that I am not an expert in, I feel that the best I can do is let others who know better do the talking.

This is not one of those times.

Who is the expert when the facts are laid bare in front of us? When we all watched the same video of ICE agents brutally executing a bystander, who was simply trying to help a woman stand up after being forcibly shoved to the ground by federal agents? They shot him over ten times. You can see it on video. You can see the casualness in which he is executed. If you turn your volume on, you can hear the brutality. And it should send terror down your spine.

We are living in a police state. We are not heading towards a fascist government - we are living in one. This administration does not follow the law. It does not comply with court orders. It threatens and bullies our allies that have given the world the opportunity to live in relative peace for decades. And now, it's executing people on the street. You don't have to be a political scientist or news commentator to have the authority to say that this is all very, very wrong.

The instinct to let others handle complex topics is reinforced by the collapse of context on social media. On these platforms, you are not a whole person scared for your friends and neighbors. You are a bundle of pixels generating text or video content related to one or two topics. And when those topics suddenly shift, people's pattern recognition breaks, and it makes us uncomfortable.

But we need to be uncomfortable right now. I get it. It sucks to not be able to tune into our regular channels and live in our online fantasy world. I have hated the past year. It feels impossible to be creative, and excited, and happy about your life when every single day the news is pounding, shoving tragedy after tragedy down your throat.

But we are in crisis. If it's stressful that every corner of your online life is filled with the same takes, the same content, the same information, that's because it needs to be right now. We should not be able to escape this when we are witnessing our country terrorizing itself.

There are no trusted experts right now. You should not be delegating your outrage only to the news commentators, now largely owned by the same billionaires reliant on your distraction and silence. You should not be delegating your outrage to your senators who write strongly worded letters and cave within weeks. You should not delegate your outrage to the brave reporters and photographers on the ground, covering this whole thing so we don't have to. And you definitely shouldn't be delegating to the people telling you to stay in your own lane.

You are the expert of your own morality. Turn the volume up.