The news cycle in 2020 for Americans has honestly been quite the dumpster fire, what with the already nonstop news of COVID-19 now standing alongside the news of protests for justice for George Floyd, and for the addressing of systematic racism in our police and law enforcement systems. Even writing all that out seems like a mouthful, which should be symbolic of the number of issues our country has in its mouth, which it is going to have to chew very thoroughly and swallow, soon.

I write this as someone who was raised by two great parents who have both been law enforcement officers for their entire adult lives, and as a caucasian man. You'll forgive me for avoiding the words "white" and "police," which, in all honesty, feel like dirty words at this point in time. And I feel that to be justified, after having seen in recent weeks and months just how dirty they can in fact be.

If you're someone who truly cannot for the life of them understand why people are burning, rioting, and looting; someone who wants to simply pretend that there has not been a trend of white people and white police officers unnecessarily murdering black men in America, then I sincerely wish you luck with navigating reality.

One of the most peaceful, pacifist, and televised forms of protest against police brutality didn't work. Those who didn't want to acknowledge the truth of the matter deemed it to be an egregious form of disrespect to kneel during our nation's flag and national anthem at a football game. Colin Kaepernick and others were publically smeared for trying to make a peaceful change. As I said and will say again, I cannot pretend to know what it's like to be a black man.

I heard it phrased like this recently: Imagine you're outside a house with a ton of people in it having a feast. It's the only place to get food for miles around. You walk up and say nicely, "Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you I'm really hungry, could I have some of that food?" and they respond with, "Food? What food? We don't have any food." And even though you can see it, you go on your way. You try again the next day, asking if you can have any; you see that they still have a lot of food leftover. Again, they tell you they don't know what you're talking about, they don't have any food, they've never had any food, and they don't know what feast you're talking about, even though you both know it's there. After days, weeks, months, years of doing that, would you not be so angry that you start trying to steal food from the house? Or burn the house down altogether? I can't say that I wouldn't be furious.

I am not ignorant of what I can see with my own eyes. A lot of people, on both sides of the political news spectrum, want you to see things the way they want to present them to you. I used to want to be a journalist, to seek out the truth and report it, but it seems like people today don't even respond to the truth. We live in a country now where people can outright deny unquestionable truths, with no argument or evidence, and people will believe it, many simply to keep towing whatever their party line is.

Seeing so much raw footage with no commentary of people being injured or killed by the police, police committing massive injustices on film, and not being scared of it because they know they probably won't face repercussions have shown one thing to be crystal clear to me: There is a problem.

Whether you're on one side of it or the other is one thing entirely, but something I cannot stand is the willful ignorance of the problem, or of there being a problem. I use the word "willful" because being ignorant is something one can not help. Ignorant people can learn, they can be educated, they can re-evaluate their positions on things. Willfully ignorant people can also do all of those things, but choose not to, for whatever reason, political or otherwise.

I do not have the answer. I'm not here to provide you with one. I don't know the right answer and I won't pretend to. I'm not sure there even is one, singular right answer. In all honesty, there's probably not, there's probably way more. But whatever they are we need to find them. And we need to do it fast.