Re:Employees are leaving Facebook and torching the company i...
by throwaway894345 on Friday December 11, 2020 @04:28PM
(#25391257)
This seems like a particularly inflammatory characterization of events. I'll just say that I think Kenosha was a tragedy, ideally Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there. Ideally there wouldn't have been riots in the first place, and failing that, the government should have effectively marshaled the police and national guard to keep the peace so (largely untrained) private citizens didn't have to do the job. I can understand why police viewed those private citizens as "help" in keeping the peace, but obviously that's problematic (bringing us back around to the rioters creating the situation and the government failing to adequately manage it). And of course everything Trump says tends to do more harm than good.
As for Rittenhouse's "victims", by all appearances Rittenhouse was acting in self defense--maybe he was instigating the conflicts before the cameras started filming, but there's no evidence to support that; on the other hand, the footage does show Rittenhouse being chased and physically attacked before firing. I'm inclined toward the presumption of innocence, but I also understand that this is very controversial.
Much of the rioting has been conducted/instigated by right-wing provocateurs (several specific ones have been identified), and much of the most severe lawless violence independent of origin of violence-in-general has been conducted by organized right-wing groups with the tacit, and sometimes active, collaboration of law enforcement (the police giving praise, thanks, and supplies to right-wing armed vigilantes, including Rittenhouse, just prior to the shooting he did — and doing so when they were out after curfew — while then turning around and publicly blaming Rittenhouse’s victims for being out after curfew is a fairly graphic illustration of this trend; as is the Trump Administration directive to DHS personnel on talking points supporting Rittenhouse after the incident.)