Only in America

[Sean Hayden]

Imagine seeing the guy next to you as a dangerous armed lunatic even as you are literally rioting and with armed peers willing to let off random shots.

How blinkered can a person get?

[JimC]

This is why it's important to understand the actors involved and what they were doing so you can avoid such grotesque misrepresentations.

Why grotesque? A criminal past does not make someone incapable of being heroic.

You are really doing the "blame the victim" thing here...

[Sean Hayden]

You're doing the gaslighting thing here. You've now invented a hero narrative absent any evidence and would like me to ignore both what we know they did, what they were all doing, and what their past might mean for their involvement.

No thanks. I'm not going to ignore the evidence and what I know about life to help you out here. You can either present evidence or not.

[pErvinalia]

If you don't see how the facts in the case contradict the popular framing of what happened then maybe you're not familiar with how it was framed. I will just point out that nearly everyone has changed their understanding as they become acquainted with the facts.

The right thinks he's innocent. I've never held that position.

What's with you types that need to dismiss everyone as right or left? What I've said stands on its own and can be accepted or not regardless of political leanings.

I didn't say you were right or left. I said that you and the right are seemingly employing a similar tactic.

[Sean Hayden]

Cool. The right has an agenda. I'm just triggered by crazy.

[JimC]

You're doing the gaslighting thing here. You've now invented a hero narrative absent any evidence and would like me to ignore both what we know they did, what they were all doing, and what their past might mean for their involvement.

No thanks. I'm not going to ignore the evidence and what I know about life to help you out here. You can either present evidence or not.

You are the one assuming that their criminal past means that their shooter wasn't as liable as if they were totally innocent.

Or perhaps if they were white...

[Sean Hayden]

The victims were white.

His liability is tied to his decision to take the law into his own hands. Theirs is in behaving like violent thugs.

--//--

I wonder if people are under the impression that only one side had a right to be there. This does seem a lot like a territorial dispute for some --old school too, as in intruder bad, we can do no wrong.

[aufbahrung]

Humans shouldn't be allowed guns...you don't train chimps to use guns and they are smarter than humans 90% of the time.

[Hermit]

His liability is tied to his decision to take the law into his own hands. Theirs is in behaving like violent thugs.

Behaving like violent thugs is Rittenhouse's liability too. It is the result of him brandishing an assault style rifle in their midst.

I wonder if people are under the impression that only one side had a right to be there. This does seem a lot like a territorial dispute for some --old school too, as in intruder bad, we can do no wrong.

Is there anyone in this forum whose posts give you that impression?

[pErvinalia]

Got to say, how stupid do you need to be to attack a guy with a gun?

[Sean Hayden]

His liability is tied to his decision to take the law into his own hands. Theirs is in behaving like violent thugs.

Behaving like violent thugs is Rittenhouse's liability too. It is the result of him brandishing an assault style rifle in their midst.

I wonder if people are under the impression that only one side had a right to be there. This does seem a lot like a territorial dispute for some --old school too, as in intruder bad, we can do no wrong.

Is there anyone in this forum whose posts give you that impression?

That's a great point Hermit and at a peaceful protest it would obliterate --in my opinion-- any notion of self-defense.

--//--

I don't like the police carrying everywhere, and I think this is a major blindspot of the boomer right who always liked to point to the lack of men with assault rifles patrolling the streets in the US as evidence of our freedoms....

[Brian Peacock]

The overwhelming majority of the various BLM protests were peaceful. What stoked this particular fire was right-wing political rhetoric that sought to delegitimise the protests, sit-ins, marches, and vigils, and to sideline the issues that inspired them, by casting them as the work of unpatriotic, politically dubious, violent extremists - such that every protest was a riot and every protestor therefore a rioter. It's in this particular context that Rittenhouse's actions appear justifiable even if it doesn't marry with the facts on the ground in his particular case.

[laklak]

Rhetoric does not excuse riots.

[Brian Peacock]

Indeed. Nor does calling BLM protestors radical marxists justify heavy-handed policing methods or 'citizen vigilantes' etc.

[laklak]

Not much discussion of white folks murdered at the Christmas parade by black BLM supporter who rapped about having an AK 47 and hating Trump. But hell, he's black, so he's entitled to kill a few kids and retired white people, eh? I mean, slavery and Jim Crow and all that shit.