Free Republic

OK, you win. I've heard enough. Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero. I should have never suggested he was anything less than that. The death threats you've sent me through my employer and former associates, the N-word-laced messages that found their way to my inbox, the profanity-filled emails you copied my supervisors on have convinced me that all that matters is that Rittenhouse was able to protect himself. The jury finding him guilty on all counts doesn't mean he is "innocent" in the way O.J. Simpson was "innocent." You win: It means he is innocent, full stop. I'm convinced: Other young...

SNIP To his supporters, and even many of his detractors, Rittenhouse isn’t a monster. Not really. He was a young, dumb kid hyped up on the Foxification or Fox News effect of American discourse on the Black Lives Matter movement in a country that fetishes guns — for show, for sport and for killing — not a white supremacist, like, say Dylann Roof. Not really. He wore no hoods and didn’t wrap himself in the Confederate flag. He’s a patriot who tried to bring calm to chaos because, as Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson told us at the time...