I can’t imagine that there weren’t plenty of people there who share that perception.

I myself also would be very nervous around someone being armed like that in public. But I don't live in an open carry state, either, so it would be very out of place for me, as well.

That said, you don't have to imagine. Just look at the facts of the matter:

• He was obviously and visibly armed from the moment he showed up
• There was no freakout over his arrival, nor over the extended period of time he was walking around doing things, obviously and visibly armed the entire time. There is plenty of video of him there while armed, and it's clear he is not drawing any more attention than the average person in any of the footage up to the point where Rosenbaum put himself and Rittenhouse at the center of attention with his mad raving.

Given those facts, it is clear that Rittenhouse was not armed to an extent that those around him found more than mundane.

What it really comes down to (again, in my mind) is that his decision to go there, into the middle of what was already basically a powder keg, carrying an AR-15 was, at the very least, incredibly poor judgement. Even if 90% of protesters saw him as helpful, all it’d take is one who didn’t to cause a problem.

There were people at these protests (speaking nationwide, I can’t speak to the one in Kenosha specifically) who were there just to cause trouble - looting, vandalizing, trying to paint the peaceful protesters in a poor light.

Generally speaking, if someone goes to a dangerous place to try and improve the situation there to the best of their ability, despite the potential risks to their own safety, one would consider that courageous and admirable, not foolish. I'd say it's very arguable that only pre-existing bias is preventing Rittenhouse from being perceived similarly, given that every single action he's known to have taken in Kenosha that day was either morally neutral (I consider defending your life to be human nature, and not a moral or immoral act), or morally good (cleaning graffiti, extinguishing fires, handing out water bottles on request, giving basic medical aid to the extent he could from his lifeguard training).

Being as objective as possible, and going by the facts, what can one realistically argue that he did that was immoral on that day? This is a genuine question--I can't find a single actual act that merits criticism, and I've found consistently that everyone criticizing his actions either straight-up gets facts about what he literally did incorrect, and bases their conclusion on that, or colors his decision to be there as malicious in and of itself (though, again, though obviously we can't read his mind that day, the actions he took that day simply do not support that assumed malicious intent at all, quite the contrary in fact).

But that's not even all of it--his most ardent supporters on the extreme right are getting it wrong ALSO, and do ridiculous things like claiming his shooting of people we later discovered were actually pretty shitty people was itself a morally good act, and completely ignore the things he did that day that actually WERE objectively morally good (graffiti cleaning et al, as mentioned above). This is ridiculous, and focusing completely in the wrong place--he didn't 'do the right thing' by shooting people, he protected his life against a few crazy and violent individuals, and that's obviously neither 'good' or 'bad'.

Although I will say, that one video did demonstrate that Rittenhouse's trigger discipline is admirable (immediately after shooting Grosskreutz, his finger was off the trigger and around the guard, as he carefully got back up to his feet, and overall, he didn't fire a single shot that struck anyone other than his intended target, no spray and pray, no wild shots, he used his weapon to the absolute minimal extent necessary to neutralize each of the people who tried to kill him)--if every cop's in the US was as good as his, we'd probably have a lot fewer police scandals in this country.

the point I was trying to get at is that he doesn’t live there; it’s not like this was happening in his town.

But again, he had family and friends there--while he may not have lived there, I'd say it's very fair to categorize Kenosha as part of 'his community', considering how many ties he has to it, and how he regularly spent time there.

It’s relevant (to me) because he holds views (and did before the protest, as far as I recall) that put him at odds with a lot of the protesters there.

I don't really find that relevant though. Suppose we knew for a fact that he was a straight-up racist and/or adherent to all sorts of extreme right-wing political views. Let's say he was literally the far-right stereotype.

The facts of the matter are still what they are--he took not a single action in Kenosha could be fairly/objectively described as an expression of such views--he did nothing that you could look at and say 'oh, it's because of view far-right political stance X that he decided to do this action Y'. He's on video at one point saying he was there "to protect this business, and part of my job is there’s somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way.”

Hypothetically, if someone goes their whole life hating a certain race of people, but throughout their life, never actually mistreats anyone of that race, then the end result, as far as real-world consequences, is the same as if that person did not have those views.

Frankly, I don't really care what his views are. I care about what he did.

he didn’t, and doesn’t (based on his behavior after the fact) seem particularly remorseful for what happened there.

I don't think he should feel remorse. Remorse is for having done things wrong. I don't think he could have handled the situations Rosenbaum et al put him in any better than he did. I literally can't think of a course of action from the moment Rosenbaum began to charge at him that's different from what he did, and also inarguably better/smarter.

But regret? He clearly regrets that things went down the way they did. The crying he did as he relived those events during the trial, that left-wing ideologues love to mock him for, and callously claim are crocodile tears, instead of a 17 year-old coming to grips with the kind of day's events that would traumatize ANYONE for life, are a clear show of that. Frankly, just talking about this particular bit makes me feel disgusted all over again, at all of the things I saw and read around that time, on Reddit. People who pretend to be champions for mental health instantly abandon their supposed virtues because they've dehumanized Rittenhouse to such an extreme degree that they can't even fathom that he is a normal human being who just might be traumatized by having to look death in the face not once, but THREE times in a day. It's sickening...but I digress.

Now, after the fact, he has on at least one occasion I know of, poked fun at himself with that same infamous image of him weeping. But humor is a common coping mechanism, especially for young males in this country, who are scarcely allowed to deal with trauma in any other way without being criticized for it (see above). I would not look at things like that and conclude 'oh, he actually just didn't give a shit' or anything like that. We also don't know what things are like for him when he's not in public view. Hell, he likely still has nightmares about that day...

The basic facts of the case were pretty widely misrepresented, by news outlets, never mind keyboard warriors on Twitter and Reddit;

That's for sure--even post-verdict I saw Redditors claiming "Rittenhouse's victims" were all black, and that it was a racially-motivated crime.

I don’t think it’s surprising at all that everyone’s perception of the details differ so greatly.

Maybe not surprising, but it's all the more reason that it's important to push back against misinformation, especially when it's ideologically-driven. It deserves nothing less than relentless calling out, in my opinion.

I genuinely appreciate that you've actually been reading what I'm writing--much better than "fuck off fascist loser" and the like, which you will find in this thread, not too far from this comment chain.

The ACLU made a statement basically condemning him post-verdict, for one, and that was pretty widely reported on.

I haven't read this statement, I'm going to look it up real quick and quote bits I find 'interesting':

• Kyle Rittenhouse’s conscious decision to take the lives of two people protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake by police <-- Oh, there's a lie in the very first sentence, lol. At the very least, it's confirmed that Rosenbaum was NOT protesting. He'd just been released that very day from a hospital after a suicide attempt, went to his 'girlfriend's house, where he was turned away due to a restraining order against him (yeah...), and basically ended up in the mix in Kenosha by apparent coincidence. Witness testimony described him as "extremely aggressive"--one quick example before moving on.
• Kyle Rittenhouse was a juvenile who traveled across state lines on a vigilante mission, was allowed by police to roam the streets of Kenosha with an assault rifle and ended up shooting three people and killing two. These are the simple, tragic facts. <-- Holy shit, lol. "Vigilante mission" is pure assumption, not a fact, the police allowed EVERYONE to "roam the streets", so that's meaningless to point out, and "ended up shooting three people and killing two" is technically a fact, but is a MASSIVE lie of omission to just say he "ended up" doing that, it completely ignores all of the other relevant events before, during, and after. The ACLU clearly had a narrative they went to great lengths to push, and were more than happy to ignore any inconvenient truth that might get in the way of that narrative.

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