brazenautomaton:arjan-de-lumens: fierceawakening:wilwheaton:I’ve tried to find empathy and com
brazenautomaton:arjan-de-lumens: fierceawakening:wilwheaton:I’ve tried to find empathy and compassion for this child who has been taught to be a hateful racist and a violent white supremacist, and I just can’t.He murdered two people. He crossed state lines with an assault rifle and he used it to murder two people. At seventeen years-old, this child felt he was entitled to grab his fucking ASSAULT RIFLE and take his too-young-to-buy-cigarettes self to another state, so he could carry out his white supremacist fantasies.And here he is, drinking in a bar with Proud Boys, joyfully making a white power sign, after a sympathetic judge let him out of custody before trial. The kid who was crying yesterday? That kid isn’t crying because he’s remorseful for murdering two people and trying to murder a third. That kid is crying because his lawyers coached him to manipulate the jury that’s probably going to let him walk, anyway. If there is any real emotion behind this kid’s crocodile tears at all, it’s fear of accountability and prison.Don’t be fooled. Don’t forget who this person is or what he did. This is why I can’t figure out why people think there’s a question here. The other side seems to be saying “he went there to commit violence, but then decided not to commit violence, but then decided to do it anyway because someone else threatened him.”It’s not that this is obviously impossible. But what evidence do we have that this was his thinking? He didn’t drop the gun, or apologize to people, or take any obvious action that showed he’d changed his mind, so why are we being expected to assume he did/called brainwashed lefties if we don’t assume he did?It’s POSSIBLE you could tell me you love Jesus yesterday, watch some episodes of The Atheist Experience today, and deconvert by this evening. Sure. But if I meet you for dinner, I’m not being prejudiced if I assume you’re still devout.If that’s what prejudice is, no human behavior should be considered predictable at all because it’s possible for people to change their minds quickly. I’ve seen a handful of comments around Rittenhouse’s tears that seemed to recognize them as looking more like a ptsd-like trauma flashback thing (as if from recalling having something horrible done to him) rather than a guilt/remorse thing (as if from recalling having done something horrible). If that is an even remotely correct reading, then it would seem to me to be consistent with his apparent lack of remorse - if he has ended up viewing the whole situation as one where he is someone who survived bad people trying to do bad things to him, it seems quite understandable that he would have trouble seeing why the deaths of the ‘bad’ people should be something to feel remorse about.I’m kinda assuming that something like this is a line of thinking that’s present in the mind of a lot of the people who sympathise with him as well - and part of why so many of his sympathisers make such a big deal out of the criminal records of the people Rittenhouse shot dead when it’s so obviously not relevant to the question of whether he committed self-defense - if they are imagining themselves in his situation, then killing ‘bad’ people makes for a strong good-vs-evil perspective, but killing ‘good’ or even ‘normal’ people introduces a ton of unpleasant cognitive dissonance. it’s relevant to the self defense claim to establish the idea that they were attacking him. if you claim you shot a dude in self defense because he was attacking you, and he has a criminal record for attacking people all the time, it’s kind of relevant. everyone like this space nerd wil wheaton shrieking about this horrible white supremacist terrorist act don’t actually believe those principles at other times, because any time anyone else makes a claim that sounds a little bit like “this person has responsibility for putting themselves in a situation where they were likely to be victimized” you start shrieking about how they’re a rape apologist and you know space nerd wil wheaton would be tearing up his throat to be screaming louder than everyone elseand there is absolutely no way around it, that’s the argument. he must be a murderer because even if the people he shot were attacking him, he only went there because he knew he was likely to be violently attacked, so it’s his fault. you don’t believe that at any other timewhen neither party should have been there and both parties were violent wackos I don’t think that you get to say “rittenhouse was a violent wacko who shouldn’t have been there so he can’t have acted in self defense” and leave it at that. -- source link