You need to speak up. It may be hard, but at least try, especially for this. Couch it with sympathy or whatever the fuck you think will help you keep your job, but say something.
“It’s a tragedy that people died, but...”
“I feel for the protestors that left before curfew, but...”
“I know that our law enforcement system is flawed, but...”
“That kid shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but...”
This is a major watershed event and a chance to show people that the narrative they’ve been peddled for three months is muddled with bullshit. People don’t like being told they’re wrong, but they need to at least think it’s possible. I’ve kept my mouth shut on a lot of things but this is the first time I’ve seriously pushed back with family members who only heard part of the story.
“I watched the video, and it’s not the same story I read in the paper...”
They fucking hate this. It stings, especially when they realize they’re making wild, dangerous claims based on a Facebook comment or headline they half-read. It’s hard, but the biggest favor you can do someone is remind them that they need to form opinions based on evidence
they see, not stuff that was repeated second hand.
People’s opinions are largely going to be solidified based on the sole fact of whether they sympathize with the protestors or not. They’ll bend the rest of the details to suit that initial judgement. If the protestors are the in-group in their minds, they’ll get hostile defending them, but they
need to see the truth and they
need to think their stance through to the logical conclusions.
There are a couple important details I’ve tried to stress:
- David Blake was being arrested for an outstanding warrant for sexual assault, he violently resisted, and the call that brought the police there in the first place alleged domestic abuse.
- The organized BLM protest in Kenosha ended at around 9:00pm and anybody left after that was more than likely looking to be violent
- People there after 9:00pm were violent. They burned down businesses and assaulted bystanders.
- Destruction like this has been explicitly encouraged and enabled since the unrest started. Local government had the option of allowing peaceful assembly while condemning violence and property crime, but they chose not to for three solid months.
- Maybe people want to compartmentalize the well-intentioned peaceful protestors as different from the violent ones, but many of the violent protestors don’t make the same distinction
- Many protestors were armed in Kenosha that night, and have been armed at other riots since day one
- Kyle Rittenhouse did not fire indiscriminately into the crowd
- The journalists who crafted that narrative had access to video proof well before they started writing about it, and they are willfully lying
- Video evidence shows Kyle being assaulted, shot at, and knocked to the ground before defending himself
The list goes on, but this situation is so fucked that it’s frankly irresponsible to let people continue on this trajectory without knowing the basic facts. Give them an out if you have to, let them sympathize and identify with people who are well-meaning and want change, but
step the fuck up and shatter the illusion that a huge portion of rioters want anything but destruction and misery.
If the violence continues, people
will have to defend themselves and we need to do everything humanly possible to remind people that, if attacked, you have a right to defend yourself and your loved ones, regardless of the perceived politics of your attackers.
