Turning Point USA bills itself as a campus group that “advocates conservative values” (details here), which apparently include police shooting black people and vigilante violence.
(Jacob Blake, the man shot 7 times by a Kenosha cop, not fatally, was no angel; he had warrants for domestic violence — and a knife. He was resisting arrest, the officer thought he was about to be stabbed, and maybe he was. The violent protests that followed were out of whack. But the idea of a 17-year-old kid with no police authority patrolling a riot with an assault rifle? That’s seriously out of whack, too. And civilized people don’t celebrate violence. But these folks do:
“Kyle Rittenhouse was met with standing ovation and deafening cheers as he took the firework-filled stage at the Turning Point USA conference in Phoenix on Monday,” the U.K.-based tabloid Daily Mail reported on Tuesday, December 21, 2021 (story here).
Rittenhouse infamously shot 3 people, killing 2 of them; a jury acquitted him, but that doesn’t make him a hero. But to these folks it does:
“The 18-year-old waved to his adoring audience as he strutted onto the huge stage at the event on Monday night …. Lavish pyrotechnics signaled Rittenhouse’s arrival, with loud rock music playing and deafening cheers erupting from the thousands of young conservatives who’d paid to see him, and who got on their feet to signal their approval.”
