Thread by @SethAbramson

Now I can't sleep—I just feel ill. I can't unsee what I saw. For some reason there are armed civilians with AR-15-like weapons patrolling a Wisconsin city alongside or instead of cops and today it seems that that—and general chaos that has nothing to do with BLM—got a guy killed.

I'm basically angry at everyone.

Cops letting civilians do law enforcement. Armed civilians who've no business being in the middle of any of this. Rioters who have nothing to do with the protests they are co-opting. Right-wingers justifying homicide in the sickest possible ways.

I lived in Wisconsin for years. I've been in Kenosha. Wisconsin is probably my favorite state in America. The images I saw from Madison weeks ago and from Kenosha tonight are like someone putting a stick of dynamite in your birthday cake. I feel sick at heart. Sick to my stomach.

No one should be destroying businesses or private property. No one should be engaged in armed vigilantism. No one should try to justify homicide by saying someone was engaged in a property crime. No politician should be trying to win re-election off misery and chaos in America.

I still feel the majority of America has a moral compass. I still feel most of us will try to correct or delete an error if we make one—because we're acting in good faith. I still feel the majority of this country will not use anger at a small number of rioters to justify murder.

I think all of us on social media—me included—are experiencing an artificial sociocultural framework in which we gain a misimpression of where the nation is at. We must remember that the overwhelming majority of Americans are positively sickened by what happened in Kenosha today.

Media and law enforcement will sort out what happened. The dozens of videos out there suggest one possible narrative that will be investigated is that law enforcement permitted libertarian "Boogaloo Boys" to keep the peace—and one of them wasn't up to the task and shot 3+ people.

The reason everything is so complicated is everything is both wildly nuanced and not at all nuanced now. Some Boogaloo Boys are libertarians; some Boogaloo Boys are far-right racists. Some Boogaloo Boys are criminally negligent (or worse) while others are straight-up homicidal.

There may *theoretically* be instances in which police believe their presence is harmful, so they seek assistance from civilians. In some cases that decision is irresponsible to the point of criminal recklessness, but there could be rare instances in which it is not ill-intended.

The problem is that these nuances and complications and scenarios take so long to untangle, and meanwhile the fact remains that one person appears to be dead and others seriously injured and the pace of America is not a pace that allows us to stop and really take stock of events.

Before we can get any clarity on a situation, 100 pols have weighed in—and approximately 1 million partisans of all political stripes. Everything is simply too tense and charged and fraught and powder-keg-like—and the fact remains that Donald Trump is responsible for all of that.

I abhor violence and believe in rule of law. I support protests and civil disobedience and the continued existence of dramatically evolved and improved and re-trained police departments. I believe in both citizen journalism and due process. I hate trolls and also my own mistakes.

Twitter isn't a place were good things happen. None of us are our best selves here. Twitter is a space whose obvious flaws, incapacities and degradations should compel us to do better things and be better people offline. One day we'll all turn away from this space and rightly so.

PS/ A lot of folks who don't want to use Google and have never researched right-wing extremism are making false statements this morning. Read this USA TODAY article (or use Google) to get answers, please, rather than *first* assuming I got something wrong. usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

PS2/ A *huge* swath of the "Boogaloo Boi" movement is white-supremacist and pro-Civil War. There is a *second* strand that is libertarian, anti-police, and *pro-BLM*.

I'm sorry if that's confusing, and I agree it's silly. But it also happens to be true, and exactly what I wrote.

PS3/ A *good* question is ask today is why law enforcement would ever delegate or even *appear* to delegate *any* law enforcement function to *either* the pro-Civil War wing of the "Boogaloo" movement *or* the anti-police wing. *That* is a good question to be asking this morning.

PS4/ A *second* good question would be this: why are right-wingers—who have spent decades demagoguing the criminal justice system—the *least* well-informed Americans when it comes to understanding when and how self-defense and defense of property are relevant in a homicide case?

PS5/ Last night I had right-wingers on my feed—men who consider themselves *super* invested in criminal justice issues—claiming that if *anyone* was rioting in Kenosha last night, *everyone* who's a leftist can be murdered there at any hour of the day on anybody's say-so.

Jesus.

PS6/ I *also* had 100+ "Russiagate" Inspector Clouseaus—far-right men whose standard of evidence in any case involving Trump is ten times beyond anything the detectives on CSI: Miami could achieve—ready to cut loose a Boogaloo Boi on homicide on the basis of *rumor and innuendo*.

PS7/ There's a small minority in this country—an *insanely* vocal one—that believes in nothing at all, yet spends every second of the day talking about their principles. They have no set standards, beliefs, or values—but dammit if (to hear them tell it) their cause isn't *noble*.

PS8/ I've taken incoming from all sides because I have principles I maintain. I do *not* support criming—even in support of noble causes; I do *not* support separate systems of justice for different Americans (on *any* basis); I do *not* root for my "team" no matter what it does.

PS9/ I'm of the view that if you tell people what you believe and get hit from all sides in response, it's a sign you should reconsider. I'm *also* of the belief that if you tell folks what you believe and *no one* disagrees, you're probably just saying what people want to hear.

PS10/ It's possible to be anti-fascist and think Nazis peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights shouldn't be assaulted. It's possible to believe we need police departments despite having spent years fighting against what police forces have historically been and are now.

NOTE/ As I've said before, I support nonviolent civil disobedience with an expectation of peaceful arrest (e.g. sit-ins, trespasses, et al.).

"Criming"—in the context I use here—involves not just a criminal act but an expectation or demand the act go *undetected and unpunished*.