The Response to the Rittenhouse Verdict on Social Media Reveals the Rot in the American Experiment

There is much about America's past we must constantly strive to acknowledge and surpass—but the way we used to discuss sensitive issues, before the advent of the internet, may have been preferable.

Introduction

RETRO may seem an odd choice for this essay on the Rittenhouse verdict, as opposed to my other substack, Proof, but hear me out: the abiding problem the coverage of the Rittenhouse shooting, the Rittenhouse trial, and the Rittenhouse verdict reveal is not just how degraded internet discourse in the United States has become, but how much bett…