I was in Kenosha. Kyle Rittenhouse is not a hero.

Meanwhile, to his detractors, Rittenhouse was a white-supremacist vigilante, and, to his lionizers, a hero standing up for law and order. The left ignored the fact that Rittenhouse had come out that day to clean graffiti. Conservatives, champions of family values, didn’t bother to ask why Rittenhouse’s family had allowed him to venture out onto the streets of Kenosha, in the middle of violent demonstrations, in the first place. Nor did they care that he’d lied about being a medic. Nor did they seem to mind that their hero, instead of calling 911, as I’d asked him to do after he shot Rosenbaum, had fled on foot.

These cartoonish characterizations were just that—cartoons designed for the algorithm. Everyone and everything was spun through these partisan lenses without regard to contradiction or nuance…

Then, a month after the trial, came Turning Point USA’s “Americafest,” which was streamed on Fox Nation. The organizers invited me to participate. “We would like to surprise the audience with Kyle Rittenhouse coming out in person,” the invitation said. “This will not be announced. Kyle is confirmed.”

I declined. Instead, I watched the segment, “Kenosha On Camera,” from home. Pyrotechnics exploded before a cheering audience of thousands of self-proclaimed young conservatives as the surprise guest took the stage. The panelists joked with Rittenhouse about how good his aim was. I felt sick watching them laugh about the man whom Rittenhouse had shot in a used-car lot. The guy I promised I’d get a beer with right before they loaded him onto a gurney and his terrified, wide eyes turned into a frozen stare.