Kyle Rittenhouse. Remember the name because he’s a symbol of how we’ve devolved. Rittenhouse is the 17-year-old white boy who, with his mother driving, crossed state lines and killed two protesters and seriously wounded a third at a police protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 28. A 17-year-old white boy may have triggered a bloody escalation of a civil war in 2020, a war now waged by civilians. And in less than a week after the Kenosha shooting, conservative crowdfunding website GiveSendGo raised over $265,000 to cover his legal fees, claiming he was unfairly charged with murder. Yes, we know of the killing that followed two days later in Portland of a right-wing demonstrator at a rally for President Donald Trump. Portland police are looking at a suspect, a white man who has attended Black Lives Matter rallies. One bullet deserves another? This dark, cataclysmic fall into madness is greased from the top. Trump this week defended Rittenhouse and the right-wing demonstrators in Portland. That itself is an atrocity.

• We have two months to get Trump voted out: 864511320 (86 the 45th president on Nov. 3, 2020). 

• Speaking of hate and division, in a time when the Eugene Police Department and police across the country are under fire for inappropriate tactics, what is EPD thinking telling people on its Facebook page that it is OK for people to jump in and “help” an officer? EPD told a social media commenter that “absolutely if the officer knows you are coming to help and is OK with it. It’d be important to follow the officer’s directions.” That’s not the kind of community policing we need.

• If you need to escape to a game, try watching the Portland Timbers play soccer. Sure, it’s weird and unnecessary when they use fake audience sounds with no real noisy soccer audience, but it’s still worth cheering them on from our screens. We like watching soccer better with the honest sounds of the players yelling at each other, no matter the language. The Timbers are a wild ride. They won the MLS tournament in Florida, then lost big to the Seattle Sounders, and on Aug. 27 ended with a 4-4 tie in a match they should have won against Real Salt Lake. It’s only a game, and we need the escape.

• As X-Files taught us, the truth is out there. At 9 pm Tuesday, Sept. 8, join a group of UFO hunters at Skinner Butte to watch the sky for extraterrestrial visitors — because an alien encounter is something that would totally happen in 2020. 

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