The most revealing thing to happen in conservative politics this week did not involve the Republican National Convention, at least not directly. Instead, it took place in Kenosha, Wis., in the aftermath of a shooting on Tuesday night that killed two people and wounded a third.

The suspected shooter, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from nearby Antioch, Ill., was in Kenosha with a group of armed counterprotesters. After several days of rioting — sparked by the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who appears to have been paralyzed after police shot him seven times in the back — so-called militia groups arrived on the scene to defend businesses and other properties from protesters. Rittenhouse was with one of those groups when, according to a visual analysis by The New York Times, he was seen running away from several people.

Eyewitness testimony fills the gap. Rittenhouse was approached by Joseph Rosenbaum, who threw a plastic bag in his direction. He ran, and turned to face Rosenbaum with his AR-15 in the ready position. Nearby, an unknown gunman shot into the air. It’s at this point that Rosenbaum reached for the barrel of Rittenhouse’s rifle. Rittenhouse then fired four rounds, one of which struck Rosenbaum in the head. Rittenhouse then fled the scene. Several people chased him, some shouting to identify him as the shooter.

As Rittenhouse is running, he trips and falls to the ground. He fires again — four more shots — as several people run toward him. One of the people in that group is hit in the chest and falls to the ground. Another, who is carrying a handgun, is struck in the arm. Rittenhouse then gets up and walks toward several police vehicles with his hands raised. Although bystanders identify him as the shooter, police pass him by. Rittenhouse is arrested the next day, in Illinois. Authorities charged him with first-degree murder.

This is a complicated situation, but a few things are clear. Wisconsin isn’t a “Stand Your Ground” state, and Rittenhouse was in illegal possession of a weapon — under Wisconsin law, it is a Class A misdemeanor for a minor to carry a deadly weapon in the open. There is also no legal right in the state to use deadly force for the protection of property you do not own. And in any case the “Castle Doctrine” only applies to the use of deadly force in one’s home, vehicle or business.

To the conservative media, however, what happened in Kenosha was eminently justifiable and even cause for celebration. “Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?” Tucker Carlson said on the Wednesday broadcast of his Fox News show. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Carlson, who has an average nightly audience of more than 4 million viewers, blamed local political leaders for the killings. “Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it. People in charge in Wisconsin from the governor on down refused to enforce the law,” he said. “They stood back and watched Kenosha burn.”

Ann Coulter, a conservative author and provocateur, said that she wanted Rittenhouse “as my president.” Graham Allen, a contributor to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, called the Kenosha killings a “justified shooting” in a video that has garnered more than 150,000 views. Katie Pavlich, another Fox News host, declared that, “When you have no police around to defend businesses, and people who are being attacked, then there is a void that is filled.” According to The Guardian, “fund-raisers, messages of support and celebratory memes” for Rittenhouse are being “shared widely” on social media platforms. And Paul Gosar, a far-right Republican congressman for Arizona’s 4th District, said it was “100% justified self-defense. Do not try to take a weapon away from a man or bear the consequences.”

What happened in Kenosha was a tragedy. Rittenhouse should not have been there, and we should agree — all of us — that the shooting should not have happened. We should also be troubled by police action, or the lack thereof, against armed militias. Tacit support from Kenosha police (at one point, an officer thanks the group for being there) almost certainly contributed to the permissive environment that led to the shooting. It is reminiscent, in that way, of the events in Charlottesville in 2017, where an official review found that law enforcement failed to “maintain order” and “protect public safety” leading to fights, skirmishes and the vehicular murder of a protester.

We should be appalled. But it appears only some of us are. Others are prepared to elevate Rittenhouse as a symbol of self-defense. It’s an ominous reaction, not the least because it might inspire other Rittenhouses to do the same, to travel to protests ready for the use of lethal force against protesters. Put differently, the extent to which Carlson and Coulter and Turning Point are representative of conservative thought on violence against protesters is the extent to which we may have to prepare for further Kenoshas.

I said, at the start, that these events lack a direct link to the Republican National Convention, the headline event for conservative politics this week. They do, however, have an indirect link. The night before the killings in Kenosha, Mark and Patricia McCloskey delivered a prime-time address from their St. Louis home as part of the convention’s opening program. The McCloskeys aren’t politicians or activists, they’re trial lawyers, famous for just one reason: brandishing firearms (Mark an AR-15, Patricia a pistol) at passing Black Lives Matter protesters. Their celebrity in conservative circles has everything to do with their threat of violence against people the president has denounced as a threat to the country itself. However ridiculous the McCloskeys may have looked in the media, the fact of the matter is their actions led to a reward. For threatening protesters with death, they were given a chance to speak to the entire nation.

One other thing. Earlier this summer, as the first protests against the death of George Floyd unfolded, President Trump took to Twitter to warn of consequences for those who damaged property. “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen,” Trump tweeted on a Friday morning in May. “Any difficulty and we will assume control, but when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Although Trump backpedaled in the face of criticism — claiming, implausibly, that he was making a descriptive statement of what would happen if looting began — his meaning was clear enough: that “looters,” however defined, would and should be shot.

The bully pulpit matters. Presidential rhetoric matters. Rittenhouse was a fan of the president — he took a front-row seat at a January rally in Des Moines — but that connection is less important than the atmosphere created by Trump’s words. A president who speaks of shooting people in the street — who elevates those who threaten to shoot people in the street — cannot be separated from the individual who does, eventually, shoot people in the street.

My daughter argues that as long as she’s seeing all of her friends together in school, they should be able to gather together in their houses as well. Unfortunately, she has risk exactly backward. She’s not alone; lots of Americans do.

My kids, like most in Indiana, have been back at school since mid-August. Each time my 9th and 11th grader head off to high school, they spend more time among other human beings in a day than they had cumulatively all summer. Because of that, they along with many of their friends and those friends’ parents think that there’s less reason to be careful in other aspects of their lives.

But as we loosen restrictions in some areas, we should be increasing restrictions in others. If kids are going to take on more risk at school, they should find ways to be even safer outside of it. Large groupings at a friend’s house are not a good idea.

Too many view protective measures as all or nothing: Either we do everything, or we might as well do none. That’s wrong. Instead, we need to see that all our behavior adds up.

Each decision we make to reduce risk helps. Each time we wear a mask, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we socialize outside instead of inside, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we stay six feet away instead of sitting closer together, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we wash our hands, eat apart and don’t spend time in large gatherings of people, we’re adding to the pile.

If the pile gets big enough, we as a society can keep this thing in check.

But rather than focus on the cumulative benefits of individual actions, our attention too often rests on the few who refuse to act safely. We rage online over a couple of people who throw a fit about wearing a mask in a store. We spend far less time being grateful that so many Americans do wear them.

We don’t need everyone to wear a mask. We need more people to wear masks. We need to be willing to wear a mask even if others refuse, because every little bit matters.

This kind of thinking holds true even for vaccines, which add a huge amount to the pile. We won’t need everyone to get one to reach herd immunity. We just need enough people to do so.

To keep the pile big enough, though, we need to be willing to trade some activities for others. If someone wants to play on a sports team, for instance, they should consider giving something up to do so. Increasing their risk by participating in a group activity should prompt them to reduce their risk the rest of the time.

But we aren’t very good at discussing trade-offs. We want it all. We want to eat in restaurants, crowd into houses, go to work and celebrate occasions en masse.

We could choose to engage in just some of those things. We could decide to get a massage or get our nails done or have a haircut — instead of demanding all of these and more be available to us simultaneously.

From a policy perspective, we’ve been just as unwilling to sacrifice. Almost everyone thinks that opening schools is extremely important (myself included). But too few people have been willing to discuss what we might be willing to shut down to make that happen. If we want to make it safer to send kids back to school, we might need to consider reducing the number of people who can drink in bars or eat in restaurants, for example.

Maybe, right now, we can’t have both schools and Disney World.

Of course, even if society can’t agree on which activities to prioritize, we as individuals can. The Carrolls haven’t seen most of our extended family in months. We’ve canceled a number of vacations big and small. When we eat with people who are not in our family, we do so outside in very small groups. My kids have been denied sleepovers and basketball games and hanging out in basements.

If Americans were willing to invest in bigger-picture solutions, we could all have nicer things. A massive testing scheme would require spending increases and many more public health personnel than we currently employ, but it could make many activities much safer. Providing more people with the means to stay home instead of going to their workplaces in person would significantly reduce close contact. Ubiquitous and affordable high-speed internet would make online education easier.

We all can’t live in bubbles like the one the N.B.A. created so it can finish the professional basketball season. But we could make use of the league’s testing methods. We could note its decision to hunker down and limit exposures. We could acknowledge that those involved felt the season was important enough to make personal sacrifices. I’m sure millions of dollars made the decision easier, but many of us would be happy with much less.

Instead of asking why we can’t do certain activities, we might consider what we’re willing to give up to do them more safely. Even better, we might even consider what we’re willing to give up so others can do them, too.