Then it came to the United States, where it caught a richly deserved beating, just like Canada’s hockey teams do when they come here. I do not know what motivated this beating
The writer tells us what the HitchBOT wasn't, then moves on to tell us it received a beating it richly deserved.
Perhaps I should write some words on what the destroyer deserved. Why bother?
The HitchBOT may not have been a break-through. I don't really care. It was an interesting entity, which was used for an interesting purpose.
What I don't understand, is all the animosity over an inanimate object, and why someone felt the need to destroy what was clearly not their own property.
Seems to me there was a human defect much more pronounced that any the HitchBOT exhibited.
I assume that the author intended his piece to be funny. We also seem to be afflicted with the meme that ‘heartlessness’ proves our conservative cred, something that our old pal George Putnam and Thomas Fleming both noticed.