To his victims and their sympathizers, teenager Kyle Rittenhouse is a White vigilante who committed double murder. To his defenders, he’s a folk hero who lived out their gun-rights fantasies.
Rittenhouse acquitted
Gun violence has become such a feature of American life that no one should be surprised that a jury acquitted Rittenhouse. But the following from a CNN report today illustrates why the jury should have convicted him:
Prosecutors … sought to show Rittenhouse acted recklessly that night and provoked Rosenbaum by pointing the rifle at him, setting off the ensuing series of events.
‘That is what provokes this entire incident. … When the defendant provokes this incident, he loses the right to self-defense. You cannot claim self-defense against a danger you create.’
The racial implications
I need only say the name Trayvon Martin to put this verdict into racial context; juxtaposing his fate and Rittenhouse’s acquittal speaks volumes about how critical race is to criminal justice in America. And every Black American will tell you there is nothing theoretical about that.
Simply put, had Rittenhouse been Black, cops would’ve arrested or shot him dead. And they would have done so long before the encounters that ended in him shooting three people that fateful night. No fair-minded American can deny that.
After all, Rittenhouse was wielding an AR-15 rifle and looking for trouble. Trayvon was carrying a box of Skittles and walking home. Yet wannabe cop George Zimmerman deemed Trayvon a greater menace than the real cops considered Rittenhouse to be.
Ironically, nothing expresses the outrage Blacks felt when Zimmermand got scot-free quite like the way the parents of Anthony Huber, one of the two (White) men Rittenhouse killed, expressed theirs:
Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.
(NBC News, November 19, 2021)
Rittenhouse, folk hero
Keyboard warriors and MAGA insurrectionists playing GOP lawmakers are vying for the dystopian honor of hiring Rittenhouse as an intern. Of course, this is just another of their attention-seeking stunts to “own the libs.”
His mother sounds like a right-wing nut. So she would probably like nothing more. But I hope Rittenhouse’s defense attorney retains enough influence to protect him from being paraded around the Capitol as a mascot for Republican vigilantism.
He would be well-advised to get on with his life as far from the media vortex already pulling him in as humanly possible. That’s for his own sake (and safety).
America, the divided
This Rittenhouse case highlighted the growing tribalism in America between Republicans and Democrats.
Abraham Lincoln warned that a nation as divided against itself, as America already is, cannot stand. But Ulysses S. Grant issued an equally prescient warning. He focused on the growing division between patriotism and intelligence on one side (aka Democrats) and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other (aka Republicans).
Grant’s warning is so compelling that I featured it in two recent podcast episodes: “Biden’s Foreign Policy A-Team Is Failing Him” on May 15, 2021, and “Online Comments Section and the Fate of Democracy” on June 12, 2021.