The verdict in last week’s trial of Kyle Rittenhouse should have taken no one by surprise. Press coverage—irrespective of the bias—made it clear that 1) the judge had a history of principled objection to prosecutorial overreach and misconduct, a “pro-defendant” approach that at one time would have been lauded by the left, 2) the prosecution was having a very difficult time with its case and 3) self-defense cases are difficult to prosecute in any case. Our competing tribes lined up on either side, with Rittenhouse either a murderous white supremacist or a heroic champion of law and order.
I am no expert in Wisconsin law, or any other jurisdiction for that matter, but it was always hard for me to grasp how a series of “first degree” charges would ever stick. I suspected he would be convicted on some manner of weapons charge, but when even that was thrown out, I assumed he would be found guilty on some lesser charge. This assumption was born of several views I held about the case. First, that Kyle Rittenhouse did not belong where he was. No one asked him to be there, and he had no official capacity. Second, that he had decided to be there armed was another spectacularly bad decision. Third, that discharging the weapon and striking other human beings under such circumstances EVEN UNDER SELF DEFENSE seems likely to involve SOME reasonable charge and potential punishment.
All of these “feelings” or views of mine amount to little but cud-chewing, as all that was important was what he was charged with, what those statutes comprise, and the degree to which the jury believed that he had either fallen afoul of them or was aligned with them. That’s it. They found that he had indeed acted in self-defense as such was comprised in Wisconsin, and so he is a free man. It is as it should be.
Had he been black, would he have been acquitted? I don’t know. I hope so. But if your reason for believing that he should have been convicted is to any degree dependent upon how you view that question, you disqualify yourself as someone interested in any concept of justice.
Viewing this trial AT ALL through a racial lens strikes me as odd. Why Rittenhouse was there is NOT MATERIAL to the question of self-defense.
Another interesting question is why so many seem to think Rittenhouse being armed was a sign of intent to shoot/kill people, but there is little symmetry in assessing why Gaige Grosskreutz—one of the men shot by Rittenhouse—was armed that night. No one seems to be asking whether HE intended to shoot/kill counter-protesters. Read this piece on Grosskreutz testimony and ask yourself just how bad a defense lawyer would have to be not to be able to create in the mind of an average juror the sense that an armed Grosskreutz who chased Rittenhouse down and then lunged at him—was not a threat.
One final point—it is mind-blowing how many aware, intelligent, and informed people came to believe that the people shot by Rittenhouse were black, and how it fed many of their narratives of white supremacy.
Kyle Rittenhouse is a punk and his media blitz with Tucker Carlson this week will likely solidify his place in ignominy. But he was not a murderer.
Own It, Joe
News that the President had decided to dip into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to goose supply in an effort to bring down energy (gas, home heating oil) prices reveals the weakness of the “Green Energy”/”Climate Change” position he’s taken, as both a political and a practical matter.
Politically, whatever support one sees among Americans for clean energy and climate policy is born of what appears to be well-intentioned reactions to the scare mongering of the left. Having successfully been convinced that there are things that humans are doing that contribute to climate change, Americans are in general, all for changes that might mitigate it. Until they have to pay for it. Not in a sterile, polled sort of “sure, I’d be willing to spend an extra $10 a month/easy to say because I’m not actually doing it” way, but when they are actually forced to pay more for existing energy sources, the sort of market-based death match that climate change advocates ACTUALLY WANT in order to make petroleum products less attractive relatively than initiatives that they favor.
You see, that’s the big problem here. A not insignificant number of climate advocates are ALL FOR rising oil prices, and in fact, would design policy specifically to create the kind of price rises that Biden’s dip into the SPR is attempting to quell. With one hand, Biden is doing all that he can to create higher prices by limiting domestic supplies of oil in service to the climate change mob, but now the other hand must react when Americans react to rising gas prices in politically unpalatable ways.
If Biden REALLY believed in the High Teachings of the Church of the Changed Climate, he’d look into the camera and say, “I’m sorry you’re hurting with higher prices, but that’s exactly what I want to happen in order for you to begin to prefer other forms of energy. So I guess I’m really not that sorry at all”.
If climate change is the looming disaster that I am routinely told that it is, so much so that the Department of Defense seems to treat it with the same level of attention as it does actual things the Department of Defense is comprised to address, then it follows that the President should take this hard line.
But he won’t. Because it would be ridiculously unpopular, and because the time horizons for much of the Cassandra-ing leave plenty of room for what humans have always done in relation to changing climate—adapt.
Etc.
Isn’t pretending to be someone else the essence of acting?
Saturday Night Live is still sometimes funny:
My one remaining ambition: