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I Have Questions
Twitter is revelatory. The general population has probably always had a stupid streak, but Twitter makes it possible for ignorance to light itself on fire and burn so brightly it overwhelms the sun.
Reading the rants about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is something else. First, there seems to be a large segment of the population who thinks the prosecution is doing a good job. Now, granted, I just catch the “lowlights,” but from what I have seen, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger has been surprised way too many times by his own witnesses.
Second, the “conventional wisdom” about the law is astoundingly bad. I mean, most people commenting on the trial would be confused watching a Matlock rerun. I could be a very rich man if I could collect a dollar from everyone who assured their fellow progressives that, no matter what, the prosecution will eventually win on appeal. That’s how bad civics education is. How the hell do that many people believe an acquittal can be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court?
And the comments about the presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder, are something else, too. Local attorneys describe him as fair but willing to be combative. My theory, which would be easy to prove or disprove with the proper resources, is that this is not the first time this judge has witnessed this prosecutor’s ineptitude. But no journalist seems even remotely interested in any backstory between them. The media loves the clips of Schroeder’s admonitions, but doesn’t go out of their way to make clear that he makes sure the jury is out of the room when he does it.
Rittenhouse will probably be convicted on the gun charge. There is no doubt that he was underage and outside the home with a firearm. The man who supplied the weapon is probably in more trouble than the person who fired it. There is a persistent belief that Rittenhouse, who lives in Antioch, IL, carried the rifle across state lines into Wisconsin. He did not. And even if he did, there is no Federal law against that. (States have their own transport regulations but anything interstate would be the jurisdiction of the Feds.)
But one never knows how a jury will rule. Especially one that feels intimidated. The political pressure has been huge, which is why in so many of these cases overcharging has become the norm. The DA feels the heat, the jury feels the heat, and so does the judge. My only hope is that the jury is more informed than the folks on Twitter.
Published in General
A quick note. Aren’t you glad that Rittenhouse has competent legal representation?
Yes …. This tragedy took place as a direct result of the government(ie: Tony Evers) abdicating their duty to protect the citizenry from rioters.
It was some bizarro world Lefty post Floyd anti-Trump idiocy where blue Pols thought it was effective politics to create the narrative that the Country was ablaze in racial strife because Trump and racist cops.
By not doing the one job expected of government we now have dead rioters …. and this trial.
Ultimately the citizens of WI are responsible for voting (D) in the first place …. always a bad idea.
And so would thoughtful reasonable me. He participated in a riot. I am indifferent to any bad thing that happens to him.
Yeah, let’s just gloss over that he went into the riot and participated in it.
I’m not sure if they’re super competent or simply look like Perry Mason next to the ADA trying this case.
Buckley’s Boy Scout.
Elaborate on how you believe Rittenhouse’s behavior that evening equates to “participated in a riot”.
He covered that earlier in the thread.
10 pages of 278 comments …. finding it sounds like homework
To be fair, so does “explain yourself” after 278 comments. Something I have found useful — follow the (view comment) links backward. Anyway, EP, fairly sure you and I are in large agreement — just pointing out that SKyler has already provided a developed case. I simply don’t happen to agree with his conclusions (or some of the claims). It’s not as though Skyler and J Climacus are bombing the thread.
EDIT: This will get you over the target zone. Follow the (view comment) links from this Skyler Comment to see the conversation develop (in reverse order, but it is what it is).
https://ricochet.com/1090230/i-have-questions/comment-page-9/#comment-5920245
To be clear I have no problem with others doing my homework for me, I just don’t like doing the homework myself.
I believe it’s called laziness.
In any case it would have been nice at the time if law enforcement had chosen to “participate in the riot”.
He waded into it. He could have stayed at the car dealership he was purportedly “guarding,” but he went out of there into where they were rioting. That makes him a participant in a riot. The only good people in a riot are those trying to leave it or who have it inflicted on them, and he was neither.
Riots are the most dangerous threat to society, both immediately and long term if they aren’t heavily discouraged. No part of the law allows rioting. We can peaceably assemble, we do not condone riots.
That is the ideal, and it’s supposed to be why they are hired. Instead, they terrorize drivers for innocuous, but financially rewarding tickets, they stretch the limits of civil rights in the “war on drugs,” and they confiscate property from law abiding people.
But when it comes to restoring the peace, they just stand back and let cities burn.
I had a beer with a Texas Ranger about a year ago when these riots were endemic and people were afraid they might come to Austin. Except for a few small events (and one punk justifiably killed by a victim of a road block), Austin remained quiet. This Ranger explained to me how they herded the “protesters” to a nearby small park (actually just a grassy section) and penned them in. The professional demonstrators/riot leaders kept trying to make them go another way, but the police on horseback quietly guided them to where no trouble could occur. That’s how you handle things.
If, as a regular citizen, you want to stop a riot, I strongly recommend that level of effort, not running around inside the riot with a rifle.
This was the job for the police. They abandoned their job because their bosses, the politicians, ordered them to stand back. I don’t think many folks here (maybe none) disagree with that. Then what? Does that mean the citizens now must stand back also…and let their property and livelihoods be destroyed? To me the problem was not Kyle Rittenhouse. The problem was there were not hundreds of Kyle Rittenhouses.
I would agree Rittenhouse made a huge error in judgement when he “waded in” to the riot ostensibly to put our fires, but he would have needed to actively burn or break things to have actually “participated in” the riot …. and after “wading in” to a riot Rittenhouse apparently did attempt to “leave it”.
I utterly reject the specious characterizations of Rittenhouse’s actions offered by J Climacus and Skyler. They sound like prosecutors. Fine, fair enough, but don’t expect to be received as neutral or even thoughtful, beyond the thought required to advance a narrative.
Everyone in a riot is a participant. The nature of a riot is chaos. Anyone wandering in on their own is part of the chaos. The supposed “innocents” are indistinguishable from the intentional rioters and they add mass to the actions taking place. Almost anyone inside the riot thinks they are rational. Kyle thought he was too. In the end, he had to kill two people and maim a third. The shootings were absolutely justified if viewed from those specific incidents, but they became necessary only because Kyle thought he was separate from the riot. He wasn’t.
No, the people rioting are the participants. The people attempting, however badly, to stop the rioting are not.
Everyone “in” a mugging is a participant as well. That’s what “in” means. But not everyone “in” a mugging is a mugger.
While many of us can agree Rittenhouse should have never been at the riots, very few of us will give you an amen that Rittenhouse was in fact one of the rioters.
My position is based on Rittenhouse’s own testimony. He admitted he didn’t understand the AR 15 or what ammo he had in his weapon. He picked the weapon not because he thought it the appropriate choice for his purpose but because it looked cool. That’s not “narrative” it’s just the record, and is evidence of irresponsible gun use.
He also admitted he disobeyed the curfew, didn’t tell his parents what he was doing, and while his attorneys claim he was asked to defend a car lot, the owners contradict them. They say they never asked him to do anything. In any case, if he wants to be a hero, why not defend property legally, which Wisconsin law allows, say with a baseball bat? Instead he chose an illegal way to do it.
You keep implying that he used deadly force to protect property. Defending oneself with deadly force while in the vicinity of property is not defending property with deadly force.
You would have to prove that there was no credible threat to life or limb (depending on the law) in order to sustain your implication that he broke the law by defending mere property with deadly force.
Rittenhouse wasn’t asked by anyone to defend their property. Don’t the car lot owners have the right to decide how and if their property will be defended? If some hardware store owner or car lot owner asked Rittenhouse and his friends to defend their property, and they did it (legally) by showing up with baseball bats and hockey sticks, then I would have respect for them and applaud them, even if it defied the curfew. Especially if they were under adult supervision.
Arming himself with an AR-15 and deciding he’s going to appoint himself property defender just adds an explosive element to an already combustible situation.
That is a silly equivalence. I was very clear that some people are victims of riots.
Not buying any of this crap about how Kyle “didn’t know his gun” enough and he’s some kind of embarrassment to the 2A.
He hit three targets under extreme duress. Shot nobody that wasn’t his target. I “know my gun” and practice regularly, and thank God I’ve never been in Kyle’s situation, but I can’t say I would perform as well as him in that situation. Nobody can.
And if Kyle gets off as he should, us internet spectators will hopefully never be in this situation. If he’s convicted, then the odds of us being in situations like his go up significantly. Because Kyle is not on trial. The second ammendment is.
I’ve already said that he should be acquitted of the most serious charges. In any case, Rittenhouse’s attorneys claim he was defending the car lot because he was asked to. The only weapon he carried was the AR-15. I think the following is a reasonable deduction:
His use of deadly force was completely justified. No question about it.
But he was a fool to be there and I won’t shed a tear if a jury goes against him.
No. He was defending a car lot with a fire extinguisher (he had one of those too, I think… he put out the fire).
He had the gun with him for the same reason someone takes a gun to church or a grocery store.
No, no no. There you go again, trying to use speech that is a conspiracy, or worse, misleadingly telling the truth.
Repeat after me … “There is no such thing as a “No Go” Zone.”
People seem to be under the impression that Antifa and BLM are “winning” by the rioting, burning and looting that goes on during their mostly peaceful protests.
They are not. They are losing.
Americans see the burning and looting on TV and while they may be sympathetic to some of the claims about racist cops, they don’t have much tolerance for rioting and looting. That’s why Joe Biden was elected: He was supposed to be the return to “normalcy.” People had enough of Trump, sure, but also enough of the rioting and looting, and they thought it would end with his election. It turns out that Biden is beholden to the far left, which the public has now discovered and is one of the reasons his popularity is tanking. The stranglehold the extreme left has on the Democrat Party is becoming apparent to everyone, and the fact that they are having trouble reigning in the nuts is costing them heavy political capital.
Kenosha would not have been a “win” for the radical Left without Kyle Rittenhouse. It would have been another example of the inability of the left to reign in its extreme elements and soured average Americans even more Democrats. However, while Americans don’t like chaos and looting, they don’t like high schoolers running around riots with AR-15s either. Instead of the Kenosha story being about the chaos caused by the extreme left, the story is about a high school kid foolishly involving himself in a riot and shooting a couple of people, justified or not.
Biden and Nancy Pelosi don’t like BLM and Antifa, even if they understand they are beholden to them. They crave any opportunity to change the narrative from leftist crazies to rightwing ones. High school kids going out into riots with AR-15s is just the sort of thing they love to see, so they can talk about that rather than the looting and burning they enable.
I wish Rittenhouse and stayed home and played his Xbox instead of giving them a gift.