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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
Rittenhouse was a professional lifeguard with additional medical training. Why doesn’t the media refer to him a “lifeguard” or “medical volunteer”? Because they are Marxists and want to be racially divisive and demoralize people that care about their communities.
I get all your points and they are substantial. There is just this: Kyle was 17, not 13 or 14. When our country has been attacked, it is not unusual for many young men of his age to attempt enlisting, and some succeed. When the rioting, burning, killing mob numbers in the hundreds, one often needs help in protecting his property.
The problem is that most, if not all, of those dumpster fire starters in the town down the road came from somewhere else, perhaps far away. The enemy has no problem traveling to start wars. We need to think of this as war and be willing to engage beyond our front yards. That is only if the police refuse to do their jobs…or the National Guard.
I am cowardly when it comes to physical confrontations. If it’s “fight or flight,” I’m probably going to flight.
My son is different from me. At school he stood up to bullies harassing a Muslim girl because of her style of clothing. He protected smaller boys at the school bus stop. He went out on snowy nights to help pull stuck cars out of ditches. That interest in “doing something” led him to pursue his current career in the U.S. Air Force (he is now 33 years old). So I recognize some of the characteristics that might lead a person like Mr. Rittenhouse to want to help defend the people and property of Kenosha. I have heard that he was trained as a pool lifeguard, that he had taken first aid training, and that he participated in a police Explorers program. I think I read that he has family in Kenosha, so Kenosha’s not just some random place to him.
I understand the nuances that end up in the law and the details of a claim of “self-defense.” But I do not like the idea of details getting so burdensome that we discourage the boys and young men who have an urge to protect others from taking action to do so.
What I would do in many situations is different from what my son would do. I had to learn before criticizing some of the things my son did that I had solid broadly applicable reasons, and that I wasn’t just criticizing him because I would have done something different.
The “Kitty Genovese Effect.”
More recently, the assault/rape-on-the-NYC-subway effect.
That’s perfectly fair, Stina.
On a similar note, I have friends who are terribly worried about climate change, and who will be perfectly happy to blame me when and if the planet becomes uninhabitable because my Yukon belches too much carbon.
The burden of being the guy who says the sky isn’t falling….
The difference between your GW friends and the people here saying we are losing the plot is that the planet has survived dozens of warming a cooling periods through its existence, even in human times.
We have history on our side that shows how civilizations can be lost and what comes of them in the decline.
(Stolen from VtK)
Forgive me for wanting to forestall that collapse a bit longer. Currently, our country is not acquitting itself well to the test of time. Other nations have survived longer.
It’s not that we don’t have laws. It’s just that different groups in society today live under different sets of laws.
For example, both Kyle Rittenhouse and George Zimmerman (a “white Hispanic“ according to the New York Times) were charged with murder in cases that were actually open-and-shut self-defense. A white couple was prosecuted for “brandishing” their firearms, while the BLM marchers who smashed open their gate to invade their property were not prosecuted.
Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton can commit as many felonies as they want and remain unindicted. On the other hand, when the Trump Justice Department tried to drop charges against Gen. Mike Flynn, the progressive judge took the unprecedented step of not permitting the charges to be dropped.
This.
I’d just encourage everyone to pay attention to the statement that prompted this digression:
“we no longer live in a society of laws”
That is, I think, ridiculous hyperbole. Yes, laws are applied unevenly. Yes, laws are sometimes ignored. But we are far from a lawless society.
What the law says is no longer the final word. Rather, we must interpret laws through various identity group lenses or bring in other factors. One’s identity group is the final word, for example, not the law. Hence, we are not a society of laws.
The Soviet Union had lots of noble-sounding laws. The chief problem was that the laws were interpreted and applied to mean whatever the Party wanted. The Democratic Party has moved us partway down that road, too.
We talk about identitarianism a lot — as we should: it’s a huge cultural problem.
But, while I can think of lots of examples of laws with which I have to comply and routinely do, I’m having a hard time seeing how any of them are refracted through the lens of group identity. Maybe you and others deal with that sort of thing all the time. I don’t. (Honestly, I don’t think you do, either, but I really can’t say.)
You had me at “partway,” Paul. I agree with that characterization.
How about a simple formulation such as “BLM rioters who attack people and burn buildings? Not prosecuted. People who shoot BLM rioters who are attacking them, in self-defense? Up against the wall!”
Hey, it’s the law, man.
I think there’s some goalpost moving going on there, KE. I’m not arguing that there aren’t instances of lawlessness in our society. One can go to our southern border and watch the law being casually ignored. Or check out a Hunter Biden art show and see the same.
But I don’t live in anarchy, and I suspect that few Ricochet members actually live in it either. I’m not defending the abuse of law, just observing that it’s a silly exaggeration to declare America no longer “a society of laws.”
You may not be interested in living in anarchy, but anarchy is interested in making you live in it.
This has become one of these myths that takes a smidgen of truth and blows it out of proportion and then it becomes an unquestioned fact. Certain local prosecutors, I believe, went easy on some of the BLM protestors, but that news has morphed into the belief that none of them were ever prosecuted, which is untrue. Here is an AP article discussing this, describing federal court convictions of BLM protestors. Keep in mind, this article just describes federal court. State courts have prosecuted many more. How many BLM rioters got away with it? I have no idea, but of course many did. Charging and prosecuting all of them would be impossible. That doesn’t mean their conduct was condoned.
KE, if the left were interested in mere anarchy, I’d feel better about it. I am in some respects the kind of person for whom society creates laws to keep in check: I’m not as worried about having too few laws as I am about having too many.
The most obvious case of different laws is how BLM rioters are treated vs. the January 6 crowd.
As I recall the number of people prosecuted from that single event and from 600+ riots is about the same.
The evidence that BLM/Antifa and conservatives are treated differently by the government is the duration (of many individual events), the extended timescale (many events over a long time), and the widespread geographic distribution of BLM/Antifa events. Also, the conscious decisions confirmed in numerous public statements — from officials up and down the chain in numerous jurisdictions — for police to stand down or “give room”, to drop prosecutions, to undercharge, to half-step bail requirements. I don’t have the facts on file. I remember it happening.
The government media complex will not stand up to Islamists because the Islamists will cut their heads off. They won;t stand up to leftists because (if no other reasons come to mind), the leftists will burn your office down and stalk your children.
Effective political violence is now the norm in the US. I didn’t say I like it. I’m just saying it’s true.
I’d dispute both “effective” and “norm” in that comment. Beyond that, I’m probably in agreement.
I think it’s pretty clear that most of them at minimum sympathize with BLM/Antifa: They’re good thugs, don’t you see.
What a great reply!
From what I have seen regarding the tactics of these Leftist thugs, when they are not participating in riots, they are on their own mean streets, body slamming elderly white women using walkers into oncoming traffic in NYC.
With the media blaring out that young people only need to be upset about something, anything, to destroy property and injure any who oppose them, our nation could easily become one ruled by mob rule. In some areas of the US, that has already occurred.
Each week I call one of my spouse’s elderly clients in the Bronx. She no longer leaves her apartment, as since late Spring 2020, the violence outside her place has been over the top. Three women raped in daylight hours in the park across the way from her. Knifings and worse to get somebody’s bookbag or laptop.
Sure there was occasional crime in her community prior to Spring 2020. But since the media’s narrative supporting thuggery went out across the air waves, it has escalated at exponential proportions to what it was before.
Good people living in terror is a Small Price to Pay for “social justice”.
Share the dread.
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it before, but apparently the “dangerous weapon” charge was dropped because the law only applies to “short-barrel” weapons and the AR-15 that KR had was not short-barrel.