Leafing about the kvetching on the Rittenhouse verdict, and how it is subsumed with piles of half truths and irrelevance into fixed narratives, a line here at a dailykos (front page item, but I actually do not know how dailykos works these days) diary:

The police, for one, just regarded an adolescent wandering around with a deadly weapon as somehow normalâ.

For the love of Sweet Baby Jesus, nothing was normal in the moment, and everything was in danger of getting normalized. From Matt Taibbi (also providing a good video of everyone saying that “crossed state lines” mantra), this refresher bit.

The context of the Rittenhouse shootings involved a summer of protests that began after the police killing of George Floyd, and continued in Kenosha after the shooting of Jacob Blake. We saw demonstrations of all types last summer, ranging from solemn candlelight vigils and thousands of protesters laying peacefully on their backs across bridges, to the burning of storefronts and “hundreds” of car thieves stealing “nearly 80” cars from a dealership in San Leandro, California.

I suppose therein lay the crux of what I encounter with a, say, “Three White Supremacist Trials” explored at Democracy Now’s website (puzzlingly the segment does not include the January 6th Riots trials, even though the court trials there are most closely comparable to the Charlottesville trials in terms of clownhouse testimony. I guess they want to make Rittenhouse comparable to the point of being identical to the Arbery trial — Well, it is identical in their minds.) A heady moment, something that could only move in the manner it did during vivid restrictions and pent up restlessness — smashed windows dotted about graffiti declaring “Rioting is my Gender” — perplexing message for racial justice which aids in telling us a couple things for Kenosha — if indeed Rittenhouse did not belong there, neither did the rapist and child molester that he unfortunately killed. The second piece is the tone deafness which will not allow a “gotta do something about the lawless wreckage!” as something you will understand a jury may just empathize with the kid regarding — in a state where it is painted in alt weekly and liberal media sources as a halcyon “racial reckonong” that can not be trespasses against.

The “adolescent” word getting tossed in is kind of interesting — one of the few deviating from the pile of Jaw clenched outraged wrenchings I see from within the liberal / left opines disagreeing with the verdict — chimes in with the question — shouldn’t he have been charged as a minor? Yeah, well… First of all this would seem to require more nuance in assessing the situation than the left came to bare with this one. Once upon a time this might be applied by a left, deeming minors distinctly more informed and thus more reformable as well less morally culpable. Maybe the past decades of “tough on crime” rhetoric, applied by the Senate careeres of Biden and attorney general career of Harris but following close behind Nixon — burns the concept. That and you are trapped by the racial disparity sets.

And from this point is where I want to deviate from litigating the case to something else that bothers me with regard to Rittenhouse. It comes with the Onion headline — Kyle Rittenhouse Sentenced To 45 Years Of CPAC Appearances —

Given the circumstances of public opinion, does this man have any choice?

And the lure is certainly there, and while Rittenhouse would be best advised to resist this lure — like, if we want to go with a narrative of “trashed in the media” the somewhat shaky parallel of a Richard Jewell (and, again, Jewell did less wrong than Rittenhouse) who — moved on to respectable private life away from spotlight where he gets profiled and fixed as a type, Loser with a Hero Complex and too much love of law enforcement and uniforms, against for the former a moral panic over militias and he the Proud Boys and their interminable battles against antifa —

“45 Years of CPAC” and gun club appearances does appear the path of least resistance.

Look. It is where “respectable” opinion has it that he is a White Supremacist murdering monster. There is some good sign on “moving away from the spot-light” — the lawyer gives a good game in making statements admonishing Republican politicians electioneering and profiting off of him, and he makes the line on getting a nursing degree — and hit it here:

Nursing must not give this man access to vulnerable patients. He has no concern for life, especially Black lives.

The people he killed were white, but never mind. I gather he actually can largely escape this political trap by careful selection of political geography — he would have to be nursing in red state exurbabia, not the blue state city. Or, maybe things will cool down enough and he can saunter into enough anomity against enough peopkenot remembering or caring about what ultimately amounts to a barroom brawl. The prerequisite for fading into private life, still with political foes following… And therein lay the trap… See here, msnbc by way of crooksandliars, angry that he was able to fundraise for a defense — wanting to keep at em — yeah, Well — follow this path and that is basically what the guy is required to keep on doing.

Now I pluck into the swarm of thoughtful comments in two posts at the pro Rittenhouse verdict Am Con page — the blog posts largely immaterial)

I hope he learned something from this and becomes a productive member of society and not a political pawn.

Sure. I would suggest the sour grapes forecasting his future as “midnight seven eleven clerk” counts well enough. But in the meantime, it is this:

Hope we don’t have another Zimmerman on our hands.

I overhear some odd conversation on following the OJ Simpson model on any impending civil case — Florida is his answer.

You do not want a vigilante country. You do not want a country where 17 year olds decide to live out a video game they have seen and walk into chaos to play hero. You do want a country where law enforcement does its job, and where political leadership enables law enforcement to do its job. That did not happen in Kenosha. The answer, though, is not to have teenagers – or anyone – thinking that wandering the streets with automatic rifles “at the ready” is the answer.

Kyle was walking around looking for people to “help.” He thought it was so cool. Now he’s in an undisclosed location, but everyone knows his name. He’s an idiotic vigilante who wanted to play with guns on the street, so basically, he acted like a loser. He and his militia buddies are strange twins to the street justice thugs and protesters they want to battle. They’re attracted to the chaos, and get caught up in it.

Defending HIS streets?” What makes them his? Being 17 and having an illegal AR 15 and getting mom to drive you 4 hours to another state to live your comic book fantasy about being a “good guy with a gun” doesn’t work for everyone.

Our society is a mess when this is our defender. A child. The author seems to think Rosenbaum deserved to die. So Kyle is our executioner. Thanks for that. I guess the wild west is back. Anything goes.

In short:

• He had close ties to the community (as if that should actually matter). I think this was what his testimony on stand was set to establish, but the focus there became on his “losing no matter what” display of emotion.
  2) The gun was not illegal
  3) The gun was already in Wisconsin anyway
  4) His mother didn’t take him there.

Half still labor under the delusion that the idiots Kyle shot were black.

I foresee a short and sad career as a conservative meme, sort of like the guest from that episode of the Jerry Springer show trying to figure out who their daddy is making the rounds of shock jock shows to make some money because they really had no future anyway.

Trying to get a book deal for a story that just makes him look like an idiot.

Interning for Matt Gaetz as a prop to help him out with his trial for banging underage girls.

Dropping by gun shows to sign autographs for $10 all dressed up in camo hoping the hard-core types around him forgot he cried like a baby to invoke the sympathy of the old ladies on the jury. This is a faulty assessment and we are back to just forcing hated stereotypes.

Eventually being discarded after a year when the next macho gun owner meme catches on.

Showing up 10 years from now on some “where are they now” show, working the night shift at the 7/11.

Yeah, well. Better life trajectory than the guys he killed. I just do not know what this is supposed to mean.

Just so we’re clear here, I suppose the author would have zero problem with me going back to “my streets” on January 6, 2020, heavily armed, and then deciding on my own terms when I could take lethal action in the name of “self-defense” against rioting criminals, right? For what it is worth, this was actually a stated strategy from some lefty groupings — do not muddle the picture by counter-protesting this one, let their Jack added show themselves to be jackasses. It was indeed a wise move and decision.

And on… Comment a looza.

If that becomes the answer of the Right, then the Right is becoming more twisted than even its adversaries claim. Society brought order to cities by creating the role of the police, not by empowering or honoring vigilantes – or the mobs they inevitably form.

Not sure he should’ve been fully acquitted. It was extremely irresponsible for him to have been out there, and he should’ve had more sense than to put himself in this dangerous situation to begin with. Still, it’s nice to hear that there were no murder charges despite what so many powerful figures wanted. I have no doubt there will be extensive rioting because of this, and Rittenhouse would be wise to invest extensively in home security. I wouldn’t read more into this though. For all the publicity the case got, the result and process was pretty mundane, and seems to fit the facts. All in all, this episode will probably have close to zero effect on any societal or even local trends. I’ve seen cases very similar to this with similar results and with teenagers of different backgrounds. Just with less hyped up coverage.

I’m worried about the Tucker Carlson interview to air Monday, and more generally about how much Rittenhouse will choose to remain in the limelight. He is of course free to talk about the case as much and however he wants, and perfectly entitled to have strong opinions and emotions about what happened. But some of his pretrial actions (wearing a “Free as F***” tee shirt, for instance) are unpromising. Maybe he will come across grateful, humble, and wise — who knows. He seems to have been an admirable teenager in a number of ways. But there will be a lot of people trying to flatter him and hold him up as a hero, which is heady stuff for an 18-year-old. On the other side, there will be threats and vilification. He’s got a tough road ahead and we should pray he handles it well.

Rod, people celebrating this as a great day for justice are as foolish as those decrying it as a travesty because the death sentence was well earned. The verdict on a murder charge was likely correct (and must have been expected by the prosecution), but I’m always troubled by this tendency to pick teams and go all in on the Yay!/Boo! emotional positioning.

Thing is, there were a lot of idiots out that night, all pumped up on self-righteousness and invulnerability. It must have been fun, joining in on the running, yelling, shoving games of my team versus yours, looking for an opportunity to get an ego boost by intimidating somebody on the opposite side. All fun and games until …

Given how badly the prosecutors handled the situation when the cameras were on them, how many young men like Rittenhouse who weren’t in a high profile trial, have prosecutors put away that should have been acquitted? Given the horrendous number of young black men in prison there should be a racial discussion going on here, but not the one we are going to have. Hw many young black men, like Rittenhouse, also were probably somewhere they shouldn’t have been but did something that came down to self defense. Even a gang member has a right to fair trial.

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