The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse of murder and reckless endangerment charges was probably correct under Wisconsin law. The circumstances of the confrontations between Rittenhouse and his victims were ambiguous enough to create reasonable doubt that he was not acting in self-defense. But let’s not conflate legal with moral culpability. Rittenhouse is no innocent. He’s a dangerous thug. He crossed state lines with an illegally obtained assault weapon looking for trouble, and he found it. As a result, two people are dead and a third severely injured. On a video the prosecution sought unsuccessfully to introduce, Rittenhouse was apparently heard fantasizing about engaging in vigilante violence just 15 days before he got the opportunity to realize his fantasy.
The gun nuts and the American right generally are going wild over this verdict; they were already lionizing the youthful vigilante as some kind of folk hero. (If Trump were still president, God forbid, Rittenhouse would be a cinch for a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Instead, he’ll likely have the opportunity to choose a Congressional internship from among several competing offers from some of the nastier of the GOP nuts in the House.) So, whatever the legal niceties, the outcome of the case portends only bad things. Wannabe vigilantes everywhere will take heart. Right wing militias will be emboldened. Salivating over the verdict, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) urged his supporters to “be armed, be dangerous and be moral.” The already growing threat of violence-prone right-wing extremism in the US has gotten a new infusion of energy.
Meanwhile, back in Madison, Republican state legislators, prodded by US Sen. Ron Johnson, are trying to take control of the state’s election administration, targeting a bipartisan election commission that they blame for Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. An apparently unrelated development, but of a piece with what is happening in this country today. The assault on democracy runs along two tracks. On the one hand, the attempt to ensure single-party rule through legislative fixes; on the other, the storm troopers in the streets who cherish Jan 6 and, with the complaisance of Republican leaders from the ex-president on down, look forward to more such shows of force.
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charles saydah November 20, 2021 at 1:51 pm
Right on.
Imagine this: The Supreme Court, empowered by the Constitution’s full faith and credit clause, abrogates gun control laws in non-open carry states such a New York, allowing gun owners from open-carry states to tote their weapons openly anywhere in the United States. Kyle Rittenhouse and his buddies travel to NYC and take a walk, armed with AKs and Kalishnikov knockoffs, down, say, Third Avenue under the Gowanus Parkway in Brooklyn’s Sunset section. They spot a group of Latinos in front of a bodega. They open fire, mowing down the bunch. They’re arrested. They claim self defense. They beat the rap.
Some people might ask me what I’d put in my coffee to come up with this scenario. But most any black person (I would have said “any black person” but I know this would have been an overstatement; after all, you gotta know that Clarence Thomas is cheering the Rittenhouse verdict. I wonder how many times he and his wife have fantasized about heading up to Capitol Hill with weapons and taking vengeance on all those legislators who participated in their lynching of him 30 or so years ago.) in America would understand what I am talking about. Now, that sort of terror has been expanded from any person of color to just about anybody. As long as you don’t visibly dissent or object to the Republican line (and make no mistake, it is the Republican line — not the radical Republican line, not the Tea Party line, not the Conservative line — the Republican line), you’re safe. Speak out publicly, you’re a target. Win elected office and support choice, gun control, widening the franchise, universal health care, a public school history curriculum that includes the impact of racist public policy on the nation, and you become target — and a target not simply of verbal abuse and death threats that’ll hound you out of office but a target of any armed Republican who understands you correctly as a threat to his or her sense of physical and emotional well-being. After all, that Republican would be rightly acting in self-defense. In place of dissent will come silence. In place of opposition politics will come resignations and replacement with ideologically pure incompetents, Republicans in spirit and incapable of controlling the levers of government because, after all, government is the problem. President Cliven Bundy?
The next benchmark will be the Arbery decision in Georgia. If his three killers beat the rap, it’ll be open season all year. Nobody will need even licenses to kill.
tonygreco November 20, 2021 at 2:26 pm
All too plausible, and scary
Daniel Greco November 21, 2021 at 10:30 am
I don’t think this verdict gives us much reason to fear the kind of scenario Charles describes.
Here’s a much less publicized verdict that came out on the same day, in which a police officer was convicted of negligent manslaughter in the shooting of a black man, in which his self defense (actually defense of other) claim was rejected. I haven’t followed the case closely but my first impression is that the result is right; the officer had no warrant or probable cause to enter the victim’s property, and so even if he did fear for his life it was his fault for creating the circumstances that led to that fear:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/us/cameron-lamb-eric-devalkenaere.html
My take on the two verdicts considered together is that we can’t make blanket generalizations about how self defense claims fitting into certain narratives will be accepted or rejected; the details still matter, thankfully.
Speaking of details, Rittenhouse didn’t cross state lines with the gun. It was already in Kenosha (link below. You’ll see it’s a fact-check site that has devoted most of its recent posts to debunking covid-19 misinformation.)
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/11/rittenhouse-testified-he-drove-himself-to-kenosha-without-weapon/
tonygreco November 21, 2021 at 10:06 pm
Thanks–It’s good to learn about the other verdict. Unfortunately, it got no publicity, so it’s not likely to reduce the delight and encouragement the gun nuts will draw from the Rittenhouse case.
Lois Bernard November 20, 2021 at 3:04 pm
It’s ironic that Kyle Rittenhouse, who seems to have gained acceptance and attention, however negative, for the first time in his short life, should have done so by way of murder. An article in the New Yorker describes his family life. A mother who alleged but then retracted (how often does this happen, as in TFG’s first wife) allegations of domestic abuse by Kyle’s father, a single mother of three who had to seek shelter in a battered women’s shelter and was homeless for a short period of time, and who was so depressed she attempted suicide once. Not excuses for Kyle but I find that in the life history of many of the USA active shooters domestic violence was present in their history and ignored by the press. Same article points to a video of Kyle hitting a young woman who was arguing with his sister. This is not a mentally healthy kid. And this will never be dealt with or even whispered about in the noisy partisan whirlwind this kid has been caught up in.
tonygreco November 20, 2021 at 3:51 pm
Thanks. I was curious about Kyle’s home life but hadn’t seen the New Yorker article. I’ll look it up.