The Rittenhouse Rorschach Test

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial has ended as it should, with his acquittal on all charges. Any fair viewer of the evidence would reach the same conclusion as the jury, namely, that Rittenhouse shot, and shot and killed, in self-defense.

That is an encouraging outcome, but it must be said that the case did not begin as it should have: it never should have begun at all. The prosecutors were in possession of all this evidence, and indeed (outrageously) in possession of other exculpatory evidence that they concealed from the defense. Absent the hyper-political atmosphere that prevailed after the August 2020 riots in Kenosha during which Rittenhouse shot three people, a fair-minded prosecutor would not have brought charges at all.

That’s the way I see it. It is obvious, however, that many do not see it that way. Like some modern Dreyfus case, Rittenhouse’s has proved a political Rorschach Test: for every person like me that sees it my way, there is another (perhaps more than one, alas) that sees it completely differently. Instead of an unjust prosecution resulting in a just verdict, these people see this as a righteous prosecution resulting in a travesty of justice. Indeed, a travesty of justice that demonstrates that white supremacy indeed reigns supreme in America, and that white supremacist vigilantes can kill with impunity.

Watch any establishment media coverage, and you will see the Supremacist Narrative on display virtually 24/7. I could provide literally hundreds of examples, but this is sadly representative:

"White supremacists roam the halls of Congress freely and celebrate this little murderous white supremacist, and the fact that he gets to walk the streets freely," said Tiffany Cross. "What are we to make of that?" @mediaite https://t.co/p92EgNULQv pic.twitter.com/pd58XPnI4V

— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) November 20, 2021

Needless to say, I find this utterly delusional–and mendacious. Virtually the entire narrative was built on lies–and things proven to be lies at the trial. Or more pointedly–things that were demonstrable lies before the trial, but which the establishment media repeated ad nauseum–and continues to repeat, verdict notwithstanding. The basic case for Rittenhouse’s alleged white supremacism–a slander repeated by Biden while a candidate in 2020–appears to be that he was white, and shot people at a (mostly peaceful?) “protest” of a police shooting of a black man. He shot three honkeys–kind of weird for a white supremacist, no? Never once has the establishment media presented direct evidence of white supremacist beliefs: no emails, texts, TikToks, tweets, Facebook posts, etc., etc., etc. They have made the weakest circumstantial argument ever to accuse Rittenhouse of being another Dylann Roof. Yet they believe (or at least assert) that their beyond flimsy circumstantial case is God’s truth.

The slander reached its heights when Rittenhouse took the stand (quite courageously, and against the near universal judgment of legal pundits) and broke down in tears. Oh, but those were “white tears” dontcha know according to scumbags like LeBron James and Joy Reid. A manipulative dog whistle that rallied all the defenders of the white race to the defense of one of their legion.

Apparently an 18 year old Olivier has been born. And one canny enough to know how to call forth the white phalanx to save him from the consequences of his actions.

It is disgusting and incredibly divisive that this trial was turned into racial issue. Indeed, it is disgusting precisely because it is so divisive–and because the racial narrative has absolutely nothing to do with the facts.

Many commentators have said that Rittenhouse should not have been there in the first place. From a legal perspective, that matters not a whit. Given that he was there, did he act in self-defense? is the only legal issue, and the one that the jury settled in the affirmative.

My take is that Rittenhouse was extremely naive, and was in Kenosha for reasons that he considered noble and idealistic. Funny, isn’t it, that leftist teens (or somewhat older young people) who act out of self-identified noble reasons with bad consequences are lionized (e.g., Rachel Corrie), but a conservative kid is demonized? Simply because his idea of a noble cause is an anathema to the left.

There’s also the question of whether the people he shot, or shot at (namely, the “jump kick man”), should have been there. Let’s put aside the quite real possibility that Rosenbaum, Huber, Grosskreutz, and Jump Kick Man should have all been in jail or a mental institution, rather than on the streets of Kenosha. Let’s just ask whether since they were at liberty they should have been there wreaking havoc? They were not engaged in anything remotely resembling peaceful protest. They found a place where they could wrap their antisocial pathologies in a gauze of social righteousness–something that the establishment media was fully complicit in.

The left believes its violence is speech, and your speech is violence. But that’s depraved: those who died by violent means were engaged in violence that was not Constitutionally protected speech, regardless of what you think about the Blake shooting. Their psychopathic and sociopathic behavior was encouraged by and validated by the establishment media, making them accessories. In contrast, Kyle Rittenhouse was behaving far more responsibly prior to the confrontation with the child rapist Rosenbaum than Rosenbaum was.

In other words, no riot, no Rittenhouse. So if you want to push back the causal chain to before Rosenbaum started to chase Rittenhouse, push it back to the riots, not to the time that Kyle Rittenhouse perhaps quixotically decided to protect Kenosha from the rioters.

Which brings us to who should have been there, but were not. The civil authorities were completely AWOL: they should have been there but they utterly failed in their duties. In particular, the mayor of Kenosha and the governor of Wisconsin consciously declined to take the measures necessary and sufficient to maintain civil order in Kenosha. They decided–like the “leaders” of many cities in the United States in the summer of 2020 (e.g., Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and on and on and on)–to capitulate to mob rule. Because social justice. Or something.

If there is blood on anyone’s hands, it is on theirs, first and foremost, if you follow the chain of causation to its logical origin.

I know the foregoing makes the left apoplectic. And perhaps that’s the one solace of this whole sorry, depressing affair. The trial has proved to be the most reliable IFF (identify friend or foe) system I have ever seen. You know whether someone is your friend or foe based on the response to the trial and the verdict: and yes, that goes both left to right and right to left. No bogeys here. Only bandits and friendlies, and you know which is which with certainty. That’s quite useful information to have.