The leftist tidal wave of irrational hate and obvious lies in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse verdicts is something to behold.
I am actually very, very impressed with the twists of logic used to make this situation into one based on race, especially when Rittenhouse and the attackers he shot were all white. Less like a pretzel, what is spewing forth from the left’s firehose of vitriol is more like a constantly changing game of intellectual Twister.
The left is trying to simultaneously sell the idea that Rittenhouse is guilty because 1) he was the aggressor because electively attended a violent riot with a gun and 2) and he should have known that bringing a gun to a peaceful protest would cause anxiety and anger. They are also advancing the position that a white guy had no business at an “event” for the venting of “black rage” about the white supremacy that led to the shooting of Jacob Blake (again, ignoring evidence to the contrary, but why waste an operative narrative, right?) and also repeating the mantra that a white guy shooing three other white guys who were attacking him is somehow evidence of racism because it was done at a “BLM rally” (yes, that was actually used as the description for the Kenosha mayhem).
Perhaps that Rittenhouse is white and was armed did have something to do with the attacks on his person. Maybe that gave Rosenbaum, Huber, Grosskreutz and Jump Kick Man an excuse to single him out - but if that is true, they did so not based on Rittenhouse’s intent or actions, the attacks were based on their own prejudices and false assumptions, most of which are the same as are being driven by the left and their media allies in the aftermath of the trial.
But these pretzel-like twists of “logic” are what pass for reason these days. By now, everybody has seen the explosion of social media idiocy flowing from every level of the progressive hierarchy. The hivemind of the Democrats and the American left is uniformly and exclusively convinced that somehow this was a result of a gun-toting, white supremacist provocateur. Many on the right see Rittenhouse as some sort of Second Amendment hero.
The trial evidence supports neither position.
Rittenhouse is not a hero, and the evidence leading up to the incident does not show that he was some sort of champion for any cause. He didn’t make the 20-minute drive from his home in Antioch to Kenosha (across state lines!) to do anything other than to help clean up and to try to stop wanton destruction.
The trial evidence does prove one simple thing: Rittenhouse is merely a citizen who was attacked and exercised his right to self-defense - and thank God he had the tools to execute that right with extreme prejudice.
The reason people are identifying with Rittenhouse is simply because, in the ridiculous and absurd social environment created by the American left, where rioters are “given space to destroy” and criminals are excused (and often venerated) by imbecilic woke, social justice ideologues, we recognize that there but for the Grace of God, goest we.
Rittenhouse could have been just about anybody.
Unfortunately, getting attacked without provocation is not a unique situation these days. Every week, we see reports of citizens who are attacked while minding their own business, walking down the street, riding the subway or simply while stopped at an intersection.
Such attacks are not situations of mutual power. The aggressor makes the decision to attack, taking power from the target, leaving the target one of three choices: surrender, flight, or fight. Those choices are forced on the victim and there is no guaranteed outcome for any of the choices.
The main difference is that most of these victims are not armed and do not have the capacity to fight back and that ties into one of the most idiotic charges of the left – that of proportional force. Rittenhouse is somehow to be determined guilty because the attackers weren’t as well armed. Rosenbaum and Jump Kick Man only had hands and feet, Huber had a skateboard and Grosskreutz only had a .40 caliber Glock. They were clearly outgunned by Rittenhouse’s AR-15 (which we assume was chambered in .223/5.56).
Rittenhouse was too much of a coward to fight with his fists or just submit to a beating said prosecutors Binger and Kraus.
But when under attack from deadly force, the victim has no obligation to be fair, they only have the need to stop the attack.
It’s not like Rittenhouse was carrying concealed, the attackers knew he was armed.
To attack a person “just because I don’t like them” is not a sound strategy, especially when that person has done nothing to you AND is armed. The left claims that if Rittenhouse had not responded with deadly force, the three Criminal Saints of Kenosha would have remained unscathed.
The same could be said for Criminal Saints’ decision to attack. Had they restrained their ideologically sanctioned lust for violence , they would still be wasting good oxygen today.
Paraphrasing what the ancient Knights Templar told Indy, these four attackers chose poorly.
I guess this entire episode illustrates there is no such thing as peak absurdity.
Rittenhouse was proven innocent and judged so by a jury of his peers. It wasn’t because he was white, it wasn’t because he held a particular ideology, it was because he performed reasonably and lawfully under extreme circumstances.
For me, one of the major takeaways is that it certainly seems there are a lot of people willingly self-identifying as not being fit for elected office, public service or even inclusion in civil society.