Rittenhouse trial highlights the worst nature of American culture war

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
123
1924

One of the problems with seeing everything through an identity politics lens is that you tend to miss a lot.

That was the mainstream coverage of the Rittenhouse trial.

The mainstream media narrative drenched this story in woke dogma and made this kid a poster boy for the gun nutter right.

Sure, it’s problematic that the Police didn’t arrest him straight away, but beside that, I think it’s astonishingly lazy thinking to simply make this about racism.

The people he shot were all white. One of them was a child molester, the other a domestic violence abuser. He was there in the night offering medical help to protestors and protecting businesses after spending the day cleaning graffiti off the school. He was confronted by people with guns and weapons who attacked him.

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He was always going to get off these charges because it was always self defense.

Former Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnist Bari Weiss is devastating in her criticism…

Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.

It turns out that account was mostly wrong.

Unless you’re a regular reader of independent reporting — Jacob Siegel of Tablet Magazine and Jesse Singal stand out for being ahead of the pack (and pilloried, like clockwork, for not going along with the herd) — you would have been served a pack of lies about what happened during those terrible days in Kenosha. And you would have been shocked over the past two weeks as the trial unfolded in Wisconsin as every core claim was undermined by the evidence of what actually happened that night.

This wasn’t a disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts. It was one pushed by the mainstream media and sitting members of Congress for the sake of an expedient political narrative—a narrative that asked people to believe, among other unrealities, that blocks of burning buildings somehow constituted peaceful protests.

…The hollowness of the woke character assassination against Rittenhouse has enabled the Right to champion his actions and make him a poster child for gun rights.

The issue isn’t the heteronormative white cis male toxic masculinity privilege of Rittenhouse, the danger is what happens when 17 year olds think the only option is taking to the streets with machine guns because the Police have walked away.

Drenching this story in woke dogma serves no insight or even oversight.

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123 COMMENTS

  1. Absolutely spot on.

    Sadly in the last decade in particular the big business media are ‘for hire’ news who have pushed together a cheap woke force who don’t seem to bother with investigation of facts anymore and often on gig contracts.

    The media make money from the click bait – racism and emotional stories that are full of errors or omissions are wonderful fodder for their agenda and very cheap to produce.

    But increasingly they are dividing democratic countries and helped create the propaganda war, as other entities start to emulate their approaches.

  2. Also doesn’t help if Biden then calls the teenager a white supremacist.

    This is also why democrats are contributing to the race war and dividing the US just as much as Trump but in a woke, globalist agenda.

    Classic woke echo chambers in operations.

  3. This is an underwhelming argument–even unpleasant, provocative nuisances with a record, do not deserve death by gunfire as a response.

    The United States of America is one fucked up country when a teenager can easily roam the streets with a semi auto and use it with ultimate impunity. There are literally more guns than people resident in the US. If Rittenhouse had been black, even in identical circumstances, he would most likely not have made it back to the cop shop alive, or been given bottled water by cops earlier on.

    Hopefully the little shit will get his comeuppance at some stage.

    • The point is not whether he was a little shit, but was he acting lawfully?

      And in the US you are allowed to have semi auto weapons.

      And you are allowed the right to self defence.

      If you don’t like the law you change it (good luck in the US) not racially attack a teenagers who are allowed under their laws, to both carry the weapon and use it in self defence.

      In NZ we have gone the other direction and now woke are up in arms and people are allowed to come to NZ, continually offend, and they pay for 2 armed SIS agents to follow terrorists around before shooting them (but they get to knife 7 people and take up millions of dollars in resources that deprive poor NZ’ers of funding and support, because the woke are obsessed with protecting criminal rights.

      (Meanwhile everyone else rights and safety is compromised, and bear the brunt of each civil liberty law change to remove rights from law abiding people).

      Now police carry guns in South Auckland and there are shootings weekly in NZ from criminals. Don’t think their law changes and woke thinking is working well for the public! NZ way is to criminalise the law abiding and make exceptions and more funding for the criminals.

      Nobody is a winner here.

        • nice, nothing like mutual admiration and a good back scratch aay…“Save” is an expert at novella length comments

          • Yes my apologies to the woke brigade that think everything is solved in a short tweet and have no awareness of complexity.

          • TM A bit sour for you. SNZ does keep discussion going and questions flying looking for answers. So many people in their armchairs sucking their thumbs and cradling their comfort gadgets.

          • The problem with people like savenz is they have their head so far up their own arse they can’t see anything from their ivory tower. Just one boring cliche after another.

    • As usual, Tiger Mountain, you are right on the money.
      USA is a fucked up country and their gun culture is obscene.

        • Back in the 1950s when us Boomers were children, NZ was a generally safer place where normal people could go about their business & their children could disappear into the neighborhood as long as they appeared at dinnertime. No patch gangs dared disrupt citizens lives & rights on a weekly basis with impunity.

          A large proportion of adult males owned firearms & were both expertly trained & had recently returned from active service.

          • “A large proportion of adult males owned firearms & were both expertly trained & had recently returned from active service.”

            A large proportion owned firearms. How large? What sort of firearms?
            Supply the figures or it’s simply opinion based on your reckins and not upon fact.

          • Don’t be such a klutz Richard C – this isn’t a place of science, people can call on memory without exactitude.

  4. The US has a brand of insanity firmly entrenched. The idea that a 17-year-old boy is able to access an automatic rifle, drive to another town, walk past law enforcement offices carrying the rifle is foreign to most of the civilised world. Then after killing two and injuring another he is able to walk free and seemingly benefit from his actions is further indicating a country where insanity is the norm.

    • It wasn’t an “automatic rifle” and he didn’t “travel to another town”. He lived in a suburb of Kenosha with one parent which happened be just over the state border, and the other parent lived in Kenosha itself. His grandparents owned one of the shops he was defending. The rifle wasn’t carried over the border, not that matters because in a free society we have freedom of movement, not like the autocratic police state we have here at the moment.

      Get your facts right or don’t comment

    • Well said Power man, it’s must be the long covid messing with their already stunted intelligence.
      Ignore Andrew the gun toting right wing nutjob cum freedom whinging know it all.

  5. Good, self defence is a right. If you attack a clearly armed individual, you do so knowing your weapons & skills, believing you will win. You leave the other person few options but to defend as strongly as they can.

    An attack may be as subtle as a light push to the chest or as obvious as a screaming maniac with a battle axe, however if at the end of it you are dead, you may in hindsight wish you had used your +2 magical sword to protect your life.

    You may say you should have stayed home & hid under your bed, but that is the same thinking that says women on the streets are responsible for their own rape.

    If you never attack anyone, you will never be killed in self defence. If you are killed whilst not acting in threatening or violent manner, you should expect your killer to be condemned for your murder.

  6. He was always going to get off these charges because it was always self defense.

    By that reasoning the outcome would have been the same if he were a black man.

    Really?

      • If all three were black, chances are that it would never come to media attention.

        The point is, that race based second guessing and division needs to stop being political and there needs to be a one justice system for all races. (Obviously difficult, but the trials by media are not helping solve race relations in the US with the rest of the world, chipping in).

        Face it, US gun laws seem bonkers and US justice seem bonkers too. The police and justice systems and laws seem to be too politically influenced to provide justice so no wonder nobody thinks it’s fair anymore.

        Oh and people’s actions seem bonkers too!

        Vigilantee groups are a sign that police have not got neighbourhood safety under control – maybe like NZ, they are more interested in revenue gathering and communications than old fashioned policing communities effectively?

  8. The most salient thing to take from woke thinking is that there is strong belief that a teenage white boy should be in prison for the rest of his life because he defended himself against an attack from two other white people.

    The woke have spoken and have decided he is guilty of racism.

    So in Wokeland if a black teenager kills two white people defending himself but is found not guilty by jury, is the black teenager still a racist and should be in prison for the rest of his life and the jury got it wrong?

    I don’t even believe teenagers should be allowed to go to prison, they should be put in special youth facilities and rehabilitated, no matter what their race.

    (At the same time, am against NZ encouraging foreign teenagers to come to NZ on visas, too young, not working out in NZ as more and more of them can’t cope and destruct causing harm to others or themselves).

    • Teenage white boy not old enough to buy a beer appointed himself as sherriff’s marshal or vigilante He-Man or whatever fucked up fantasy evolved in his head and armed himself with an semi automatic assault (i.e. designed specifically to kill human beings) weapon. He then walked into a protest situation that had already periodically flared into riot to protect property.
      What did he expect to do if and when property was damaged. The weapon was only for show was it?
      People died.
      And idiots make that chain of decision-making into something to admire, turning the cretin into a hero.

      • I agree it’s a screw up, but we have kids with automatic rifles at birthday parties, that’s US culture. He’s still a teen, and stopping teens in US having guns is probably the first step, rather than letting them have them and then putting them in jail when it all goes wrong, but is unlikely to happen.

  9. When we were kids we read cowboy comics and occasionally saw westerns. Shoot ’em ups. We fashioned guns out of bits of wood and sticks and if you were lucky you got a real one, a cowboy gun for Christmas and ran around shooting people.

    Research from the 1990s:
    Number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000
    Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
    Since the ’90s there has been a proliferation of realistic violent video games.

    Apparently Rittenhouse was a high school dropout. There are no accounts of him being an academic or being bright. He was just an American kid growing up in a country of bizarre extremes, where shooting people is quite common, where trouble on the streets is not uncommon. When he got older, he did the logical thing, he took a gun to town. What’s the big deal?

  10. Some context:
    August 23rd, 2020 in Kenosha, a (white) policeman shoots Jacob Blake seven times

    August 25th, as protests erupted, Rittenhouse armed himself with the fully loaded semi automatic and joined a group of other armed men. A shot was fired by someone in that group. Joseph Rosenbaum, an unarmed local resident, then tried to take the gun off Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse shot him four times, killed him and ran away. Among those now chasing him was Anthony Huber. Trying to get the gun off Rittenhouse, Huber hit him with a skateboard. Rittenhouse shot him in the chest and killed him.

  11. Well I do not know all the circumstances, mitigating or not but I do believe it should have been a police matter not a vigilante/militia one. They already had the presence of the National Guard. He may have studied some Police academy courses but he was not a sworn in officer. There were riot conditions, destruction of personal property, and a heated violent atmosphere. It was no place for a young civilian to be toting an automatic rifle, and this is exactly what happens when young ( Or older fellows) take the law into their own hands. It complicates Police operations.

    The Police should have declined any civilian involvement from the start. The onus of law enforcement should have rested on them and them alone. And that despite the USA’s gun laws and issues of self defense. That young man went out heavily armed into a volatile situation. When one considers the huge amounts of mass murders in the USA caused by AR15’s and similar, one can indeed say he was heavily armed.

    That young chap should have been securely tucked away at his relatives home well clear of the mayhem. Property’s can be rebuilt and are usually insured. The death of a human being can never be repaired. Despite what judgement we like to put on them for what they may or may not have done. This is why we have law enforcement, a judicial system and as an ideal,… equal rights before that law.

    Personally? The way I see it,? – America should divide their firearms into 3 groupings,…. for self defense, nothing stronger than a short range glock type pistol with a ‘license to carry’, – and only then after passing an approved Police firearms course.

    A hunting license approved for hunting purposes involving large caliber rifles and shotguns and/or also a pistol for both dispatching large downed prey or for those tramping/camping and being stalked by a bear or cougar, personal self defense. (Despite bear spray, a large caliber pistol is sometimes preferred). Again these to be required only after attending a Police approved firearms course.

    Thirdly, a collectors license for those wishing to own and operate special weaponry such as automatic military grade weapons or historical firearms ie military grade M1 Garand assault rifles. Again only after attending a Police approved firearms course with a special category regards military grade weapons with a stipulation that these must be only used on private property or within the confines of a registered firearms club.

    Black powder is a special category also, which after attending an approved Police firearms course would come under a special category of historical firearms , the difference being they do not have the rapid firing capacity as the military grade M1 Garand thus cannot be used in mass shootings.

    The logic of this is simple, – if you cannot bag your deer with one maybe two ( if you are so lucky ) well placed shots, you need to back to the gun club and do more practice. Military grade weapons are designed to kill human beings, not game. They are smaller caliber, usually rapid fire to ‘spray’ an area and by and large will not bring down Elk or Bear. They are designed to suppress, to incapacitate as much as to kill. By contrast, a conscientious hunter always aims to take their game with as little pain and suffering to the animal as possible. Essentially, good shot placement as opposed to wild automatic coverage.

    The civilian using firearms for immediate personal self defense need not have either military grade weaponry or large bore hunting caliber firearms. A short range pistol will easily incapacitate and kill a fellow human being. If that civilian is caught up on the periphery of criminal activity, and feels threatened, then its an issue for the law.

    In my view, the NRA, has perverted the ‘right to bear arms’ into a self serving exercise. If one reads the ‘right to bear arms’,… one soon discerns the historical context. That being of a fledgling society that had wished to escape the oppression of the various monarchy’s of Europe. They did not wish to replicate and revert to European domination after their hard won gains during the War of Independence. And that was a fair call. Essentially it reads ( 2nd Amendment) that the people have a right to resist and displace a tyrannical, despotic govt. However the qualifier was a ‘FLEDGLING’ society. The USA is now a mature society. They now have an organized military and state Police forces. And yet the right to resist , that being of the right to depose a tyrannical and despotic govt,…is still counted among being paramount. A worthy set of values when compared to Hitlers maniacal 15 year tenure.

    So now,… as a mature nation, there are better,… yet perhaps more slow moving ways, – without the use of direct force and bloodshed, – to change that govt. I have every confidence in the United States of America. They are an amazing peoples of all sorts of ethnic demographics. Born of immigrants, …their good values and their atrocities,… by and large have not been hidden from the world. But there is still much they need to do to fine tune some of their excesses. And I think they should start with the excessive ‘ Wild West’ mentality that belongs more to an era of lawlessness than todays lawful sophisticated superpower that they are.

  14. This is exactly the toxic masculinity that y’all woke beta peasants have been bitching about for decades and as soon as it they’ve got it, they don’t know what to do with it???? Dafuq!

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