No, not fiction. Not a hallucination, either, nor a snarky description of the ‘sentence’ he ‘passed’ on his – regardless of the deeply racist judge’s preferences – victims. Rather, a prediction: barring a miracle of maturity, Kyle Rittenhouse has been sentenced to a violent death.
The uncontested facts are these: Kyle Rittenhouse, at age 17, brought a rifle designed entirely for killing humans to a protest he knew would be heated. There, he killed two people and wounded a third. This action has now been deemed lawful, and there will be no government-sanctioned consequences for him to face.
He’s a kid. He’s a kid with terrible judgement, and evidently a strong willingness to imagine himself as the Good Guy With A Gun hero figure. He’s also definitely a kid who had a firm belief in his own immunity from consequences, because while the trial was ongoing, he went to a bar with his Proud Boys buddies and flashed white power symbols. That feeling of immunity has been seriously confirmed, in a verdict that is going to have far-reaching consequences on the definition of self defense in the state of Wisconsin. In the eyes of his white supremacist friends, and 1/3 of the USA, he’s been confirmed to be the hero, the Good Guy With A Gun forming the thin white line between good honest commerce and horrible uppity lefties.
So… what do you think is going to happen the next time there’s a civil rights protest anywhere near him?
I’ll lay good money he’ll be locking and loading and rolling out. This is who he is now. He’s the hero! The Main Character! He’s the one who can blow away the Bad Guys and not even spend a minute in prison. Like John McClane! It works for the guys in the movies! And it’s fun!
What do you suppose will happen then, though? If he is very very lucky, nothing. But if he’s not very very lucky…
He’s infamous now. There won’t be a single left-leaning pro-social-justice activist in the country who does not know who Kyle Rittenhouse is, nor that what he’s known for is killing them, while the police and the justice system pointedly look the other way. This whole debacle started because he chose to be in a situation where he was rightly viewed as a threat. Now he’s a much bigger threat, a known killer who cannot be brought down by legal means, and who is specifically known to kill anyone who tries to stop him using non-lethal force.
Which means what, exactly, is going to be the only other option for stopping his next killing spree?
The opposition to white supremacy comes from people who, on the mean, have too much human decency to want to take human lives badly enough to pull the trigger. I *feel like* I could pull a trigger on a nazi, but at the end of the day? The only time I’ve handled a gun it felt like poison in my hand. I have made no moves to own one. I just don’t know the measure of my convictions in that regard, and I’d wager most of us are the same – as a good person should be.
He’d be *far* more likely to die from weird nazi infighting, like the various white supremacists who’ve been murdered by white supremacists over drug deals or power moves within their gangs. Or perhaps to be killed by a cop because they noticed too late that he was one of their fanboys, in a dark room or something.
@1 Great American Satan
I’ve given this sort of thing a lot of thought. I’m pretty sure I could do it.
I would not want to, not enjoy it, not relish anything about it, least of all dealing out pain and suffering. But if confronted with someone determined to torture or kill, who can ONLY be stopped by sacrificing his life, his family’s emotional state, and my future?
I could do it. It would be a horrible, horrible sacrifice. But if it really came down to it, I could do it.
That’s just it. I don’t exactly disagree with this, but it’s a whole different perspective.
To the Nazi types, they want to. They aren’t willing to engage with empathy enough to even be aware of us as ‘people’. Remember the NPC thing? They really do think of us as the meaningless Enemy, with deaths to be gloated over. They see themselves, like Rittenhouse, as the heroes of their stories. Very Griffindor, you could say.
To us, it’s completely different. We don’t want to. We actively despise the notion. But for us, it’s a cause, it’s a necessary evil ofr the greater good. An evil, to be sure; an evil to be avoided at all costs short of the life of another… but in extremis, still a necessary one. The Hufflepuff perspective, if I may. Something horrible that must be done, to prevent worse harm.
You could well be right about who’s most likely to hurt him, but I think you’re wrong that there aren’t enough of our side who would pull the trigger. After all, that’s what the antifa black bloc is: leftists who have been pushed into believing (IMO rightly) that the unpleasant duty of violence is necessary to stop the fascists, and who have taken upon themselves the willingness to do that unpleasant duty. Antifa types generally eschew guns, but… Rittenhouse represents an escalation, he’s the thing that if he appears on a ‘battlefield’ (his appearance making it a battlefield), what else from their point of view could be done to save the lives he’s choosing to endanger?
If he hasn’t learned anything from this and he has a Zimmerman-esque desperation for attention, he might try again. More likely in my estimation he’ll be safely insulated by a team of bodyguards (think Brock Turner), and won’t feel the need to personally intervene.
If I had money (I don’t, sorry, I’m broke), I’d bet that Rittenhouse gets a cushy job at Fox News or some other right wing echo chamber, where he’ll have the megaphone he needs to stir shit up, and then sit back and watch as his loyal footsoldiers tear people to pieces.
hmmm…. i should probably start taking hrt so i can level up my antifa supersoldier powers. thanks for the heads up.
@1, Great American Satan:
So much to unpack.
1. “On the mean” – abbey was not referring to anyone operating on or anywhere near the mean. It doesn’t need a majority of plurality of lefties to be gunning for Rittenhouse. It needs (count ’em) ONE.
2. You’re taking the bleeding heart lefty position to extremes by characterising it as “wanting to take a human life”. How about “wanting to DEFEND human liveS (plural)”. Deadly force in self-defence is something that all but the most ludicrously pacifist snowflakes can generally accept, and (pardon me to interpreting) what abbey is describing is SELF-DEFENCE against a threat which is known to be able to operate with impunity. Seems reasonable to me.
Newsflash: not all of us are like you. Some of us are comfortable with guns. Some of us have been trained by the armed forces to use one effectively. And, wow, judgemental much, of people who don’t share every single one of your values? I respect the extreme pacifist position, I really do, just as long as those who use their privilege to take that position accept and respect that the only reason they can is that there are others who don’t AND THOSE ARE GOOD PEOPLE AS WELL.
I hope the left is better than putting a price on the head of Rittenhouse. But I’ll shed no tears if he meets with an accident. And I’d bet my house there’s someone in antifa happy to arrange one.
I don’t think that level of snark is at all called for.
I suspect you’re right, ASB. The Left does include a certain number of people who own and use guns; those guys tend to get overlooked, because they generally don’t go out of their way to flourish their weapons, don’t make it impossible for everyone around them to not realize that They Are Well And Truly Armed. And I get the sense that leftist gun owners are, statistically speaking, more competent in their gun usage than are alt-Reich ammosexuals.
This is not a recipe for long life and health. Not for Rittenhouse, it’s not.
As the saying goes, “Think of it as evolution in action.”
People said the same thing about george zimmerman. He is still walking free and making a general nuisance of himself.
@7 StonedRanger
Not really the same. I’d argue that Zimmermann is even more evil, but is definitely wiser. He hasn’t been showing up armed to protests, i.e. unlike Rittenhouse, Zimmermann hasn’t been exposing himself to large crowds of people who justifiably hate him while representing a clear and present danger.
Zimmermann knows he’s only good against soft targets. Rittenhouse now thinks he’s an action hero.
Remember New Zealand if you worry what will happen next time. Decent people are heroic and will do what’s right, not run with tails between their legs as rittenhouse did.
One way or another, he’s gonna get himself removed from real life’s server, if you know what I mean.
I think it says all that needs to be said about the strength of the argument presented in #1 that its author has responded to criticism of it not here, where it was made, but in their own blog where they know those who criticised them are either already unable to post, or are explicitly soon to be unable to. Demonstrates great faith in their position. /s
He’s a kid. He’s a kid with terrible judgement, and evidently a strong willingness to imagine himself as the Good Guy With A Gun hero figure.
And somehow his mom thought so, too.
There’s the old Johnny Cash song “don’t take your guns to town” (the lyrics are pretty good, really) but this is a re-write, “here, grab your gun and I’ll give you a ride into town.” WTF.
That’s what I think, too.
If I saw Rittenhouse walking down the street with a rifle, I’d be terrified — he’s a known murderer with a penchant for gunning down unarmed people. I’d call the cops (who would be worse than useless).
If he turned down my driveway, I’d shoot in self-defense because, dear god, why does he need a gun to walk up to my door?
The one thing that would save him is that I don’t own a gun myself. Not planning to get one, either.
He’s a marked man wearing a target on his chest now. That I don’t own a gun doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of others who do. This is ‘Merica!
@ 7. StonedRanger : As yet. That may still change – for both of them.
The Kenosha multiple murderer and White Supremacist terrorist in question here might have now alienated his own toxic side of poltics too for laughably proclaiming he supports BLM in his sorry excuse for an interview..
Personally I think he’ll be too chicken-shit to go out armed like that again (without a full security detail) and it’s pretty clear he’ll have his hands plenty full milking the rightwing grift after his victory lap is done.
He’s more likely to write a book or run for Congress or start a podcast imho.
We shall see.
=8)-DX