8/29/20
If ever there were a visible turning point for Americans, it was Kenosha.
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Kenosha is probably a nice town. It's a shipping port on Lake Michigan, not far south of Milwaukee, and its 101,000 population's median age is 34. Its politics split down the middle, but Trump won by a nose in 2016.
Late afternoon last Sunday, a 911 call led to a policeman shooting Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back. No one knew that evening whether he would live. Nobody knew whether there had been a warrant, a 911 call, a knife on the floorboard of the SUV. There were rumors, not facts. That night, protestors took it as just another example of police violence involving a Black man.
Around 11:00 that night, police started using tear gas and rubber bullets to make protestors gathered downtown disperse. An hour later, "at least three garbage trucks and a trolley car" were set on fire. Then, a truck at a used car dealership was set on fire, damaging "most of the 100 cars on the lot." One protestor, the article said, used fireworks. There was looting as well as largely cosmetic damage to buildings.
The next day, the governor called in the National Guard, and the county set an 8 pm curfew. Daytime protests were uneventful, but by late afternoon, it was clear that the police were welcoming right-wing militia members to help "keep the peace."
That's where Kyle Rittenhouse came in. An apparently troubled child of a single mother who had driven him to Kenosha from Illinois, Kyle had an awkwardly friendly relationship with the police. He had a police record, but he wanted to be a policeman, and he associated himself with a right-wing militia. He was standing with that militia when a police car rolled its windows down, thanked the militia members for their help, and gave them bottled water.
After killing two people and wounding another, "Rittenhouse subsequently walked towards police with his hands up and still armed with a semi-automatic rifle." They let him go home (he had been driven there by his mother) despite shouts that he was the shooter. Kenosha Sheriff David Beth said later, "In situations that are high-stress, you have such incredible tunnel vision." That is, officers just didn't take in that Kyle was the shooter.
After Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested, public opinion was divided between those who thought Rittenhouse was a good guy who did the right thing and those who thought he should be punished severely. Meanwhile, police kept up their heavy-handed approach to protesters, stopping and arresting a group from Seattle who supported protestors by feeding them.
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| One of the garbage trucks that was burned during the riot. Some speculate that the violence was provoked, like the looting in Minneapolis, by right-wing militia members. |
At Arizona State University, the campus group "College Republicans United" announced that it would donate half of its funds for the semester to Rittenhouse's legal defense. "He does not deserve to have his entire life destroyed because of the actions of violent anarchists during a lawless riot." For those of us who think that Rittenhouse has already destroyed his own and two others' lives, it's hard to believe that anyone could say those words.
The Arizona group also said that "Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it," leading to the presumption that the group either doesn't know how to read or doesn't know how to evaluate what it reads. (And that's why we teach English in school.)
The statement's a near-exact rendering of PR by Rittenhouse's attorneys, who said, “A 17-year old child should not have to take up arms in America to protect life and property. That is the job of state and local governments. However, those governments have failed, and law-abiding citizens have no choice but to protect their own communities as their forefathers did at Lexington and Concord in 1775.”
Gateway Pundit included that quote in an article about Rittenhouse's attorneys calling for Maryland's governor to resign. Why? Because the governor fired a staffer who was using social media in Rittenhouse's defense. The lawyers also claim that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense (a concoction directly contradicted by videos of the scene) and set up a defense fund for their client's defense costs (which, obviously, the lawyers can use to pay themselves).
On Friday, a petition was filed to recall Wisconsin's Democratic governor, also echoing the lawyers: "Governor Evers has had ample time and opportunities to protect the citizens and their property. He has failed and refused federal help. He has encouraged these riots and the "defunding" of our police. Enough is enough."
I'd say that anyone who believes that it's okay for a boy of 17 to take an assault rifle and flaunt it in the open before shooting three people has something seriously wrong in their perspective. That's where I stand. Where do you?
What makes anyone believe that Rittenhouse is not a vigilante or a murderer, but a defender of freedom? Do you know of active militias in your area? How can you see Trump using these militias, whom he has called "very good people," to support his own agenda for reelection? Does all of this scare you?
Note: The summary above draws in part from an article in Wikipedia called "Kenosha riots." It is unsigned, and it seems to me to be biased toward the police, but its specifics suggest access to police information; and it's heavily sourced.
Photos: "Frank's Diner, Kenosha, Wisconsin" by *hajee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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