Several news sources have analyzed a lot of videos, such as the one above, to try to figure out what happened in Kenosha the night before last. Many video show a chaotic scene with the sound of many gunshots — probably more than one shooter — and a lot of people running. And then we see the teenaged Kyle Rittenhouse, possibly on a cell phone, saying he had just shot somebody. The circumstances around this first shooting are murky. After this we see him running down a road with others in pursuit and he tripped, and while on the ground he shot and killed one of the pursuers. In total, it is alleged he shot three people. Two died at the scene, and one lived but with serious injuries to an arm.
One already finds people on social media sneering that Rittenhouse fired in self-defense. This is always the excuse. What do you expect? He was being threatened! What I expect is that he shouldn’t have been there to begin with. The kid lives in Antioch, Illinois. Antioch is less than 25 miles from Kenosha, but still.
I wondered all day yesterday what kind of parent would allow a 17-year-old to drive to another state with a firearm to get mixed up in a potentially violent and dangerous situation. Today, there are reports that his mother drove him to Kenosha. If true, she should be charged as an accomplice. And have her head examined.
Yesterday I heard a BBC broadcaster practically blubbering with incredulity as to why these unauthorized, undeputized men were being allowed to walk all over Keosha brandishing weapons. And the answer is that Wisconsin is one of those “open carry” states in which anyone can openly carry loaded firearms without a license. However, at 17, Rittenhouse was too young to enjoy that privilege. Wisconsin is not a “stand your ground” state, strictly speaking, but Rittenhouse may be able to claim self-defense anyway, according to this article.
In the case of the person killed after Rittenhouse had tripped, it appears Rittenhouse was being pursued because he’d already killed somebody. And the pursuers were not armed. The man Rittenhouse killed in that street appears to have been brandishing a skateboard. He was trying to apprehend a killer.
At that point, in my mind, Rittenhouse had achieved the status of mass shooter. Usually the act of apprehending a mass shooter makes someone a hero.
The most charitable thing I can say about Kyle Rittenhouse is that he was in way over his head. He had no training, no experience to guide him. And 17-year-old boys are not exactly famous for their impulse control and sensible judgment. He probably did find himself in a circumstance in which he was frightened, justifiably or not, and started shooting. He should not have been there. And if the Kenosha police had had a lick of sense they would have pulled this obviously not-yet-an-adult boy aside earlier in the evening and told him to go home. But they didn’t.
See Why police encouraged a teenager with a gun to patrol Kenosha’s streets at Vox.
A recent paper by University of Arizona sociologist Jennifer Carlson offers some insight into the police’s behavior. She conducted dozens of hours of interviews about guns with 79 police chiefs in three states — Michigan, California, and Arizona — to try to better understand the way police see armed civilians.
Carlson found that police leaders tended to see armed civilians as allies, maybe even informal deputies — provided they fit a set of racially coded descriptors.
“Police chiefs articulated a position of gun populism based on a presumption of racial respectability,” Carlson writes. “‘Good guys with guns’ were marked off as responsible in ways that reflected white, middle-class respectability.”
So the white strangers with guns are assumed to be good guys, no questions asked. That’s got to stop.
There are reports from several sources that the armed, white vigilantes who showed up in Kenosha to “protect” the city were being treated much more leniently and congenially by police than the cops were treating protesters. The news report at the top of the post alleges the undeputized vigilantes were allowed to remain in areas from which “civilians” were barred. And at the end of the evening, police officers at the scene allowed Rittenhouse to walk away and go home, in spite of multiple other persons yelling at the cops that Rittenhouse was “the shooter.”
See also White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says.
The racial injustice protesters are blamed for whatever violence occurs near their protests, but often — possibly more often than not — it’s the counter-protesters, the vigilantes, who do the real damage.
It’s not like we haven’t seen this video before.
We saw it on June 17 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when an armed man shot a protester who was trying to take down a statue of the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, seen by many as a symbol of oppression.
We saw it on July 10 in Milwaukee when a group of armed white men surrounded a group of Black Lives Matter protesters.
We saw it on July 4 in Phoenix when a group of armed counter-protesters aimed their loaded rifles at an unarmed group demonstrating against police brutality.
We saw it on May 15 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when hundreds of armed protesters — some carrying signs comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to a Nazi — called for an end to the state’s pandemic lockdown. President Trump later tweeted approvingly, saying Pennsylvanians “want their freedom now.”
The circumstances that led to Rittenhouse allegedly firing his rifle are still murky. Authorities aren’t saying much about what happened before the teen ended up on the ground, repeatedly firing his weapon.
But what we do know is this: There’s nothing strange in America, nothing at all, about right-wing white men of limited good sense parading around with big guns, convinced they are saviors of the American way of life, when in fact they are obvious fools.
And the police are fools for accepting these meatballs as allies, especially since not all white supremacist gunmen are pro-police.
The presence of right-wing militia, or Boogaloo Boys, or Proud Boys, Three Percenters, or whatever the wannabe Klansmen are calling themselves these days, is an obvious accelerant in already volatile situations. They have a right to peacefully aseemble and demonstrate and speak their minds. They don’t have a right to threaten other citizens or assume the roles of police and soldiers. None of them really want to “keep the peace.” They want to dominate. They want to show who’s boss. The more extremist among them probably are hunkering for an excuse to kill Blacks and “libtards.”
But this is where America’s gun-worship has brought us. I doubt that what happened in Kenosha this week could have happened in any other country that is not in an active war zone. In no other country do cops smile benignly at strangers from who-knows-where carrying loaded firearms near an already unstable situation.
I don’t want to excuse violence by protesters, when it happens. News stories say that there has been a lot of looting and burning gong on overnight, presumably by protesters. But we’ve seen in other cities that often the genuine protesters and the looters-burners are separate groups of people. We’ve also seen too many circumstances in which perpetrators turned out to be right-wing operatives trying to stir up animosity to the demonstrations. I assume nothing at this point.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced today that National Guard from Arizona, Michigan and Alabama will join Wisconsin National Guard already in Kenosha. These are not federalized Guard, so Trump did not send them, even though he may take credit. The out-of-state guard are “under the operational control of Wisconsin’s adjutant general during their mobilization but remain under their respective state’s administrative control.” They should be able to keep the peace without the amateurs in the way.
In Other News
I’m preparing for my fourth and last night of not watching the convention. For your reading enjoyment:
Room rentals, resort fees and furniture removal: How Trump’s company charged the U.S. government more than $900,000. It appears we taxpayers are just one big personal cash cow to the Trumps.
Paul Waldman, The latest chaos at the convention reveals Trump as a miserable failure.
Here is the original Brennan Center For Justice report.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law
The most charitable thing I can say about Kyle Rittenhouse is that he was in way over his head. He had no training, no experience to guide him. And 17-year-old boys are not exactly famous for their impulse control and sensible judgment.
Oh I’m not so sure. The way he carried that gun, with gloves no less, says that he’s had lots of experience with guns. He was looking for trouble and had to make an effort (or his mom did) to get to Kenosha.
And I agree completely with the BBC broadcaster. It’s just shocking to see this kid running around in what amounts to a war zone, as if he owns the place, and nobody is making an effort to get him out of there.
It's the juxtaposition of 2 shots that makes plain what the problem with this country really is: RACISM! ( Yeah, Kinda obvious).
In the one picture: You see a Black guy getting shot by a cop, in the back 7 times, in front of his kids, and with a couple of cops (that would have been MORE than enough to subdue the guy) with him. The cop just shot the guy. Not once. No. He shot the Black man 7 TIMES IN THE BACK. In the back. Cowardly.
In the second: You see a White kid drop, shoot his weapon a few times, get up, raise his arms, and wearing his rifle, walks up to, AND PAST, a sea of police vehicles.
And apparently, not ONE cop wondered what a young lad with blue gloves on, his long-gun slung on his back, was doing walking away from a shooting.
Not ONE cop saw that people were pointing to him as the killer. And instead, they ignored him as be traipsed past them, and went home (via Mommy?), where he was eventually be arrested – without shooting this White punk-ass MFer!
Two shots: The entire sad and tragic story.
Bunker Boy is probably under pressure to stay out of it. Billy the Kid is exactly what Trump wants to happen, so I don't thin the week will end without Trump expressing support for self-defense by vigilantes against lawless unarmed mobs. Or: We got the guns – kill a few and the rest will shut up.
This may be the last gasp of institutional racism. Oh, racism will survive for generations but are we going to see people demand governments saddle and ride the police according to rules that give no quarter to bad cops?
We're in for a few ugly, bloody months that may bring voters face to face with institutional racism. We might see a formula emerge for voters to demand that elected officials make a strict set of rules the police will have to live by.
I don't thin the week will end without Trump expressing support for self-defense by vigilantes against lawless unarmed mobs.
He already did so tonight in his acceptance speech. Not in direct words , but in his coded way of speaking he declared BLM as radical movement that has set out to destroy America and it's values. As clear as a bell, he defined an unnamed 'movement' as the enemy that must be stopped to save America..
It might be presumptuous of me in my ability to decipher Trump's code speaking, but I can't think of any movement other than Black Lives Matter that would fit the bill to make sense of what Trump is spewing. To me it was a clarion call by Donald Trump to declare war on Black Americans and those of us who have chosen to examine our hearts and work for an America that is all inclusive and just.
Here's the statement. Did I decode it properly?
"And this election will decide whether we will defend the American Way of Life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it."
I think the radical movement is supposed to be the Biden campaign and presidency. I know it's absurd, but we are dealing with the Trump cult who rant against the "socialism" of Joe Biden.
I've been wondering where he got the rifle. I assumed from his father, but his father doesn't live with him. Those things are expensive. But he's a high school dropout and may have been working. With minimal other expenses he could save enough to buy it. But he isn't old enough. There's an assload of civil liability tied up in how he comes to have that gun.
I've been wondering too. Also, if his mother drove him, didn't she notice the gun? What in the world was she thinking?
I believe his mother gave him the gun.