Over the July 4th weekend, there was another mass shooting, this one in Highland Park, Illinois. The shooter (who will remain nameless because he’s a piece of shit) opened fire on a parade, killing seven and injuring several more. Although many people on both sides of the aisle expressed sympathy and some used it to advance the need for stricter gun control, some Leftists asked an unexpected question.
Where was Kyle Rittenhouse?
An odd flex, to be sure, but one not without a purpose.
Kyle Rittenhouse
What the Left thinks it means – a murderer who is the poster child for mass shooters everywhere
What it really means – a young man who beat long odds against Leftist disinformation
To gain the necessary context for the current discussion, we have to go waaaaaaaaaaay back to…2020. During the mostly peaceful rioting…I mean protesting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse went to offer help. Armed with a medical kit and an AR-15, he waded into the middle of a devolving situation and attempted to prevent a flaming dumpster fire from causing property damage, both literally and figuratively.
After that, the rioters…I mean protesters started chasing him, some with the intent of using his head for a pinata. When it became evident the people chasing him weren’t going to ask if he wanted smores, but instead wanted to do him bodily harm, Rittenhouse shot and killed 2 people and injured a third in self defense. The subsequent trial acquitted him of any wrong-doing and Rittenhouse left the courtroom a free man.
Of course, that’s not how the Left tells the tale.
From the outset, Leftists attempted to paint Rittenhouse as a trigger-happy kid looking to get in the middle of the protest and start trouble. They went so far as to say not only was he guilty of murder, but he did so by crossing state lines with a gun he obtained illegally and with the sole intent of killing blacks. No amount of evidence, testimony, and a little thing the kids call common sense could sway them. To Leftists, Rittenhouse was worse than Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nickelback put together!
Naturally, when Rittenhouse was acquitted because a) the evidence, testimony, and common sense were on his side, and b) the prosecution lawyers were 20th degree black belts in dumbassery, Leftists couldn’t take it. After all the time and energy they spent to make him look guilty as hell, he walked. I’ve seen little league parents take losses better than Leftists.
If that were the end of the story, we wouldn’t still be talking about Rittenhouse and this would be one of my shortest Leftist Lexicon entries in history. But the Left has this core flaw: they hold a grudge. If you beat them in spite of their best efforts, they will never let you live it down, and everything they say and do to oppose you is justified in their minds. Just ask Clarence Thomas about his experiences being a Leftist target for close to 40 years.
With Rittenhouse, the Left have a ready-made whipping boy (as opposed to a Ready-Whip made boy) to bring up whenever there’s a shooting, no matter how tangential and strenuous the connection is. Given enough time, Leftists might connect Rittenhouse to another shooting because they both wear pants.
Note to Leftists: that was a joke, not a suggestion.
Since they’re already conditioned to believe the worst in Rittenhouse, Leftists have no problem extending their caricature to any situation they can use to perpetuate the myth. And each time the myth gets repeated, the truth gets further out of reach for everyone except those who have this stubborn belief the facts might actually matter when it means the difference between character affirmation and character assassination.
The thing that really pisses me off about the Left’s treatment of Rittenhouse is how dehumanizing they are towards him. Whether you agree with his decision to shoot three people, there is still a young man behind the rhetoric coming from both sides, a young man who made a difficult decision and has to deal with the consequences of his actions even if the legal consequences are a moot point. I don’t know him personally, so you can take my observations with a Great Salt Lake of salt, but the vibe I get from him isn’t one of a heartless killing machine full of rage and hatred. What I see is someone who has been through Hell and lived to tell the tale. No matter what, his actions have a psychological toll only worsened by misinformed judgmental assholes whose knowledge of the facts is scarcer than baby formula right now. Besides, I have the market for judgmental assholes cornered.
I know it’s dirt simple for Leftists to get hate clicks by taking as-subtle-as-King-Kong-in-a-neon-jumpsuit jabs at Kyle Rittenhouse, but it serves no substantive purpose. At best, you are only perpetuating the echo chamber. At worst, you are setting a young man up to fail so you can point and say “See? We were right all along!” when he inevitably fails. The difference is Rittenhouse isn’t a guy like George Zimmerman who was a fuck-up of a person before he got famous or infamous as the case may be. He’s a young man who tried to do the right thing in the midst of people actively doing the wrong thing. Of course, if he turns out to be Zimmerman 2.0 later in life, I will happily retract my statement because I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong. That’s more than you’ll get from any Leftist.
For now, though, linking him to every mass shooting is low-hanging fruit and intellectually lazy thinking, even in jest. Of course, if you’re serious, do us a favor and get some scissors with the rounded ends so you don’t hurt somebody, ‘kay?
