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?
Tag: kyle rittenhouse
State of the Onion Address 2022
There are many words that could be used to describe the state of media today, but I will only use two.
Hoo boy.
Since I need to fill out this blog post a bit more, I think I’d better use a few more words. To put it mildly, the lessons the media should have learned by now have gone the way of Whoopi Goldberg winning an award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center anytime soon. As a former journalism student myself, I am astounded people who get paid to tell us what to think…I mean the news can continually make mistakes that would get you kicked out of Journalism 101 at a junior college that also doubles as a tire repair shop.
And when you consider they’re acting as fact checkers as well as reporters, it’s a double whammy. If it were just an error every once in a while, it might be easy to forgive. Unfortunately for them, Kyle Rittenhouse entered the chat. After months of painting him (incorrectly) as a racist gun-nut who wanted to shoot black people for riot…I mean protesting, not only was he acquitted, but now he’s starting to go after some of the media types who smeared him before, during, and even after his day in court.
And you thought Nick Sandmann was pwning the media!
Then, there’s the current war in Ukraine, where we’re told only one side is telling the truth and anyone who says differently is a traitor. There is an old saying that applies here, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” As much as we want to root for those plucky Ukrainians, knowing how fucked up media coverage has been on domestic matters should cast some serious doubt on whether we can trust it on foreign affairs, which American media care next-to-nothing about to begin with. Good thing there’s a war going on or else we wouldn’t know where Ukraine is on a world map or know what flags to put on our social media profiles to show that, dammit, we care!
And really that’s the point with media coverage anymore. It’s not to keep us informed as to what is happening or to flesh out details that would help us make informed decisions. It’s to make us feel something. President Joe Biden fucking up the economy worse than he fucked up the Afghanistan withdrawal? That’s not important, but what is important is that we feel he’s doing a good job.
That is one of the most abused powers of the media right now: the power to elicit emotions. A snide comment slipped into an allegedly straight news story, a carefully edited audio or video clip, or even a catchy phrase to summarize a piece of legislation can be enough to create an idea that may or may not be tethered to reality.
Just ask Florida Governor Ron Desantis and his press secretary Christina Pushaw. They’ve been dealing with media types and Leftists (but I repeat myself) maligning the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that Desantis is expected to sign into law once it hits his desk. You know how many times the word “gay” appears in the bill, including its title?
Zero. None. Zilch. Nada. The Big Goose Egg. The number of times Jen Psaki tells the truth.
But do you know what is in the bill? Prohibition of mentioning any discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation to children in lower grades. That’s it. And, oddly enough, that’s the part that Leftists hate the most! Let’s be clear, though, it doesn’t prohibit discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity with older children. Just kids who are not too old to eat their own boogers. Yet, to hear the Left and the media (again, I repeat myself) talk, the bill makes things horrible for all transgender or gay students. Why, we’re practically in a more fabulous version of “The Handmaid’s Tale” if we stand by and let this bill pass!
And Twitter idiots ate it all up and asked for seconds.
That’s the power of the media in one isolated incident. And I’ve lost count of the other times the media got it completely wrong over the past year. But that’s not the only problem the media have to deal with. They’re also getting into the history revision game. Whether it’s admitting those “conspiracy nutjobs” offering medical advice on how to combat COVID-19 were right all along or “just finding out” about the Hunter Biden laptop story that’s been covered for, oh, almost 2 years now, the media love to avoid taking responsibility for getting their facts wrong by pretending to be or actually being uninformed until it’s too late.
Let that roll around in your minds a bit. We have a group of influential individuals who shape public opinion with what they say and do telling us how to feel about issues while knowingly or unknowingly withholding information that may eventually be true. And that’s just Twitter! The media are far worse!
And until they learn their lesson, either through self-reflection, a massive movement within the media to clean up their acts, or enough defamation lawsuits to bankrupt them, the media will continue to suck ass. But there is a bright side.
I will still have plenty of material to write pieces like this!
Okay, so it’s a bright side for me, but I think you’ll enjoy it, too.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
In case you’ve been living under a rock recently (and given housing prices these days, I wouldn’t blame you if you did), there was a little trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Kyle Rittenhouse faced some serious charges and was ultimately acquitted. At the heart of the trial and the situation that came before it is the concept of self-defense. Others have hashed out the various details of the case itself, so I won’t go too far into it because a) they’ve done a better job than your humble correspondent could, and b) you’ve probably heard as much, if not more, about it than I have.
With the Rittenhouse case, people on all sides have been focusing on whether what he did constitutes self-defense from a legal standpoint, but not too many have looked into the political aspect of it. That’s where I come in!
self-defense
What the Left thinks it means – an antiquated and unnecessary idea used to drive gun sales to paranoid right-wingers and gun nuts
What it really means – a principle essential to personal freedom
To put it mildly, things have gotten a little weird out there in the past couple of decades. Between Leftists LARPing as World War II vets and Trump supporters acting like, well, Trump supporters, you’re likely to find yourself in the middle of a conflict that can go pear-shaped before you can say, “Hey, isn’t that a pear?” Throw in all sorts of racial, sexual, and sociological contexts and you have a melting pot on the verge of melting down.
Such was the case in Kenosha, where protestors decided to do what the Property Brothers do, just in reverse. As you might expect, property owners (some of whom could be brothers, I suppose) didn’t like the impromptu Burning Man/Woodstock 99/any weekend with Lindsey Lohan vibe in the city. And the Kenosha police? Well, they were trying to maintain order by letting the protestors run around unopposed. Put another way, Barney Fife was Rambo next to these clowns.
Enter 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man who lived in Illinois, but worked in Kenosha. If the stories we’ve heard are true, he was asked to help protect a business in Kenosha, but he also wanted to tend to any wounded people there if needed. (Maybe it’s me, but that doesn’t sound like a bloodthirsty killer.) It wasn’t until he felt threatened by the riot…I mean protestors that he fired his rifle. And with one guy pointing a gun at him and another smacking him with a skateboard, it’s clear his life was in danger. Regardless of whether you feel he should have been there, the fact he was attacked and didn’t fire first shows he wasn’t there to get his jollies by killing people. He felt there was no other option than to shoot and he acted accordingly to protect himself in the absence of police.
And that’s why the Left lost their shit.
To the Left, anyone who isn’t one of them is a dullard and needs to have Leftists run his or her life. The minute you show even an iota of initiative to do something yourself is the minute you become dangerous to the Left. After all, if you don’t need government to do everything for you, you won’t need…them.
Thus, the Left has taken up the cause to make bureaucracy as expansive and essential as necessary so more and more of us become wards of the state. And they’ll make it happen by any means necessary, including convincing/coercing people to comply. Whether it’s an additional charge to make a payment with a credit card over the phone or demanding people jump through flaming hoops only to have the state reject a gun permit, the Left’s goal with all of that is to make sure they have their noses in our business for no legitimate reason. Just ask Glenn Beck about the hassles he endured just trying to put up a fence on his property in the Northeast.
So, when someone decides to cut out the middle-man and pass the savings directly on to, well, himself/herself, the Left loses money and power, which makes them more than a little cranky. You see, the Left believes in self-determination so long as you abide by whatever they deem appropriate. Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t, and as a result is being held up as what’s wrong with the Right, an enemy that needs no courtesy or even an obligation to get even basic facts right. He’s an “other” just as anyone else who defies the Left.
And, as a result, Rittenhouse may get Nick Sandmann rich soon. But that’s a blog post for another time.
Self-defense is the ultimate fuck-you to the Left. After all, the Left think only the police and military should have firearms. You know, the same police that are racist and the same military that is a tool of the elites? Mind-blowing hypocrisy aside, this is to a) make it harder for people to defend themselves, and b) creating a need that only government can fulfill. The only problem with that is time. Anyone who has spent any amount of time at the DMV knows the speed of government is usually inert. No matter how quickly your need is, the police will get there when they get there and not a second sooner.
Provided they come at all or aren’t hamstrung by politicians. Anyone want to turn your community into San Francisco East? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you don’t, but it’s the way the Left wants us to live: where the law-abiding are always the victims of the lawless. If you take up arms to protect yourself from being a victim, the Left can’t take it.
And that’s why you should do it, if you want to.
Really, it’s not a good reason why, but it’s certainly attractive. The best reason is because you have a right to be secure in your person, and if the government or its agents can’t or won’t respect that right, you shouldn’t be shamed into submission. If we take nothing else from the Kyle Rittenhouse situation, it’s that the best way to not be a victim is to understand what power you have and to never let anyone take it from you.
Oh, and that Leftists suck at keeping track of the facts of a criminal case before spewing ignorance.