The Attempted Crucifixion of Kyle Rittenhouse

This Rittenhouse thing isn’t a trial, it’s an attempted crucifixion. Even if you absolutely abhor what he did, I don’t know how you feel good about this circus. I’ll admit I didn’t follow the story from the beginning. I didn’t know I had to. It looked pretty cut and dried to me. So I was pretty stunned when highlights from the trial started coming out.

Turns out the media lied about his reason for being there. The first reports I saw claimed he went down there looking for a fight; one of them said his mother drove him there for that reason (because hell, she had nothing to do with this but why not put a target on HER back too). And the lie did exactly what it was intended to do; I had no sympathy for him when I was under the impression he jumped into it just to play Billy Badass. You go looking for a fight, it’s all on you when you find it.

One of the reasons I thought the case would be a no-brainer was the picture of someone swinging a skateboard at Kyle’s head. Maybe I’ve been jaded by my 39 years as a bouncer, but I sure see that as a reasonable threat of death or grave injury, which is the only burden you need to meet to go straight to the top of the self-defense force continuum. But even if your life experience of never having been in a fistfight doesn’t lead you to the same conclusion, SURELY you’d agree that force is justified when the other guy points a gun at you FIRST.

But you might not have heard that detail. I first heard it just two days ago. And when I went to confirm it, the first three sources I checked were making THAT guy out to be The Noble Hero, while using pretty grisly language to describe Rittenhouse’s 100% justified response. You’re reporting on a story about a guy who claims he shot a man in self-defense, and you don’t mention that that man was POINTING A GUN AT HIM at the time? You don’t think that’s relevant? Can someone explain that to me without using the word “agenda”?

And when the trial rolls around, you get a prosecutor who doesn’t seem to understand anything about what he’s trying to lock a man up for life over. He thought hollow points explode on impact. He thinks you lose the right to defend yourself if you’re armed. He pointed a rifle at the jury with his finger on the trigger, breaking at least three, and unless he knew exactly what was on the other side of that wall, all four rules of firearm safety. Which we take more seriously than you take anything.

And now I’m hearing there will be more riots if the jury returns with anything other than 1st-degree murder. Facts don’t matter. Guilt doesn’t matter. Details don’t matter. Fair doesn’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. “Give us the outcome we want, no matter what, or we’ll burn cities to the ground”.

If Kyle Rittenhouse was guilty as charged, they’d just need to lay out exactly what he did. They wouldn’t need to lie about his motive for being there or how he got there, they wouldn’t need to bury the things other people did, they wouldn’t need to slander him, they wouldn’t need to exaggerate anything for the jury, or tell them things that just ain’t so. The truth is all you need for “you’re going to die in prison because you’re dangerous”; what they’re doing is what you need for “you’re going to die in prison because I don’t like what you did.” Jesus, I hope no one I know would be proud of that.

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Bama has been a rodeo cowboy, a professional stuntman, and, for 39 years and counting, a bouncer at various biker bars and redneck rat cage juke joints through the Deep South. He makes cool stuff as Crimson Tied Paragear, using knots his Army Ranger Scoutmaster taught him at Boy Scout summer camp deep in the Okinawan boonies back in 1972.