I suppose it’s time for me to face facts; I am a radicalized, hard-core, right-winger. According to my own research, I am unreasonable, unfeeling, bigoted, stupid, and a threat to civilization. I am brainwashed into believing in the supremacy of my socially constructed gender and a race of which I don’t belong. I am filled with hate and incapable of expressing empathy, joy, or anything resembling an intelligent thought.
[To the FBI agent(s) joining in, please maneuver your high-definition drone around to where you can clearly observe the tongue that I’ve placed squarely in my cheek.
….got the shot? Good. Please don’t “lose” it.]
While, looking back, there were many ignored warning signs that could’ve informed me of my radical nature, the thing that finally opened my eyes to my own radicalism was the Kyle Rittenhouse situation. Because, regardless of who you listen to, one of the most popular preambles to any conversation on his situation is the phrase: “He shouldn’t have been there.”
And this is where I find issue. So, surely, if everyone on the planet is in agreement that ‘he shouldn’t have been there’ and I’m not in that camp, well then, surely, radicalism has got to be the answer. There’s no other team for me to be on.
One of the things that keeps coming to mind as I think about the Kyle Rittenhouse situation is the phrase uttered from Jack Nicholson in the movie A Few Good Men:
“You want me on that wall…you need me on that wall!”
[In fact, the majority of the sentiment I aim to convey here can be found in that iconic speech. Despite him being the “villain” in the film, the things that he says are true. Sidebar: Man, remember when writing in movies used to be good? *sigh]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hopNAI8Pefg
Because, when it comes to discussing Rittenhouse, I am reminded of just how short the human memory is. It’s something that I noticed when reading through the Bible, specifically the Old Testament. In every chapter, almost, it seems like these ancient civilizations are participating or establishing some type of tradition to “remember” events or things that they learned. At first, I found this odd, but later found it necessary as the nature of humans is such that we will forget things in the blink of an eye without constant reminders. I mean, is there a more obvious depiction of this than social media? But I digress.
The point is, despite the once-in-a-lifetime nature of the year that was 2020, it’s clear to me that we’ve all already forgotten most of it. Because when I hear people say something like “He shouldn’t have been there,” I wonder if they really remember the state of the country in August of 2020. So, let’s do a very brief recap, shall we?
After going through 4 months(120+) days of directives from our betters on how to live our lives amidst a worldwide pandemic, a cell phone video on the internet sparked a riot in May of 2020. Following the initial unrest in Minneapolis on May 26th, nary a television could be powered on without images of a major U.S. City burning. I can remember one Saturday afternoon, with nothing else to do, sitting in front of my buddies TV, for an entire day, watching the city of Philadelphia be looted and burned from 10,000 feet as news helicopters tracked the destruction as if it was a Twitch stream of some Real-Time-Strategy game where hunters and gatherers were used to expend the city of it’s resources.
In June, the country of CHAZ was established in Seattle. This, in combination with decisions from other city leaders to ‘stand down’, as well as plenty of bluster from politicians throughout the country sent the message, pretty clearly, “you are on your own.” Not only were you on your own in trying to fend off the destruction, but the wealthy elite of our country would be funding it in the form of large funds dedicated to bailing out the few who’d happen to be arrested.
This was the back drop. A country in crisis, and those responsible for maintaining order were nowhere to be found. The talking heads on our TVs all knew this. We’d sit around, every day, chained to our houses and watching the country burn with narration from the righteously indignant. For anyone paying attention, this was bullshit. There’s just no way around it. Even if you believed in the movement(that hurt to type) it would only be the opinion of a crazy person to believe that their means were justified. We all knew this. This was not an unpopular opinion.
Unfortunately, for too many(apparently), this was little more than a TV drama; pontificating pontificators pontificating on the destruction of large swaths of the country’s cities from their ergonomic chairs; comfortably insulated from any of the real effects of it. And this, we also knew. We know that the talking heads are often commenting on things that do not affect them. But every logical mind also knows that you don’t have to be on the Titanic to speculate as to what the future may hold for its passengers.
The evidence was clear. We watched it every night on our TVs for over 2 months. Many of us saw the devastation if we dared venture outside of our 4 walls. Property was destroyed, lives had been lost, and the lunatics were running the asylum. We knew things were shit. We knew our ruling class had abandoned their post, and it wasn’t hard to predict the plausible, justifiable, outcomes. And for all of the rational people in the country, we all thought some version of the same thing:
“When is someone gonna do something about this?”
And, yes, some people get there faster than others. Some boiling frogs have thicker skin than others. And some, also, have thicker skulls than others. But I think it’s safe to say that by July of 2020, the whispers of desperation in our collective psyche had grown to, at least, an audible murmur.
And, among the “he shouldn’t have been there” crowd, I see there to only be 2 legitimate factions. I find it prudent to immediately dismiss the “He wasn’t from there” folks and the “he shouldn’t have had a gun” folks. These two groups are uninteresting to me. They’re either uninformed or willfully ignorant.
No, the 2 that warrant, at least, an address, are the ‘It’s just stuff. Property isn’t worth life,’ crowd and the ‘He was too young,’ folks. Afterall, we do have age limits for all sorts of things in this country. And the debate over the importance of property is, perhaps, one of the most fundamental barometer’s on one’s ideology.
And I don’t intend to hash it out here. I will go ahead an punt on ‘property’ other than to point out that, throughout the history of the world, if one were to boil every conflict down to their cores, I think the “dispute over land/property” would be somewhere in the top 5. Property ownership is a huge deal; perhaps instinctive. And when a threat to destroy all or a part of something you own arises, I think it would be foolish to expect a person to simply “let it go.”
So, for the ‘Too Young’ stans well, maybe they’re right. Truly. But, why? Why would we conclude that he was too young to be doing what he was doing? Would we be referring to the stunted development of all of this country’s youth, perhaps? This prolonged adolescence that results in the arrested development that leads to the baby-brained politicians that some up with revolutionary ideas like “Defund The Police,” and keep the racism money-making machine churning? Is that what we mean by too young?
Because, when I consider the implication with someone being too young for a particular task, I think about either judgement, capability, or both. And we can’t, possibly, be talking about judgement, right?
The facts of the Rittenhouse case, on that night, hardly support any charge of poor judgement in the moment. Kyle spends the evening putting out dumpster fires and, on a couple occasions, administering some type of aid to protestors. When the first whiff of real trouble surfaces, Kyle flees from it. It is only after trying to get away, hearing gunshots directly behind him, fleeing again, and having a lunatic grab for his gun does he fire the weapon. To imagine that less than 80% of the population wouldn’t have turned around and started firing the minute they heard gunshots would make us the naïve ones.
The 2nd set of events was a true tragedy. To say that a group of men hunt him down with the specific intent to kill him is a simple fact. BUT, I am not ignorant to the fact that this could be viewed as justified. Even if we are to believe that all of the individual attackers were truly random protestors that got caught up in the moment (and weren’t coordinated and, reportedly, seen on video together at numerous times in the night), they could still be somewhat justified in their actions if they truly believed they were in search for justice.
But, even if that were the case, so what? Does that mean that Kyle needs to die? Are we to say that a man must be put to death if he’s mistakenly labeled as a killer? Of course not. It’s a tragedy. But one that could just as easily have been avoided if those men would not have decided to go out to the streets that night. In this, they are all the same. And even amidst this tragic scene, the trigger discipline he displays, while likely suffering from a concussion, is fascinating; 4 more shots that repel 3 attackers and only killing one. The most compelling part of the entire exchange is in the lowering of his weapon when Gaige Grosskruetz raises his hands, followed by the re-raising and firing when Gaige goes to shoot him. Providence is the only way to describe it.
So, as you can tell, I’m not really buying into the “He was too young” argument either. I cannot see any way in which age would’ve resulted in anything different. In fact, I can more easily imagine a scenario of more death than less in the presence of an older man. His judgement wasn’t just good for someone with no training. Having seen several examples of poor police behavior online in recent years, it appears as though his judgement was pretty sound regardless of his classification or age. If you don’t believe in protecting property, then these last 2 paragraphs made you cringe. But, just know, that what you are saying is that you have a duty to allow everything you own to be taken from you, with no fight at all, because someone you don’t know has been convinced that the destruction of your property (and your whole person in general) is justified. That’s just facts.
Of course, he’s a little naïve and sure, perhaps a bit more optimistic than most, but that happens to be how I like em, “Naïve and optimistic” (AmIRight??).
And for the purist libertarian crowd, it would be hard to imagine a more blatant test of their convictions. Because it is impossible to dispute the fact that any type of massive reduction in policing would result in self-protection just like this. I, for one, count it a good thing. But I also think it foolish to assume that things like this wouldn’t have a justifiably jarring effect on many of our sensibilities. Any libertarian bending over backwards to de-legitimize Kyle’s actions would be living proof of this.
Wrap It Up…
I started with this diatribe prior to the Acquittal. The predictable response to the news has done little to squelch the effects of the massive white pill that the verdict provides. For awhile, now, I’ve felt that the ability to conceal the truth from people is the devil’s primary weapon today… and probably always has been. When you see and hear something with your own eyes and ears, and then see how that event is conveyed to others is one of the most fascinating phenomena to me; no matter how mundane. I used to wonder how a civilization could effectively combat this issue, and assumed prior generations did a far better job of it than we do today, and maybe they did. But, it seems like, to me, this is where faith lies. Maybe it’s a “God of the Gaps” type mentality, but I don’t think so. There must be some combination of facts and instinct involved with finding truth. Why else would instinct exist? My faith in the big guy would not have been shaken, regardless of this outcome. But my faith in the country, and the west, has received a pick-me-up. Which is much-needed at this point.
So, to conclude, for those who believe that Kyle “shouldn’t have been there” in August of 2020, I vehemently disagree. When no one is around willing to protect your life, your stuff, or your community at large, it falls on individuals to provide that for themselves. Instinctively, we all only wish we had the intestinal fortitude to do something like what Kyle did. But we have extensive practice in justifying our passivity throughout our lives. We tell ourselves that “it’s the only way society can exist”, or “there’s nothing so serious as to require it of me.” But mostly, we ignore it. Just as the aforementioned Colenel Jessep described it in the line preceding his famous quote, we relegate those thoughts… “deep down in places we don’t talk about at parties.” We’re placated by our indulgences that were built on the lives of the generations that came before us. The generations that we, now, hold distain for and show resentment of. ‘Everything is fine until something bad happens to me,’ is our baseline. I, personally, am not a stranger to this sentiment. I recognize it in myself and it’s uncomfortable. But I’m not gonna sit around and pretend it’s the right mode of being and try, not only, to justify it, but define it as some kind of ‘virtue’ and shout it out from a mountain top. Sure, I may be able to convince enough people to make me feel better about myself, temporarily. But they are empty calories and the truth suffers.
Kyle Shouldn’t Have Needed to Be There. But since he did, I feel like we got pretty lucky it was Kyle, and not the majority of alternatives.
AgingMillenial 