No Heroes in Kenosha

Last week, jurors decided the fate of Kyle Rittenhouse, finding him innocent of murder charges, by way of self-defense. For exclusively political reasons, the fate of the verdict captured national attention with Americans dividing into partisan camps from which they pronounced broad conclusions about what the result represented. However, the collective response says much more about our society than the trial itself ever could.

Despite the enormous amount of media attention, there did not seem to be a very good collective understanding of the facts at hand in the Rittenhouse case, even by those sounding off most vocally on the trial and its verdict. As such, a brief recap is probably in order.

On August 24, 2020, Rittenhouse–then 17 and living with his mother in the state border town of Antioch, Illinois–drove about 20 minutes to a friend's house across the state line in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where protests, violence, and looting were taking place in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man who had been shot by a white police officer. The shooting followed (nearly three months to the day) the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which is about 400 miles west of Kenosha, a factor that undoubtedly influenced the events that followed.

However, while Floyd was essentially the victim of extrajudicial summary execution, Blake's case was much different. The interaction occurred when police responded to a domestic distress call from his ex-girlfriend who had a restraining order in place against Blake after she accused him of sexual battery the previous May. As a result of those accusations, a warrant for Blake had been issued for the charge of third-degree sexual assault. When police arrived on the scene, Blake refused to comply even after being stunned with a taser. He was in possession of a knife and turned toward an officer brandishing it before being shot. Blake survived, though he was paralyzed from the waist down.

Obviously, the facts of Blake's case have no direct relevance to Rittenhouse's. However, I think they speak to the general mood of the moment and the way in which a wave of racial and ideological tensions, combined with the effects of COVID-related lockdowns, ramped up the ever-present racial tensions in our society and provided something of an accelerant to the societal flames that were lit in the wake of Floyd's death. That is to say, unlike the police murder of Floyd, Blake's case presented no element of racial injustice. Police responded to the call of a black woman who had a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend for allegedly assaulting her and attempted to legally execute an arrest warrant. Blake chose not to comply and later admitted that he took up the knife against them, though he claimed not to have intended to use it. He was shot while failing to comply with a lawful order as police protected the black woman who had requested their assistance.

That said, the tinder box that was the Floyd incident provided the backdrop from which people again spilled into the streets, some with the honest intention of protesting a system they saw as corrupt, others intent on anarchy and burning said system to the ground. I would also submit that it is constructive to consider that it was into this illogical and in some ways hysterical landscape that all four of the people directly involved in the Rittenhouse incident had inserted themselves.

Early media reports suggested that Rittenhouse had been driven by his mother to Kenosha, with his Smith & Wesson AR series rifle in tow, a narrative that was reinforced endlessly on social media and still seems to be the prevailing understanding of the events among those who feel that Rittenhouse was unjustly acquitted. However, the trial established that a friend of his in Kenosha who'd already turned 18 had previously purchased the rifle on Rittenhouse's behalf and had stored it at his house, planning to keep it there until the minor came of age months later. Rittenhouse initially faced a misdemeanor gun possession charge for having the weapon. However, in accordance with Wisconsin law, the judge threw the charge out when it was established that the length of the weapon barrel met the criteria for an obscure carve out in the legislation that allowed minors to possess certain style rifles.

Nevertheless, Rittenhouse still faced two counts of homicide, one count of attempted homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment for shooting three white men during what can best be explained as either a riot or, at the very least, a period of civil unrest that followed the initial protests. He pled not guilty, claiming self-defense, and was ultimately acquitted on all charges. No matter what you think of Rittenhouse or the judgment he exercised, the ineptitude of the prosecution, or the potential bias of the judge, it seems very clear that "not guilty" was the only verdict the jury could have lawfully returned under Wisconsin law.

The first man Rittenhouse shot was Joseph Rosenbaum, a convicted child molester who had only been released from a mental health facility earlier that same day. Rosenbaum's family testified that he had been being treated for bipolar disorder, claiming that he was unable to fill a prescription for his meds upon his release because the drug stores had been closed down amid the civil unrest the city was experiencing. Multiple witnesses, even some of the prosecution's, described him as being belligerent and confrontational with those he encountered in the hours leading up to his death. At the time of his death, he was out on bail for assault charges. There is no indication that he was participating in protests of any kind.

Rosenbaum, who'd been aggressively interacting with people all day, at one point chased Rittenhouse into a used-car lot, as Rittenhouse yelled "Friendly, friendly, friendly." A reporter testified that after another person fired a shot in the air and then Rosenbaum lunged at Rittenhouse and tried to take his rifle. Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum four times, at close range, killing him, a fairly clear case of self-defense under Wisconsin law. This, however, set off a chain reaction that directly impacted the other shootings.

As Rittenhouse fled the scene, he was chased by a crowd with some yelling "Get him!" Minutes later, he stumbled to the ground when Anthony Huber, a 26-year-old, hit him in the head with a skateboard. From the ground, Rittenhouse fired a single shot, killing Huber. Huber's girlfriend testified that they had gone to the protest together and that after the Rosenbaum shooting, Huber joined others in chasing Rittenhouse, believing him to be an active shooter. She said she tried to stop Huber but that he pushed her out of the way and took off after the teen shooter.

Huber had twice served time in prison, once for violating probation after strangling his brother and again for assaulting his sister. He is also said to have suffered from bipolar disorder. Huber may well have thought he was performing a heroic act in risking his life to stop a murderer rather than a teenager who was fleeing a mob after shooting someone in self-defense. But it's just as reasonable to presume that Rittenhouse saw Huber as an angry member of a mob intent on doing him harm first and asking questions about his interaction with Rosenbaum later. If it was a tragic misunderstanding, however, the person who initiated the violence among the two was the one who paid the ultimate price. That said, in any self-defense case, if the person claiming self-defense is the only one to survive, that party has an obvious advantage in the courtroom as the other party is unable to counter their narrative.

That brings us to the final shooting, that of Gaige Grosskreutz, the only party aside from Rittenhouse to have survived that night's events, losing nearly his entire bicep after being shot in the arm. Like Huber, Grosskreutz was among the small crowd who had given chase following the shooting of Rosenbaum. He was armed with a pistol and, in perhaps the most pivotal moment of the trial, testified that Rittenhouse had not shot at him until he pointed his pistol at Rittenhouse, essentially handing the defense a solid self-defense claim.

Now, there is a lot to dislike in the way the larger event played out. The police in Kenosha outwardly expressed appreciation for the white, right-wing vigilante groups that assisted them, and it would be very difficult to imagine them ignoring an armed black man running through the streets with a semi-automatic rifle the way they did Rittenhouse. There's also evidence that Kenosha police deliberately drove protestors toward right-wing militias.

Additionally, Judge Bruce Schroeder seemed outwardly sympathetic to Rittenhouse from the start, and from attempting to paint Rittenhouse exercising his right to counsel as suspect to providing the defense with an inferior quality video of a key piece of evidence, the prosecution proved itself to be woefully incompetent, at best. In that sense alone, ask yourself how likely a black male in the same situation would be likely to find himself in front of sympathetic cops and judges and you might be able to better understand some people's frustration.

There is also a lot to dislike about Rittenhouse. From the fact that he was in a bar, underage, drinking, and flashing white power signs while wearing a shirt that read "Free as F*ck" with members of a known white supremacy group shortly after pleading not guilty, to the social media posts that seemed to foretell the likelihood of such a tragedy, he should be seen, at best, as a tragically misguided man-child whose poor choices led to the deaths of two other men, a description not dissimilar to that which we could just as easily ascribe to the other parties involved. In other words, there were no heroes in Kenosha that night, or, if there were, they were not part of this particular saga.

To see so many on both the right and the left drawing much more from the events is instructive as to the sad state of our union. Those on the right who are hailing Rittenhouse as a hero should look at the juxtaposition of the two photos below–one taken shortly after he took two human lives in a tragic series of events and the other while standing trial for it. It should go without saying that when it comes to the personification of a hero, that's a rough look, to say the least.

What is to be said about the ideological side that routinely Photoshops the heads of their obese, physically inept heroes onto muscular cartoon characters, and can't stop droning on about snowflakes and attacks on the very idea of masculinity, nevertheless heralding men who are so mentally and physically soft as poster boys for the concept of strength? To that end, it seems there's a straight line that can be drawn from the aptly nicknamed Gravy Seals of that sad attempt at an insurrection on January 6, to Kyle Rittenhouse, to the chickenhawk legislators so eager to spend treasure on war weaponry that someone else can deploy, and none of it leaves the far right with an outward facing image that even remotely resembles what it pretends to see in the mirror.

For those who do not buy into their mass delusion, Kyle Rittenhouse is instead the poster boy for soft, doughy white kids who watch too many Marvel movies, while enjoying a level of institutional privilege that allows them to escape what would all but assuredly be severe consequences for such idiocy, had it been displayed by someone less privileged in our society.

That said, those on the left who seem to feel as though the only just way to respond to the obvious social and judicial inequities between blacks and whites when they interact with American institutions is by way of legal verdicts meant to send a message rather than adhere to the laws that govern us would be well served to take an equally introspective look at their own positions and how hypocritical they can appear. The continuous statements about how Rittenhouse "crossed state lines"–including by the ACLU–are but one example, especially given that the increasingly-partisan organization expressed no qualms about the prosecution's effort to tar Rittenhouse via him exercising his right to counsel.

In the end, the Rittenhouse case wasn't a referendum on race or justice in America. It was the tragic result of a series of events that snowballed into deadly carnage. We would do well to allow it to inspire us to look more closely at our laws, our institutions, and the many ways in which we are falling short in our stated mandate of treating all citizens equally, regardless of race, color, or creed. But that seems far beyond our capacity. So, instead, we'll decamp to our tribes and claim victory or injustice on social media, screaming into the echo chamber that is our bifurcated society. And so long as that remains the only thing we're capable of doing en masse, nothing will meaningfully change.