I write this within days, literally hours, of the jury verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Given the level of publicity it has received, you don't need me to tell you why Rittenhouse was on trial in the first place. Frankly, although it might be good journalism form to do so, I don't feel like I have the time to go through the history of Rittenhouse's time in the limelight.
Because, even though the verdict was the one I and everyone else fully expected, I still have too much outrage over it, and the implications for the rest of us to worry about the form. The substance of this is killing me, emotionally. The phenomenon it represents has already killed far too many innocent Americans, literally. And, unless it can be put to an end, it may kill democracy in the United States. Also literally, and maybe forever.
But I want to start by going through the reasons why the verdict is outrageous. I don't want there to be any doubt about where I am, to borrow a phrase from back in the day, "coming from." If you're reading this, and you think that this is merely the rage of a blindly liberal snowflake who lives to hate people who disagree with them, well, keep reading anyway. There's always that one-in-a-trillion chance you'll learn something.
Kyle Rittenhouse took, without permission, a gun that did not belong to him. He took that gun across state lines, into a state where civil unrest was already being countered effectively by the governor of the state in question. He wandered into the midst of the unrest, already not under color of law, and used deadly force against three people who did not use deadly force against him. Legally, therefore, he was not acting in self-defense. Practically, he killed two people, and seriously injured another. In short, he is every bit as not guilty as Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Mark Chapman, David Hinckley, and the Son of Sam. *Please see update below.
But not, as it turns out, in the eyes of twelve allegedly average citizens in the town of Kenosha, Wisconsin. And so he walks free. The only thing he has to fear is his conscience. If he has one. The rest of us, on the other hand, have to worry about copycat Rittenhouses. Especially men of color.
That last link is to a New York Times column by Charles Blow, someone well worth reading in any case. Especially since, in this column, he notes a time when Ronald Reagan and the National Rifle Association joined forces to enact a California law banning open carry of firearms. Ah, but those were very different circumstances. The rationale for the law in that case was the appearance of members of the Black Panthers at the California State Legislature, armed in accordance with the Panther ideology that African Americans needed to provide themselves with the protection that white police officers weren't willing to give.
That hypocrisy, and the racism behind it, has remained evergreen half a century later. Conservatives aren't opposed to regulating the use of guns. They are only opposed to regulations that limit their use of guns. You have only to look at this piece of claptrap from Lois Weiss of the Murdoch-owned New York Post, one that mercilessly exploits a workplace tragedy involving a celebrity nemesis of Donald Trump, to realize that the right would be thrilled to bits by any regulation of guns by people they hate. (Full disclosure: as an actor, I have been on sets where guns were used in accordance with effective gun protocols, and I fully support this kind of common-sense regulation of firearms, as I support it in other settings as well.)
The hypocrisy, of course, has not emerged in a vacuum. If anything, it illustrates the need for a full discussion of critical race theory, which is nothng more (or less) than an examination of the multiple ways in which racism has been, and continues to be, embedded in the structure of American culture, society, economy, and government. Conservatives have responded to the emergence of CRT by decrying it as a strategy designed to make white people feel guilty. Wrong. It's the start of a process to remove the legacy of racism that is baked into the structure of the country. If that makes you feel "guilty," well, that's strictly on you.
But the hypocrisy should not obscure the role that the conservative fetishization of the Second Amendment played not only in the Rittenhouse nightmare, but in similar nightmares that reoccur over and over again. And that's why I need to digress into a discussion of Charlton Heston.
If you are of a certain age, like me, you remember Heston as the physically chiseled, emotionally stony leading man from historical epics in the 1950s like "The Ten Commandments," as well as sci-fi epics from the 1960s and 1970s such as "Planet of the Apes" and "Soylent Green." On the other hand, if you are an adult of any age at this point, you will also remember him as a long-time member, and president of, the NRA. It may not in fact be stretching a point to say that Heston did more that anyone else to turn the NRA into one of the most lethally powerful political forces in America. He's probably best remembered for popularizing the slogan "I'll give up my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands."
Catchy. But there's a far more dangerous thought that Heston did more to promote, and embed in the minds of Americans, that that one. It's the misbegotten notion that the Second Amendment is more important than any other part of the Constitution, because it gives citizens the power to resist tyranny from its own government.
Let's leave aside the obvious point that a government with the nuclear power to level the planet several times over really doesn't have a lot to fear from men who are spending all of their money on firearms instead of paying their back child support. Instead, let's back up one Amendment, and talk a little about the First one.
The First Amendment (and this will be news to Amy Comey Bennett, who drew a blank on its provisions at her confirmation hearings) guarantee four basic rights: the right to speak freely, the right to worship the religion of one's choice, the right to publish freely, and the right to peaceably assemble to protest injustice. Four separate rights. But all undergirded by one basic, utterly essential freedom: freedom to think. To perceive, to learn, to understand, and to ultimately shaped by the power of the human mind to experience reality and understand how it works. Ultimately, to learn the truth, about oneself, and about everything else.
Without that freedom, the right to own and use a gun becomes the right to be a menace. And, carried to an unfettered conclusion, the right not to fight tyrants, but to become one. Or to become subject to one.
This is not a purely academic analysis. Far from it. This is a description of American society in the Rittenhouse moment. We are now a country in which the right to own a book, or even to discuss its contents, is less important than Kyle Rittenhouse's apparent right to play weekend soldier at the expense of other people's right not only to protest injustice, but even to live.
This was true even before the verdict. In death threats against a news anchor on a conservative network urging people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. In a conservative opinion maker being publicly asked when it will be permissible to use guns. In displays of Confederate symbols at schools. In the unwillingness of our own national law enforcement bureau to respond to advance tips about the January 6 assault on the Capitol. In the willingness of Republican Members of Congress to advocate violence against their political opponents. And in the related willingness of those members to spread social media posts depicting the murders of the President and a Congresswoman.
In the short time since Rittenhouse's acquittal, has it gotten any better? I guess, at this point, that should be purely a rhetorical question. We've got Marjorie QAnon Green, yet another gun-loving Republican, saying she's not in favor of a civil war, but, what the hell, bring it on anyway. We've got Madison Cawthorn, referenced above, pouring more fuel on the fire. And we've got people arrested for writing their opinions of the judge in the Rittenhouse case on the steps of the courthouse. Like I said, in contemporary America, guns effectively have more freedom than thoughts do.
If ever there was a trial that demands the full pushback efforts of every American who really understands what the Constitution is all about, it's this one. We can start with the judge, whose behavior during this trial was almost a clinic on what every member of the bench should avoid doing, and who, as it turns out, has a rather checkered history. Judges are not above the law, or the power of either the government or the people to remove them from their position when doing so, as here, is warranted. You can take a look here at how this works in each state, including Wisconsin. And, whether or not you live in Wisconsin, if you care about civic decency, file a complaint with the Badger State authorities.
But what we really need to to even more urgently is to reclaim the power of the First Amendment over the Second. Without the freedom to think, and the freedoms the First Amendment guarantees relative to that freedom, we will be overwhelmed by the power of guns to destroy us all--not only those in front of them, but those behind them as well. Without that freedom, we have anarchy, and death. Death not just of individuals, but of a Republic built on the belief that a free people, armed first and foremost with the truth, are stronger than any tyrant, even one with all the arms in the world. We can start with critical race theory, and we can start there by refusing to be intimidated by those who would slime it in the same way that conservatives of a different era slimed liberals as Communist sympathizers.
And we cannot--we must not--be afraid of their guns. If the day comes when we need to arm ourselves in self-defense, we will. They would be mistaken to think that we would not be willing to do that. I would be willing to do that. If we act now, and put the First Amendment back in first place, it may not come to that. I pray that it will not come to that.
So, sorry Charlie. The Second Amendment is NOT the most important one.
And I have this piece of food for thought for CongresswQman Marjorie.
I don't want a civil war either.
But I'm not afraid of one. Neither are millions of people on my side of the ideological divide your side has created.
And all of the bullets in the world mean nothing to people who are not afraid of the truth. Or of acting upon it.
*UPDATE: November 21, 2021
I have to apologize for two errors in my description of the events that led to the Rittenhouse trial. He did not take another person's firearm across state lines. The truth isn't much better, however: he sent money to a friend to buy the gnn for him and store it until Rittenhouse's 18th birthday--which had not taken place at the time of the protests. The "straw person" transaction may have been illegal, and Rittenhouse should not have possessed the gun in any case.
Also, the surviving victim did admit to pointing a gun at Rittenhouse. But again, Rittenhouse was not present under color of law to keep the peace. How was the survivor to know what Rittenhouse's motives were? This is the whole problem with the theory that good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns. How do we know who the good and bad guys are? That's why police uniforms exist in the first place. And, if your answer here is that the good guys are white, I'll thank you for having the decency to be honest, but that's all.
Finally, a word about so-called "stand your ground" laws. As noted here, the wording of the Wisconsin statute is vague (perhaps deliberately so, especially given the nature of Wisconsin's Republican legislature) and may have been influenced by the judge's own instructions. I've already said enough about the judge in this case. Otherwise, whether or not you're an attorney, I think we're all free to ask whether this was truly a case of "self-defense." Frankly, the facts here reinforce my view that "stand your ground" laws, as applied, are licenses to hunt humans. We have no evidence of Kyle Rittenhouse's motives in going to Kenosha other than his words. And, given the results, that's not good enough for me.
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I'll be taking off until the first weekend in December. Until then, please have a safe, healthy, and happy Thanksgiving with those you love.
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