After it initially occurred, I only followed the Kyle Rittenhouse story from the edges. A lot of reasons, though mainly the basics seem fairly clear to me, and any details to argue over would come out at the trial. (Arguing with people over things that nobody has any way of knowing always strikes me as an effort in futility.) As for that basic story, it’s an underage teenager who crossed state lines with an AR-47 and shot and killed two people and wounded a third.
Were there extenuating circumstances? I don’t know, that’ll come out at the trial. I suppose there could be, but given that he crossed state lines with an AR-47 and shot and killed two people and wounded a third I would have to wait for the trial to hear a new definition of “extenuating.” Well, yes, there was a protest that got out of control and he apparently felt his life was in danger. Yet even granting that, he’s still the one who went to that protest, crossing state lines with an AR-47 and shot and killed two people and wounded a third. And me, I generally think that someone with an AR-47 tends to pose more of a threat to the lives of others than other people do, as long as they don’t have AR-47s, too. But again, I don’t know the conditions or what actually was said or done, and so that’s what trials are for. So, now we’re at the trail. And honestly, I’ve only followed it tangentially, since at this point outside opinions don’t matter much, and it’s the verdict that matters most. To me, most public trials are a little like awards shows, where you can spend hours of your life watching people talking as they build up to an announcement – or wait until it’s over and spend a minute scrolling down a list to see who won. Sometimes it’s worth watching the awards show because there’s a lot of good entertainment you haven’t seen before, and that’s how I feel about occasionally paying attention to some trials as they go on. Also, in this particular trial, since I’ve read the stories about all the things he won’t allow the prosecution to say – like, for instance, that the people who the nice young innocent-until-proven guilty whippersnapper shot and killed are “victims” and other restrictions that weren’t forbidden to the defense – it would be a waste of time trying to follow the proceedings as a matter of…well, y’know, law. (I do wonder if, instead of “victims,” the prosecution could have referred to the people killed as “corpses”?) So, I didn’t even watch the live coverage yesterday when young master Rittenhouse took the stand in his own defense. I completely understand that he might possibly be found legally “not guilty” of murdering the two people he shot and killed with the AR-47 he crossed state lines with. But since he did, in fact, kill the non-victims, which isn’t in dispute – only why he did, and if it was okay under the law, though likely not to the non-victims – I wasn’t interested in hearing him explain why it was okay. That’s for the jury to decide under the law once all the arguments were made. And as I said, I wasn’t paying attention to all the arguments, on both sides. So, listening to him take the stand would be subjecting myself to hearing a kid who crossed state lines with an AR-47 and shot and killed two people who aren’t victims and wounded a third non-victim justifying why that’s okay. And again, maybe under the law it will be found “okay,” for any number of reasons, including “If there are no victims, how can someone be guilty?!” Driving home from an appointment in the morning, I did hear a bit of the trial on the radio. Maybe two minutes of Kyle Rittenhouse at first trying to avoid answering the question asked until finally acknowledging, yes, he knows he has no right to kill someone for a range of public actions he didn’t like even if they were illegal. I also heard him say that he feared for his life because he’d been kicked – which I didn’t know, and I can see that being scary, but then if someone was coming at me with an AR-47, I’d probably be even more scared and might try kicking them, too. Or running for my life. Anyway, then the prosecutor tried to impeach the witness using evidence the judge had apparently not allowed, and the judge cleared the courtroom and began to read the prosecutor the riot act. It seemed to me that the prosecutor might have inappropriately crossed the line, though I understood his explanation why he thought it was fair to ask – even if it might not have been fair to ask. I thought they each made good arguments, but the judge’s vote count for a lot more. I did, however, think the judge misunderstood the meaning of the word “brazen” when he yelled at the soft-spoken prosecutor for quietly offering his own interpretation of why he acted as he did. I listened to all that for about four minutes, but eventually the weirdness exceeded my limit for the day, and I changed channels. And later in the day, when I saw TV coverage of the day in court, I kept the sound off, even when the teenager seemed to be scrunching his face and heaving in sadness. Though I can’t be sure since, as out of control as he appeared, he admirably controlled the release of any tears. To be very honest – because I didn’t hear him – I have absolutely no idea if that was real sadness or not. I heard a lot of cynics dismiss it as theater. And maybe it was. But I can see if even the most racist white supremacist child was on the stand under those same conditions then the weight of it all would get to even them as they struggled not to weep. So, I truly don’t know – without the context and sound. It had the touches of reality – though also had, to my limited knowledge, a greater force of theatricality. (Which in some ways returns us to the whole “awards show” theme. The only thing from that exchange which I could definitely say is that even if the sadness was real, as much as I feel bad for anyone feeling distraught over the overwhelming circumstances they find themselves in, I feel profoundly more deep sorrow for those who were killed and shot. I saw a comment last night that said -- "Kyle Rittenhouse claims he went to provide 'medical support' that he was not qualified to give, while holding a gun that he was not legally allowed to carry, in a state where he did not live. It doesn’t add up." That seems a fair point. Yes, I'd agree that it doesn't appear to add up. Though, as I said, I haven't followed the story closely or the trial. But then, to me, even acknowledging all those personal qualifiers, nothing seemed to add up after he crossed state lines with an AR-47 and shot and killed two people and wounded a third.
3 Comments
Douglass Abramson
11/11/2021 06:21:56 pm
Little Kyle will really cry when, IF the judge gets the jury to let him off, the Feds arrest him for Federal murder and a raft a Civil Rights and weapons charges. I'm sure the local Federal Attorney has the arrest warrant burning a hole in their pocket while they wait to see if they need to hand it off to the FBI or the Marshals. Hopefully a governing body in Wisconsin will look into the judge's behavior too. In California, the Presiding Judge for the court would have likely taken him off of the case when he issued his special vocabulary list to the District Attorney's Office. It boggles the mind that he is still presiding over such a sensitive case with international interest. I keep waiting to see video of him accusing the prosecutor of stealing the frozen strawberries.
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Robert Elisberg
11/12/2021 04:40:38 pm
There's very little in that I disagree with. The only thing I don't know for sure is what the feds will do. Though the same possibility did occur to me.
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Douglass Abramson
11/12/2021 05:19:47 pm
It's an experiment in positive thinking. 😁
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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