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by $8 blue check mistermix| 250 Comments
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Here’s the Post’s live stream. Here’s the Guardian story.
Comments are closed.
SiubhanDuinne
Fuckles Todd seems pleased.
Woodrow/asim
Horrible day for justice, even if expected.
dr. bloor
No surprise. Up next: federal and civil actions, wherein young Master Rittenhouse learns that the scales of justice are not always tilted in his favor.
Frankensteinbeck
When the judge starts the trial by saying the prosecution must refer to the people Kyle killed as ‘looters’ and ‘rioters’ and not ‘victims’, you know it’s going to be mighty hard to build a jury-swaying case.
Hunter Gathers
White Boy Day.
Aimai
A total obscenity. I am not surprised but very disgusted.
catfishncod
@Frankensteinbeck: Wait, I knew they could not say ‘victims’… they required them to say ‘rioters’?? ?
MisterForkbeard
I was sure they were going to acquit him of the worst charges, but seriously – that trial was a shit show and I’m STILL somewhat in awe that he’s just going to walk away free after intentionally murdering people.
Yutsano
Once again: white Justice is different. Not to mention the judge had his thumb on the scale from the off.
Kyle won’t be so lucky with the federal judge.
RedDirtGirl
Me and my new dog Nola say, “Phuck this sh*t!”!
Kay
@Aimai:
Wait until the celebrity tour starts. He’s the new role model on the Right.
S. Cerevisiae
Yeah, I knew this smug little scumbag was going to walk. Now he will never have to work a day in his life by riding the wingnut welfare gravy train because he did something they all yearn to, kill some liberals.
NotMax
When does Dolt 45 invite him to Elba-lago for lukewarm burgers and soggy fries?
//
SW
Lawless judge makes mockery of legal system
David Fud
The Weeper walks, just like everyone knew he would.
cckids
I was fairly sure this would happen, but what a fucking disgrace.
SiubhanDuinne
@dr. bloor:
I would almost guarantee that sometime in the next few years, this miserable little junior vigilante will kill again.
In self-defence, of course.
Kay
If any Right winger arrives with a weapon anywhere the whole citizenry must obey their orders or they’ll kill the people who won’t comply and get off on self defense.
The message is you must take orders from them. Any of them, at any time.
geg6
No shit. What took them so long? The judge put every digit he had on the scales and would have been pleased with his work if they had sent in this verdict about 2 minutes after he sent to deliberate. That’s what they should have done because no one thought it would be anything different.
I hope that little shithead catches COVID and dies, gasping and wheezing all the way. And his shitty mom, too.
Frankensteinbeck
@catfishncod:
‘Looters’ and ‘rioters’, yes. It makes clear how a judge doesn’t have to write the verdict to make sure he gets the one he wants.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They jury took this long decided for not guilty while shooting while white?
Miss Bianca
@RedDirtGirl: While I am disgusted/sickened/you name it over the Rittenhouse verdict, I have to say that I am all thumbs-up to hear that new dog Nola shares our disapproval!
Kent
@Kay:
The alternative is to gun them down where they stand “in self defense
Because you saw a “furtive movement” or “feared for your life”
Deep Southerner
If you think George Zimmerman went on to do spectacular things after his acquittal, just wait and see how this little fucker turns out. I wonder if his mama will drive him to all his future calamities.
NotMax
@RedDirtGirl
Cool; a new Brooklyn barker. Adopted the one being treated for heartworm?
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Aimai:
So, the Rittenhouse jury has let the rest of America know it’s open season on protesters and demonstrators – or, at least, on Progressive protesters and demonstrators.
I suppose, going forward, anyone planning on attending a demonstration should be prepared to go armed and to defend oneself against live fire.
Which, to be fair, is what conservative demonstrators already do.
And, yes, that would basically turn every civil demonstration into a civil war zone.
But I guess we’re already there …
Deep Southerner
@SiubhanDuinne: See “George Zimmerman” above.
Poe Larity
So what Congressional seat should he shoot for in 2028 or so?
I presume he’ll get a scholarship at University of Austin.
Immanentize
@catfishncod: No, it is NOT true.
raven
David Henderson, Civil Rights Attorney just said if the families came in to his office and asked him to file a civil suit he would say no. It will do nothing but cause you more pain. He also said they should have never charged him with murder. (Imm?)
eclare
@RedDirtGirl: You found a dog? Hooray! Some good news.
Kay
There’s another Right wing vigilante shooter case to watch.
Get used to it. These people believe they are entitled to patrol our neighborhoods and execute people. The whole Right wing is encouraging this and cheering it on. Honestly, no one is safe. There weren’t any riots in this one. They just decided to pursue and kill this man because they were bored one afternoon.
Old School
From The Onion:
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne:
I foresee some domestic violence incidents, raking in a bunch of money and blowing it on cars and opioids, some kids out of “wedlock” (I hate that word), wrecking the cars, and a drug overdose.
AnthroBabe
@Kay: Yup. Guest speaker at CPAC and the RNC 2024? Lord, I am tired of this…
zhena gogolia
Fuck.
As the close relative of a murder victim, I say fuck that fucking judge and those jurors.
sixthdoctor
Josh Marshall used the phrase “wingnut murder safari” to describe Rittenhouse’s act and I think we’ll be seeing more of these.
brendancalling
@Kent:
Yes. And it’s been coming to that end for a very, very long time.
They want a shooting war with their fellow Americans.
SiubhanDuinne
@Deep Southerner:
Yes, I was thinking of GZ.
Kay
@raven:
I’m sorry the families were treated so shabbily by the legal system. Whatever the verdict, there was no reason to treat the shooter like a celebrity and the victims like garbage in this trial. It didn’t have to be so bad for them. I’m ashamed of it.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: This is true, but my guess is the itch to commit politically motivated violence on strangers in public is overwhelmingly but not exclusively a right-wing trait. I don’t think there are enough anarchists to make a real fight of it.
Suzanne
@brendancalling:
Yes this. They want to kill us.
WaterGirl
Not surprised, not shocked. That judge doesn’t belong anywhere near a courtroom, at least not wearing a black robe. Perhaps he has a white robe at home? And maybe a nice white hat with cutouts for his eyes?
In case anyone wants to rage donate toward organizing that can help us throw Ron Johnson out of the senate, help keep the Senate, and maybe win the governorship, and get the Native vote organized to help us again in 2024:
FOUR DIRECTIONS – WI
Double-Match Fundraising
Having a DOJ that actually cares about the law is pretty handy. If we can keep it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
Certainly. What you foresee and what I foresee, they are not mutually exclusive.
Kay
@AnthroBabe:
It’s amusing that the Right wing who are so terrified of YA books about gay teenagers are promoting this guy as a role model.
Reap what you sow, fuckers. This is what your sons are looking to become. This is what they’re raising.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Kay:
If they keep getting declared Not Guilty, then they are.
That’s the society we’ll have to get used to. And by “get used to” I mean: learn how to fire back.
Immanentize
@Kay: Our old rules about self defense have been tossed out the window with the new additions of “right to carry” and “stand your ground.” Add “citizen’s arrest,” in the Arbery case and there is no meaningful way to describe the right to self defense other than ” I was scared!”
Reasonable gun carry laws, the duty to retreat, actual deadly threat are the old timey principles developed to prevent just this kind of verdict. But we know better now! And when the rules aren’t clear, the jury gets to exercise it’s discretion, which in Kenosha was not pro-demonstrators.
Eolirin
@Kay: That celebrity tour is going to make everything about this worse too.
Honestly, if anyone thinks he’s going to be okay, as in will be able to become a functional emotionally mature adult that can have healthy relationships after all of this, I think they’re kind of crazy. Unless he’s an actual psychopath, the kid is gonna end up broken for life. The right wing hero workship is *also* dehumanizing and not helpful.
This sort of thing causes real trauma and that trauma is never going to get addressed, and isn’t even going to be acknowledged. Same thing happened to Zimmerman. Life went even more off the rails afterwards.
Justice being denied here really fucking sucks, but Rittenhouse isn’t facing a decent existence after this either even with his undeserved freedom. He’s not winning, we’re *all* losing. And this sets the precedent, coupled with the encouragement on the right, for all the other aggro gun totting assholes out there that they’re immune from consequence and will get praised for doing things that will destroy their lives, which is just going to lead to more tragedy for everyone.
We’re trapped in a cycle of abuse driven by one of our two political parties. This isn’t sustainable.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Suzanne: That’s the thing, and how many people will little Cryface McDumbass take with him? That are also white with the Right kind of politics?
I half suspect this Ritterhouse is screwed up in the head in the head – wanting to be a cop is a big thing in my experience with autistic teens, and whatever group of low life meth dealer “militia” he bumbled into his attempt to be a pretend policeman cynically put him up for that shooting.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: At least the judge in the Arbery case isn’t a clown who acts like he’s a close family friend of the defendants. I think there’s a decent chance the shooter in that case will be convicted, thanks to his dumbass buddy videoing the murder. If not for that, he’d never have been charged.
banditqueen
I feel awful for the families of the victims–the jury members, judge, defense, media, all of them, should be ashamed of themselves. Yes, the verdict was expected but it hit like a hurricane regardless. The media drones on and on about “gangs in Haiti”–that’s where this is going. Just horrible.
UncleEbeneezer
@raven: Ben Crump (who just helped secure a $7.5 Million settlement for the family of Anthony McLain, here in Pasadena) will be happy to help those families if they decide to pursue Civil Rights or Civil Cases against Rittenhouse and his family. If that’s the justice they seek, they should pursue it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That is an amazingly accurate spelling error for what they do.
Jeffro
White college kids better look out next time they rampage and turn cars over after a football win; after all, it should be perfectly fine now for some out-of-town Black teenager with an AR-15 to get dropped off by his mom in East Lansing, feel “threatened” by the mayhem he
sought outencountered, and start shooting, right?Immanentize
Also, people, that Judge was not uniquely bad and fairly representative of the crack pots who sit on the bench across this great land — especially where judges are elected.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
He did himself no favours when he testified in his own defence yesterday. And the prosecutor was really good, unlike in the Rittenhouse case.
cckids
Truth. And, since right-wingers are hands-down the most terrified people on the planet, this doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.
H.E.Wolf
Violent action against the less powerful is nothing new in this country. Ask the Native American organizers at Four Directions… for whom BJ is running a fundraiser this month.
The ActBlue thermometer is in the sidebar. Donate in repudiation of the little killer and all he represents.
[ETA: WaterGirl has added a donation link, earlier in the thread. Thank you!]
Yutsano
Agreed. How do we get out of this situation?
WaterGirl
@Immanentize:
Pretty sure that is not making anyone feel less outraged about this. :-
edit: Not that it’s your job to try to console us. Reality sucks.
Lacuna Synecdoche
I don’t know that it’s fair to declare the prosecutor in the Rittenhouse case good or not good. When the judge rigs the scales against the prosecutor with a two-ton barbell, there’s really not much the prosecutor can do except go through the motions and hope for a mistrial.
Eolirin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Oops, but I’ll leave it unfixed then. :)
Martin
I said yesterday I didn’t see many ways through our current political moment without violence. This just reinforces that. I am very, very hesitant to arm up, but that’s the likely end game here.
opiejeanne
@S. Cerevisiae: That money will be spent, most of it blown on stupid shit probably, and a few years down the road he won’t have any friends. The RW shows won’t continue to have him on once they tire of his whiny-ass whining.
opiejeanne
@Martin: People are going to die because of this verdict, today or tomorrow.
Martin
@Lacuna Synecdoche: Yeah, this had shades of the Chicago Seven. Not nearly as severe, but plenty of WTF moments with this judge.
James E Powell
I was thinking of Bernard Goetz the whole time.
The majority of white Americans are scaredy pants bigots who approve of & even welcome violence against people who make them uncomfortable. They will never vote to convict a white vigilante or a police officer.
Chris
This goes along with a bunch of things, to include 1/6 and the Texas abortion law, in a broader pattern: Republicans trying to create a legal system that effectively deputizes all conservatives as either de facto or de jure agents of the state, while making everyone else fair game for whatever they decide you’re guilty of.
In effect, it’s their effort to recreate Jim Crow, but contrary to the original Jim Crow (or more precisely, contrary to how it’s often perceived), the unpersons aren’t limited to black people.
Paul in St. Augustine
@dr. bloor:
We can only hope
Eolirin
@Yutsano: I honestly don’t know.
I think the success of anti bullying initiatives in schools that Kay’s talked about might help in the long term, if we can keep them. But short of generational change ultimately leading to a shift in what we consider acceptable I have no ideas at all.
Sure Lurkalot
Indeed.
Skepticat
Totally expected and totally sickening—and frightening. Remember the yahoo who said, “When do we get to use the guns and kill them?” The answer is right now.
And after he’s on “Dancing with the Stars,” this vigilante can be Gaetz’s intern.
I wish the prosecutors had raised this point, which I saw last week. “If the situation was so dangerous on August 25 … in Kenosha, how come the only three people shot all night were shot by Kyle Rittenhouse?”
Martin
@opiejeanne: Probably. And more due to the 2nd order effects. Hard to not see this verdict tied to the Trayvon Martin murder verdict. Same reasoning, same impact. USSC seems poised to make things much worse hinting that the 2nd amendment gives everyone a fundamental right to open carry.
Culture war slowly giving way to a real one.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
If they can’t convict in that case there’s no law other than vigilante justice.
What is alarming to me is the words of the vigilantes themselves. They are coming into these situations completely believing that they have some “right” over other people- that they are”police” and that not following their orders and demands is justification for killing the people who won’t comply.
They believe this, and they’re learning it somewhere. The Arbrey vigilantes believe they have a right to pursue someone with a truck, trap them, and if they fight back they can then kill them.
What they’re demanding is complete and utter compliance, by everyone, to them. They expect us to recognize their authority over us.
Eolirin
@Martin: I’m not sure violence is an effective response to the kind of political violence that’s going to be attempted here. It certainly wasn’t a solution to the Jim Crow south.
We don’t have law enforcement on our side. We’d never win if it came down to that. We need to fight this asymmetrically. And that means being willing to die more than being willing to kill.
But we also have powerful ways to bring social and economic pressures to bear. We’re already winning on those fronts. That’s part of why they’re having to ramp up the violence. It’s all they have left.
Alison Rose
FUCK EVERYTHING
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s the new model for them for how to get away with murder. Like that guy in the Arbery murder in GA, who said it was self-defense after they stalked and tried to abduct Arbery. He was “afraid” because the guy they tried to abduct objected and tried to get the gun away from him! Go out, make people scared when you point your big gun at them, and then when they try to disarm you shoot them and say you were afraid of them. Bingo, murder with no consequences!
Immanentize
@WaterGirl:
My point is that you cannot say that this was an aberration because the judge sucked. He made some good calls (including the one about the term “victim”) and did some really poisonous stuff in front of the jury. But don’t blame the judge for this verdict. It is not a unique thing because of what he did. The laws allowed it.
But people in places which have elected judges really ought to commit time money and effort to those races.
The Thin Black Duke
I hate being right:
https://link.medium.com/V3ZMWm1Ojlb
VeniceRiley
I think they want to throw us all in a deep it, listen to the crunch, and then jack off on our corpses.
SiubhanDuinne
@Lacuna Synecdoche:
And in fact, I thought the prosecutor was very good in his summation/closing arguments. But there were some own goals during his cross-examinations. And he should have known what an asshole the judge was and been a bit more careful. He had to have known that he’d piss off the judge.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Its not subtle, the message here. It’s “don’t fight back, don’t refuse to follow their orders, and they’ll let you live”.
If you fight back, if you refuse to comply with whatever the Right winger with the gun orders you to do, the state (now) says the Right winger can kill you.
They’ll be strutting around patrolling now. If you do something that scares them they’re entitled to shoot you.
Brachiator
@opiejeanne:
Sadly, I think you mean:
“More people are going to die because of this verdict, today or tomorrow.”
Immanentize
@James E Powell: Bernie Goetz is the perfect Godfather of this case. I’ve been thinking this for weeks. Or Bronson in Death Wish.
Do you know what happened to Bernie? He ended up being the premier Rescuer of squirrels in NYC.
Kay
@Soprano2:
If they can’t convict Arbery we’re all at real risk. Any Right winger with a weapon is “the law” if they can’t put those three in prison. All bets are off.
Immanentize
@Alison Rose: I support your platform. Where do I contribute?
LStrom
@dr. bloor: How so? Seriously. Are there federal and civil actions still pending?
Cameron
So…..how long until the first Rittenhouse copycat starts mowing people down? I’m guessing by Sunday night.
AM in NC
Is it wrong that I’m half-fantasizing about a small army of liberal women shooting tens of thousands of agro white supremacist bois in the crotches because they felt scared by the heavier, taller, looming men, and they get away with it because of these laws? I’ve always thought the only way we have gun control laws again or get rid of these insane stand your ground laws is if women start killing men in significant numbers, and Black folks start taking out White people (Reagan freaking out about the Black Panthers open carrying in CA is how we got the last wave of gun regulations). But in our world, the women and Black people would just go to jail, I’m afraid; no right to self-defense for them. In my fantasy, on the other hand, the army of ‘no fucks left to give’ women not only sterilizes a lot of Nazis, they also get the rest of them to mandate sensible gun regulations.
Soprano2
@Kay: Oh, I totally agree. To me that case is open and shut – they stalked and tried to abduct that man at gunpoint. What do they think Arbery thought was happening? What if he had been a woman? My self-defense instructor told us to fight when someone tried to pull us into a vehicle. Now, I’m supposed to just meekly submit if they’re a right-winger who thinks I committed a crime sometime in the past? Fuck that shit!
Eolirin
@Cameron: There would need to be large scale civil rights protests going on, so probably not.
Martin
What make you think we’ll be given a choice in the matter?
The Jim Crow south at least had the benefit of being a system perpetuated by a minority of the country. There were other states that could steer the federal government to a non-violent resolution. I mean, the Confederacy lost that fight once, they didn’t have any reason to believe they wouldn’t lose it twice.
There is no such countervailing force now, or I should say, it’s not southern state legislatures against northern or western state legislatures now. It’s any citizen is given permission to enact violence (not necessarily physical – but the ability to constrain their decisions) against any other citizen. That’s what the Texas abortion bill does. That’s what open-carry does. They are very difficult things to push against, especially if you’ve stacked the federal courts. It doesn’t really matter how blue CA is if courts have empowered my neighbor to shoot me because of the Black Lives Matter sign in my front yard.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Once states started accommodating chickenshits who are afraid to leave their homes without a gun, it became inevitable.
Immanentize
@Kay: Arbery is dead. Shot by McMichael who’s is on trial for murder. Mr. Arbery is beyond conviction.
I know you meant “convict the defendants in the trial about Ahmaud Arbery’s killing” but using the name of black victims to identify the trial of white killers itself tilts the perceptions of who is on trial. I was glad everyone called it the Rittenhouse Trial. But it was tough to get people to call the trial of Chauvin anything other than the George Floyd trial.
Old Man Shadow
@Lacuna Synecdoche: Exactly. This is an invitation for everyone to bring their guns to rallies and protests they disagree with and start trouble.
Conservatives think they are the only ones armed in America and are prying open the lid on Pandora’s box.
Betty
Wingnuts on Facebook ate celebrating without any concept of what this could mean in terms of public safety, including their own. Although it wasn’t legally a mistrial, it was morally. Bad judge and poor attorneys on both sides, I am reliably informed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: Yes. Unfortunately, this is true. That being said, time for federal charges.
Nelle
@The Thin Black Duke: This line -” Kyle Rittenhouse is the homicidal sociopath that a delusional White America imagines black people to be.” – that line sums it all up.
Kay
When the Right wing vigilante plowed into a crowd to murder people at a protest with his car he was punished, self defense not being available in that case. No more Right wingers plowing into crowds.
The gun murders are less risky for the vigilantes, so we’ve seen more of them.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: I actually am a lot more hopeful about federal charges against Rittenhouse than most seem to be. The anti-KKK laws of the reconstruction era give prosecutors a lot of power in this particular scenario. We’ll see….
ETA But if the feds do file charges I will have to spend a lot of time explaining dual sovereignty concepts.
CaseyL
To me the message going forward is pretty clear: white men with guns are out to kill, so shoot them first.
Mai Naem mobile
This loser’s going to be Biden’s George Zimmerman. I guarantee this little Nazi will kill or maim again.
lee
@Lacuna Synecdoche:
The one thing that stands out for me against the Prosecutor was that the charge of being out past curfew was dropped because he didn’t print out the PDF of the curfew order and bring it to trial.
Eolirin
@Martin: I don’t think that courts will empower your neighbor to shoot you in CA though. And to the extent that they do it’ll be if you’re not white and shooting back will just result in you being killed by law enforcement or sentenced to prison.
Mass civil disobedience and a cultural rejection of state power to be abused in this way is the only thing that plausibly makes a difference.
Violence will be used as a justification for more violence and we are out gunned with respect to law enforcement. I think we could actually win a low intensity but hot conflict if we didn’t have to deal with law enforcement weighing in, but we do. We will always lose on those grounds.
geg6
@Suzanne:
Totally agree. They want to kill us and dance around our dead bodies, hooting and hollering.
I hate them. I keep seeing people saying we need to learn how to talk to them, to have empathy for them and, based on the media coverage, be aware of every single one of their complaints about life and amplify and validate them. Fuck that shit. Just fuck it. I despise them and want them all to suffer. Or at the very least, not be living in the same country, state, county or town as me.
Betty
@Lacuna Synecdoche: There was a lot of criticism of the prosecutor to the point that some were questioning his intent.
WaterGirl
@VeniceRiley: Is “us all” black people, Democrats, or “liberals”?
Jeffro
100% this. No open carry = no Rittenhouse. If people want to wave guns around, they should either be in the home, at the shooting range, or out in a field hunting deer. Not out on the streets.
The other piece are these horribly written laws that (as many of you have already noted) that let perpetrators skate if they ‘were in fear’ for their lives or whatever. They’re ALWAYS in fear. That can’t be an excuse to let er’ rip.
Get rid of open carry and overturn laws that let fear alone acquit the perps.
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: Yep. First thing I learned in self defense was that Location A is always better for you than Location B, so fight like hell.
The Thin Black Duke
@geg6: If talking to these assholes made a difference, they’d sew our mouths shut with iron thread.
MazeDancer
Knew he’d get off the minute he cried those Kavanaugh tears.
glc
Personally, I was surprised that Rittenhouse was acquitted on all counts, given that the jury actually deliberated.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: I also think this a good case for successful federal prosecution.
Almost Retired
I just went on Facebook. Don’t do that.
Ohio Mom
@Chris: I think it’s set of a larger project to dismantle the Democratic state.
Violence in the service of law enforcement isn’t the monopoly of the state anymore. In Ohio we are expanding concealed carry, vigilantism for everyone!
Then there is the effort to undo the administrative state, and IIRC, the recent finding that foreign nationals can contribute to ballot imitative campaigns. How can we have a sovereign state if non-citizens can participate?
Hungry Joe
Had he been found guilty on any of the charges the judge just would have given him a suspended sentence. Kyle R. was going to walk no matter what.
VeniceRiley
@WaterGirl: All of the above.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl: Yes
Women too! Don’t forget the ladies!
geg6
@glc:
Don’t know that they actually did. Who knows why it took them four days to get to the verdict we always knew they were going to get to. None of us were in the room with them, so don’t give them credit for something we cannot possibly know about.
Geminid
@Kay: The lawsuit, Sines v. Kessler against the people who attracted the car-murderer to Charlottesville on August 12, 2017 is now being decided by a federal court jury in Charlottesville. The plaintiffs and defendants gave their final arguments yesterday. Among others, Raw Story is covering this civil trial. Local activist/reporter Molly Conger has been live tweeting throughout the trial as @SocialistDogMom.
Immanentize
@Almost Retired: Always sound advice
VeniceRiley
@Kay:
Exactly right.
WaterGirl
@Almost Retired: That got a wry chuckle from me. Surely excellent advice.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: Sad but true.
WaterGirl
@geg6: You’re right, we can’t know. My first thought when I heard that the jury was taking awhile? They knew exactly what their verdict would be but they thought it would look better to appear to be taking some time.
JoyceH
@CaseyL:
Absolutely. Tubby guy with an AR standing in line at Starbucks, just for performative jackassery, little old lady pulls a handgun out of her purse and plugs him, claims self-defense.
It would be the trial of the century. Why did she have the gun? “My late husband always insisted that I have a gun in my purse, ever since he was mugged in 1972.” Why did she shoot? “I feared for my life! He ordered his latte in a loud and aggressive manner. I was certain he was about to open fire on the crowd. I saved them all from a mass murderer!”
And then there’s the outside the courtroom portion, where the lives of the shooter and the victim are dissected. Little old lady’s Facebook page is all about her peonies and her grandkids and her cat. The victim’s social media… well, you know.
Old Man Shadow
@WaterGirl: Yes.
Sure Lurkalot
@WaterGirl: I threw in $25 for the match (I hope that’s still on).
Betty Cracker
If belligerent, puffed-up punks like Rittenhouse are allowed to walk around cities carrying battle-zone weapon AND are allowed to shoot anyone who scares them, people are going to get killed, and the killing will be legal. I’m not sure we can blame the jury for this. Sounds like they applied the law, which is their job. The judge preemptively removed the illegal weapons charge.
...now I try to be amused
@David Fud:
Boys don’t cry, except when it can get them an acquittal or a Supreme Court seat.
Eolirin
@JoyceH: An otherwise benign old white lady is probably the only category of person that could get away with something like that. Anyone else would get gunned down by responding officers or have a decent to high probability of being convicted for being a liberal/commie/feminist/scary minority terrorist trying to take away a perfectly upstanding white man’s constitutional right to open carry.
jnfr
Neither shocked nor surprised here either, but deeply sad for my very broken country.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
“All these guns. Beautiful guns. Be a shame not to use them, am I right?”
Jinchi
That’s not quite right. They reserve the right to kill you. Period. Trayvon Martin spent most of his exchange with Zimmerman trying to get away from a stalker with a gun. So did Ahmed Arbery. In each case, they were put in a position where they couldn’t retreat.
Unarmed men pursued relentlessly by armed attackers, who are absurdly the ones given the benefit of the doubt under Stand Your Ground defenses. If Martin or Arbery had actually turned the tables and killed their attackers I have no doubt they’d both spend years in prison for their efforts.
Woodrow/asim
White Supremacists — and those sympathetic or friendly to such — have always thought so. And when I say “White Supremacists” I’m not just talking about those who clothe themselves in white robes and Nazi fetish gear.
I’m not the first commentator to compare Stand Your Ground, or the Texas SB8 horror show, to the Fugitive Slave Laws. This has been a part of how America — and not just the South — thinks of itself, for centuries. I root my reaction in that awareness, and in the need to push, with all our might, to avoid a rollback to the 1850s.
As I said early on here, it is a miscarriage of justice. One that is part of a long history of such, a history invisible to a lot of people, in this country, for a long time. And I include myself, in that number; it took a lot of hard study and painful discussions, to come to this understanding — and I’ll keep trying to understand until I die.
I have more I’d like to say, yet just saying this, is tough enough.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Hasn’t the Supreme Court accepted an open carry ban challenge that could invalidate such laws nationwide? I seem to remember something like that. Lord help us all.
Eolirin
@Woodrow/asim: I really value your comments on these topics. I don’t have anything else to add but I wanted you to know that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty: Prosecutors aren’t necessarily good litigators. They have a lot of structural advantages in the system and they rely on them.
Fair Economist
@WaterGirl: Thanks, WaterGirl. Best response we can make. It’s even in Wisconsin!
CaseyL
@JoyceH: I look forward to this, but hope I’m not the little old lady in question, as my comments here and on Twitter (plus on my long-dormant but probably still searchable FB account) would do me in.
dww44
@Jinchi: Nope. They would have been sentenced to death. No questions asked. If there is no death penalty in WI, maybe life without parole, but in Georgia, the death penalty is still very much with us. But the case in Wisconsin, as compared to the judicial conduct here, is further evidence that racist and biased judges are not the sole province of the American South.
Kay
Giggling like a psychopath, rooting for more bloodshed:
They’re hoping their followers go out and kill some more people.
matryoshka
@AM in NC: I don’t think it is wrong at all. In fact, I’d say it is entirely appropriate and you are not alone.
Eolirin
@Kay: I wish we had the stomach (and legal mechanisms) to go after people like him for inciting violence, because that’s what that is.
Wyatt Salamanca
This judge was a pure, unadulterated monstrosity. From the moment the trial began, he showed all of us that he was completely in the tank for Rittenhouse.
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: ballot initiative (thanks for nothing, spell check)
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Would you (or another of the knowledgeable legal minds here) please game out for us IANAL types: What specific federal charges? Where would such charges be filed? What might be the likely penalties? When might such a scenario unfold?
TYIA.
WaterGirl
@Sure Lurkalot: thank you!
Double-match is still on for any amount until we reach $25,000. So your $25 gets $75 for Native vote organizing.
trollhattan
@Kay: Am I allowed to hope Cawthorn and Gaetz get into a beef, fighting over who gets to have Rittenhouse on their staff, and it leads to bloodshed?
If that makes me a bad person, then I accept.
Sure Lurkalot
@geg6:
More than anything, the changes in gun laws and the increase in the number of guns that have occurred in my lifetime have me thinking that my end days may (should?) not be in America. I can deal with a lot of the other shit.
I don’t want to be scared about driving too slow and ticking someone off to the point of being shot at. I don’t want to live in a country where the Kyle Rittenhouses are heroes.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: I thought the SCOTUS case was about concealed carry permit restrictions, but I could be wrong. I’m not a fan of permissive concealed or open carry laws, but open carry seems especially harmful to society because it’s all about intimidation.
Surprisingly, Florida does NOT permit open carry except under fairly strict conditions, i.e., when the carrier is actively hunting, fishing, etc. The yahoos are trying to change that, naturally.
There’s a crank in the Tampa Bay area who enjoys terrorizing people by marching across crowded beaches with an AR-15, then throwing a line in the water so he can pretend to be fishing instead of waving his prosthetic metal penis around for all to see.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Kay:
Madison Cawthorn is scum with a capital S.
Geminid
@trollhattan: They heard the New York gun law case a couple weeks ago, and the plaintiff’s argument seemed to be received sympathetically. Striking down that law would be a big step that would go way beyond Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller. Hundreds of gun safety laws, in almost every state, would be at risk..
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Not knowledgeable! But, there is a crossing-state-lines aspect and a civil rights violation aspect as far as I can speculate.
UncleEbeneezer
@SiubhanDuinne: The families of victims already have Civil Suits against Rittenhouse. But yes I’d love to hear from some experts about potential for Federal/Civil Rights charges too.
Wyatt Salamanca
@WaterGirl:
This judge was simply auditioning for a show on Fox News, OAN, or Newsmax.
Geminid
@Geminid: correction made to #153.
The Dangerman
A travesty. No shock, but still a travesty. There’s a bunch of gun humpers that are madly fapping away on this news. I hope the ER’s are ready for injuries from all that jerking off.
There is really only one answer and that is to carry as well.
Ruckus
@Almost Retired:
I haven’t been on FB in a few years. And I’m a better person for it.
I had an account, deleted it and know better than to ever even peek.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Basically, it would be civil rights violations. That Rittenhouse violated their civil rights when he killed them. That is a very simplistic explanation but I am on my phone. Probably filing charges in the E D of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
I wasn’t able to edit my comment in time, but I was actually typing “I assume the transporting weapons across state lines by a minor would be one of them” when the windows slammed shut on my fingers. Any notion what kind of penalty that carries?
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you, OO.
Sure Lurkalot
@Eolirin: This truly bothers me. Why is it OK to incite violence over the public airways? There aren’t even code words anymore. It’s blatant as shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: Possibly federal weapons charges as well. The civil rights charges would same kinds of things used in the South when juries would not convict white people for killing civil rights workers, etc.
aliasofwestgate
News helicopters have been hovering over downtown (which is a block or two away from me here in Kenosha), since about noon. That more than anything else is stressing me out. I knew this verdict was going to be a shitshow the moment the judge started making those comments he did earlier. I am actually glad the National Guard is here, because the conservative yahoos came out of the woodwork while the trial was on and roomie and i have avoided downtown entirely since the trial started.
Frankly, i would be playing Final Fantasy XIV online right now and ignoring this shit, but my mouse broke and the new one hasn’t arrived. It’s driving me up the wall. I am not sure if watching something would keep my attention the same way an active game would.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
Not only allowed, but enthusiastically encouraged!
A Good Woman
@Immanentize:
This showed up in my Twitter feed. Have you seen this? IANAL but the writer appears to make some salient points about the limitations in WI law that practically made the verdict inevitable. He also notes that it is not a good thing.
NYMAG article on Rittenhouse trial.
zhena gogolia
@aliasofwestgate: I hope you can stay safe.
Woodrow/asim
Yes. And to be pedantic — because it matters to the end-goal — there’s more.
Race massacres, at least the ones I’m aware of in US history, happen to re-establish White Supremacist’s power, and/or align other groups to that power center. Tulsa was about Black Wall Street’s money and prestige, whereas much of the other so-called “Red Summer” events were about Black labor vs. stable and new “white” population groups.
(NOTE: this is not my direct area of study, yet I’m getting out on my skis because I think it’s critical to this situation in WI, today.)
Contrast with the Reconstruction era, where violence was more directly about shutting down Black political power, along with the White folx who allied in Fusion coalitions. Or with Jim Crow, where many acts of violence — not just lynching — were about holding Black power in, not simply inflicting violence for its own sake.
This is what ties modern White Supremacy to misogyny, TERF bullshit, anti-immigration, and so much else — the need to not just scapegoat, but to drive up the fears of the White soon-to-be-minority, similar to Jim Crow.
They want as many people as afraid as possible; the (currently) marginalized, so that they fall back in line, and the “whites” so that they vote in line, and use the power given to treat the marginalized as their own bread and circuses, once again. Note that, before Black folx got our freedom, the slave owners pulled horrific voting manipulation tactics, up to and including getting people drunk, on poor whites All they did to us Black folx, post-1877 Compromise, was re-run those plays (well, no liquor for us!) while psych-op’ing the hell outta the same poor whites they toyed with — then sent to war! — before.
And still do.
Dead people in the street mean nothing to people like Cawthorn and his ilk, if those bodies don’t make the right people afraid, in the right way. They don’t want to slaughter anyone — unless they “have to”. They just want Black bodies, and so many others, back in the cages, real or imagined, that allow the “right” people to sit back on top of the social and economic hierarchy, without any question. And “random” deaths don’t get you that.
Deaths that make certain people feel powerful, and others powerless, do.
Part of our work is to disrupt that effect, as much and as loudly as possible. That’s doable — and is part of why I still have hope, y’all.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I get caught on that sometimes too with a long edit. So rude!
If you’re doing more than fixing a typo or adding the word you left out, just type an x or any other key anywhere in the comment, update your comment, and then you get a fresh 5 minutes to edit.
You may know that already, but maybe someone else won’t.
Mike in NC
Who will play him in the Lifetime movie?
Anotherlurker
I kicked $50.00 in to 4 Directions.
It is the only thing I could do to fight back against this lunacy. Acting on my gut instincts would only hurt me.
However, I will not lift a finger to help any individual gop supporter or their family and friends. If they are broken down on the side of the road, I will just keep on driving. If they need a contribution to a COVID generated gofundme, fuck them.
JML
I don’t blame the jury on this one, not really. At the end of the day, I don’t want juries convicting people based on facts not in evidence. I blame the prosecutor a little: someone more skilled might have been able to handle the judge and the case better and maybe sell one of the charges. But the judge here didn’t just put his thumb on the scale, he dropped his entire fat ass on the defense’s side. Hells bells, that hard to overcome, especially when he kicked the gun charge which would have been a slam dunk and guaranteed some punishment.
Omnes Omnibus
@JML: How was the gun charge a slam dunk?
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: If nothing else no double jeopardy. He can be charged in federal court.
EDIT: stupid fingers…
taumaturgo
@Eolirin: I sense that in any homicide there are at least two victims, two deaths, the deceased and the killer.
aliasofwestgate
@zhena gogolia: I have zero plans to go anywhere. Especially as a minority woman. The helicopter noise being enough to irritate me is caution enough to begin with. Much less knowing how shitty human behavior is, especially as of late around here.
Cacti
The Judge achieved his intended result.
I’m only surprised they deliberated this long.
Eolirin
@aliasofwestgate: I hope your replacement mouse gets to you soon. Best of luck on staying sane.
The Dangerman
So, Rittenhouse was a Good Guy With A Gun (GGWAG).
If the paramedic (IIRC) had shot the fucker, would he have been charged? Can a GGWAG be shot by another GGWAG?
Fair Economist
I’m sitting my mother as she watch CNN nonstop and boy CNN is jumping on the Rittenhouse verdict as a way to not talk about the Build Back Better act passing the House. For all the horrors caused by Republican legislators legalizing murder and lynching, almost any of the BBB provisions is far more consequential. How many thousands of lives would be saved each year by just the insulin price caps?
Old School
@Omnes Omnibus:
You don’t think the prosecutor could have proved Rittenhouse was a minor in possession of a firearm?
Sebastian
Mastercard and Visa can deny business if they see a nipple but racism and murder is ok.
It’s time to create laws that will deplatform Fox, Tucker Carlson, OAN, and all the other racist shit. If it is not allowed within a corporation due to discrimination laws then it shouldn’t be allowed to make money off of it either.
matryoshka
Here in Misery we have the Second Amendment Preservation Act, which prohibits local police from working with the ATF to keep guns out of the hands of felons. Police are already alarmed at the open gunfire in the streets in what was a boring little college town this time last year. I guess “feeling threatened” is the new normal.
germy
Kay
Another elected Republican rooting for more bloodshed. Celebrating the deaths of the two victims and encouraging others to go out and shoot their political enemies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Old School: 17 y/o is legal in WI.
Immanentize
@A Good Woman: I hadn’t seen that, but that is pretty much right on and what my friends in defense and poverty work are saying.
Eolirin
@Old School: The way the WI statute was worded seemed like it didn’t apply to him to me, but IANAL.
Jinchi
@Cacti:
I haven’t seen the final juror vote count. It seems hard to believe it could be unanimous for acquital on all charges.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: Ritterhouse killed two, Abbot’s kill count in is the thousands.
Kay
The entire anti-culture sector now consists of scolding people. They all wrote the identical Riitenhouse take – it’s the fault of the protestors- and now they’re all out with the same stern lecture.
You wonder how much of this sloppy, facile garbage people will pay for- isn’t it already a saturated market? Do you need more than three people writing the same thing over and over?
ETtheLibrarian
It is only a matter of time before this f***et gets himself in trouble again. He’s like George Zimmerman in that way.
Cacti
The decrepit hack who presided over this case is typical of local and county courtrooms throughout the country.
Men who have been in their own little power bubble for so long, they don’t even realize what they sound like to ordinary people anymore.
Old School
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, that was the defense’s argument. If the judge hadn’t dismissed the charge, would the jury have agreed?
Gravenstone
@opiejeanne: He’s five years or so from ending up face down in a gutter somewhere. Whether drug OD or a gunshot wound will be of little relevance.
Jinchi
@Old School:
Didn’t the judge throw out that charge?
germy
I predict he’ll get himself in more trouble.
I saw a clip of him hitting a woman. Some sort of street dispute where young people were arguing with each other. A fight broke out, and he started throwing punches at a girl.
I also remember a police camera clip where he’s posing for a mug shot or something. His mother gets close to him and starts fussing over him and he gives her a hard shove away. In the police station!
He seems like a guy with a temper who shoves and hits whenever anyone pisses him off. I’d be surprised if he didn’t act out again in the future.
Sister Golden Bear
@Woodrow/asim: Spot on analysis.
The only thing I’d add, is that they want to eradicate (a word I don’t use lightly) those people from public life. In the case of LGBTQ+ folks like me, it’s pushing us back into the closet. In the case of other groups that are too big/too visible put in a closet, it’s to make them effectively invisible and ignorable by having no power or voice in society.
Old School
@Eolirin:@Jinchi:
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: All right, I just kicked in. For the win!
Kay
I guess the rest of us just need some new rules.
If I encounter an armed Right wing vigilante how do I avoid scaring him enough so he’s permitted to shoot and kill me with no consequences? If I refuse one of his commands is that enough justification?
Should we all drop to the ground and wait for instructions from the vigilante? Any sudden moves and they can blow my head off?
RedDirtGirl
@NotMax: Yes. She is sweet as can be.
Kay
@Old School:
The judge is still talking? It’s truly remarkable how this grown man seems to have no self discipline at all.
He hasn’t been heard from enough? Now we’ll hear from him AND Rittenhouse?
See what sucks about the shooting cases is when the Right winger gets off we never hear from the victims because they’re dead. You could say “cancelled”. They’ve been cancelled.
Comrade Colette
@Immanentize:
Popehat and other lawtweeters have been making this point throughout the trial – the judge’s bigoted asshattery isn’t unusual, just unusually visible to the public.
Has that been your experience, too?
WaterGirl
@RedDirtGirl: Congratulations on your new life with your pup!
Old School
@Kay: That quote was from when the weapons charge was dismissed.
Archon
Figured this would happen. Now if the people who killed Ahmaud Aubrey get off…
matryoshka
@Kay: That sounds about right to me. If they are already so scared of everything that they can’t leave home without their guns, the rest of us apparently have to accommodate them and stop doing anything that makes them scared. Either way, they are still going to be wandering the grocery store with their guns on and their masks off.
westyny
@Mai Naem mobile: Why is he Biden’s?
sab
@Kay: First, take off your mask. Those things scare them.
sab
@Old School: I wonder if the judge and tje prosecitor’s office already had a bad history.
SiubhanDuinne
@Fair Economist:
MSNBC also hasn’t mentioned BBB since the Shittenhouse verdict came down.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
Kay
Compare with the elected Republicans celebrating and promoting the shooter and urging more of their followers to pick up weapons and kill their political enemies.
Immanentize
@Comrade Colette: Yes it has -+
I’ve been in front of some very good State l judges and very bad ones in Florida, Texas, new Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama and Massachusetts. The states with elected judges — especially Texas — were more routinely bad. And even the good judges were cranks or did crank things in about 1 in 10 trials.
But defense attorneys have a lot more weapons against a car ank than prosecutor’s, most notably the power of appeal. Trial judges hate being reversed. But not guilty verdicts cannot be appealed by prosecutors!
Cacti
@Kay: I see it as just one more example of Dem politicians wanting to win good sportsmanship awards, while an actual fascist movement just got the green light to shoot at us.
Kay
Pretty amazing none of our billion dollar media business can find a single Republican to ask about this, even as Republicans are madly tweeting about how happy they are the shooter got off with zero consequences.
The only questions are directed to Joe Biden. Joe Biden must answer for his behavior here. They can’t find anyone at all on the Right to ask.
Tonight should be LIT on Fox, don’t you think? They’ll be celebrating the deaths of two people and urging more shootings. They’re multi-millionaires. Paid tens of millions of dollars to encourage bloodshed. That’s the business these folks are in.
Immanentize
I have a fabulous respite happy story, but the respite thread is only about silly foreign phrases — which really are fun!
My story is that on Wednesday, a client I represented in SCOTUS (with a couple other folks), Henry Montgomery, was released from Louisiana prison after 57 years. He is 75 now and was first sentenced to death (!) for killing a truant officer in 1963. It’s a hell of a story. I’ll find a better day/time to share the details.
God knows justice, but waits.
Cacti
@Immanentize: That’s 57 years of his life he’ll never get back. A person victimized by the criminal justice system never truly gets made whole.
Old School
@Immanentize: Congrats on helping to get him released!
germy
More tears:
Immanentize
@Cacti: That is so true, but leaving prison alive should be seen as a huge win in a very long process for Henry. The best part of Mr. Montgomery’s case in the Supreme Court was that it led to probably 1500-2000 other inmates (who were sentenced to mandatory life without parole sentences for crimes committed when they were juveniles) getting new hearings and many of those have been released. Now Henry has too.
Woodrow/asim
@Sister Golden Bear: Thank you for the add, it is highly relevant!
Almost Retired
@Immanentize: That’s wonderful! And now I feel like the appellate brief I’m working on regarding an obscure procedural issue of California employment law is suddenly inconsequential in comparison. Oh…right…it was inconsequential even before your post…..But Congratulations!
Kay
You’ll be hearing a lot from Rittenhouse and his fans – as we know the “cancelled” Right never fucking shut up, so please read this too.
The people Rittenhouse shot and killed can’t speak, and they won’t be heard. These are the only people who can speak for them:
Immanentize
@Almost Retired: No issue is necessarily inconsequential. They somehow have the potential to snowball into importance. Good luck on the brief!
Immanentize
@Kay: Kenosha is gonna be such a broken town. If it isn’t already.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: Great news!
Kay
@germy:
Gleefully jumped in a truck to go hunt him down.
His co-defendant crowed immediately after the murder that they had the victim “trapped like a rat”. It’s all on tape. They didn’t even go to the victim as he was dying, not them and not the first police officer who responded. They all stood around whining about how scared they were as the man they just killed died 20 feet from where they were standing. They treated it like a fender bender- like they had been inconvenienced by it. 20 feet away he’s bleeding out. They do nothing.
Another Scott
I haven’t followed this closely, but what I have heard has been bad. Popehat has said that judges are very often like this. He pointed to someone else that said that criminal procedures are broken when it comes to decisions about the law in trials. We’ve heard that he had the gun in the first place because of a strawman buyer, but apparently that wasn’t one of the charges. We’ve heard that one of the laws he was charged with breaking didn’t apply because the barrel wasn’t short.
Lots and lots of things were hinky about the charges and the trial, but maybe they are creaky and broken by design to give prosecutors and judges the ability to get the outcome they want…
I assume that there will be civil suits, and that he will lose in them. I don’t know if there is a federal prosecution avenue, though my gut tells me that there should be. We cannot have discussion and debate and petition for change if yahoos can intimidate (and worse) the rest of us with impunity.
The laws need to be fixed, the courts need to be fixed, and we need to have sensible people in positions of authority. It’s not going to be easy, but that’s the continuing task…
Cheers,
Scott.
Almost Retired
@Immanentize: Thanks. But, I don’t think obtaining clarification from the California Court of Appeal on the timing of an employer’s obligation to produce personnel files is ultimately going to lead to the release of 2000 wrongfully-condemned inmates. But, you never know. California courts are unpredictable.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I’m glad they got to say it. They were treated like shit in that trial- like their kid was throw away garbage. They didn’t deserve that and it shouldn’t have been conducted like that.
It’s shameful. They deserved some dignity and gravity. They didn’t get it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: It already is. It is on Lake Michigan and right on the WI/IL border. That makes it about halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. Things don’t do well in the shade.
Laura Too
@Woodrow/asim: Thank you. I feel so lucky to read your perspective. I will reread and ponder.
Laura Too
@aliasofwestgate: Take care of yourself. I’ll be thinking good thoughts for you.
Immanentize
@Kay: Why weren’t they called? There is always a way to get the victim’s next of kin on the stand if only to identify the victim. The prosecution was sloppy and — no surprise here — the prosecutors were really bad at cross examination. They always are. They do it so rarely that they never prepare and they don’t dig in enough. The prosecutor in the McMichaels trial was good. Tight, prepared. Not just snotty and repetitive.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: All if this just makes me sad. I’m feeling like I did what I could in my law life and now the 30 year olds are gonna have to see what they can do. Things were bad in the 80s. They are actually better in so many ways now — but we are sliding and I just can’t anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: They aren’t good because they usually don’t need to be. But you know that.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I didn’t listen to Rittenhouse but I am listening to all of Arbery. If they can’t convict in Arbery I give up. Everyone should go purchase a weapon and try to shoot first, because that’s the country we live in.
If you can jump in a truck, pursue someone, then trap someone with the truck and if the person fights back you’re allowed to kill him? There’s no fucking legal system in the world that works like that. It’s insane. Arbery only had one choice- his choice was to submit to the people who were hunting him and hope they didn’t kill him. He wouldn’t submit, so they killed him.
I wouldn’t submit to them either. They have absolutely no authority over me and I do not have to take commands from them. I won’t.
cwmoss
@Eolirin: for that little fucker to be broken for life is small consolation, but I’ll take it if that’s the only thing available. I’d rather he go to prison and enjoy the same regard for his physical safety in the Wisconsin penal system that was given to Jeffrey Dahmer. Incidentally, Dahmer would have been apprehended sooner, and committed at least one fewer murder, if he hadn’t benefited from a bit of white privilege himself.
Another Scott
@Woodrow/asim: Excellent.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Kay: I so agree
debbie
@Immanentize:
I was living there then. What a mess that was.
Kay
@Immanentize:
The soft, coddled hunters had trouble catching him even with the trucks. He ran and ran and ran. Without the 70 thousand dollar trucks there wouldn’t have been a shooting- he would have left them winded and gasping by the side of the road.
Such brave, manly hunters. The minute they got out of the truck they all pissed their pants and started shooting. Three against one. They couldn’t even manage that. Gosh, no one told them that when they set out to hunt this person down they might have to actually fight him! That’s not fair! Look how scary he is!
debbie
@Immanentize:
One of the families said they didn’t want to attend because they couldn’t bear to see videos of their son’s death.
TriassicSands
@Kay:
Racists are never bored when racism is the issue.
Kay
@TriassicSands:
None of the news stories are using the victims names. They’re non persons. Rittenhouse is the celebrity.
Let’s make an effort to use Arbery’s name and not identify the shooters in that vigilante case by name. It’s just wrong to make the shooters the star and disappear their victims.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay: Same as it ever was.
“A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!” — Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address.
grandmaBear
I just kicked in another $50 as a rage donation.