The Thin Black Duke published another smart, thoughtful piece on Medium this week. Once again, I asked him if I could share it here, and he graciously agreed. ~WaterGirl
The Rittenhouse Acquittal Normalizes Vigilantes: An armed society is a society held hostage by sociopaths
by The Thin Black Duke, aka Darryl R. Scott
The moment Kyle Rittenhouse blubbered in court I knew right then there that he’d get away with murder because in White America only a white man’s tears matter.
CHICAGO (AP) — For many Black Americans, Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal on all charges by a Wisconsin jury on Friday confirmed their belief in two justice systems: one for white people and another for Black people.
Rittenhouse, the two men he killed and the man he wounded were all white, but the case has been linked from the start to issues of race and the criminal justice system.
Activists have previously pointed to differences in how police handled Rittenhouse’s case and that of Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot by a white Kenosha police officer in August 2020, sparking protests in the city that became destructive and violent.
Of course it gets worse. Besides getting to goose-step out of the courthouse a free man, Rittenhouse was offered a job as an intern by U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Tucker Carlston interviewed him as a guest on his TV show (“a sweet kid”). Trump says Rittenhouse visited him at Mar-a-Lago. It’s not just a slap on the wrist, it’s a collective pat on the back by his fellow white supremacists. Kyle, you’re doing a heck of a job!
Forget it, Jake. It’s America.
I guess the two men who died must have shot themselves, huh? By the way, their names were Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26. They’re not faceless statistics to their heartbroken families who have to live with this ugly miscarriage of justice:
“Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.”
In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, there’s a scene where Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred Pennyworth, are investigating the violent crime spree of the Joker and Bruce is trying to make sense of the Joker’s lunacy. This is what Alfred says to Bruce:
Alfred Pennyworth: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Angry white men in this country have been burning things down for quite a while now, while the apolitical “non-racist” white people who work in the fire department pretend nothing is happening and decide to look the other way.
Pay no attention to the arsonists behind the curtain.
A democratic society only works when its citizens fully understands what their responsibilities and obligations are and make the commitment into looking out for each other and their communities. That’s what “We, the People” is supposed to mean.
But the Rittenhouses in this country, fueled by their fear and hatred of the Other, are taking away the checks and balances, fail-safes, and all the other legal guardrails that keep a civilized nation from degenerating into barbarism.
Make no mistake, what these angry white men are doing is barbaric. Some men just want to watch the world burn. And their relentless hammering away at the crumbling bedrock of America’s democratic institutions is accelerating.
Dollar Store Rambos carrying AR-15s are strolling down the supermarket aisles. Teachers are either being harassed or terminated for educating their students about “CRT”, the latest boogeyman that’s scaring the hell out of right-wing zealots. Planed Parenthood clinics are vandalized. In spite of three viable vaccines available to everyone, COVID-19 is still killing people every day because Anti-Vaxxers refuse to get vaccinated. The insurrection on 1/6. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Freedom of Speech isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution anymore. It’s dictated by how many guns you have. Coincidentally, it’s a sacred privilege that only white men get to enjoy (Second Amendment, fuck yeah!) and as Kyle Rittenhouse proved, he and all the other vigilantes in White America have been given the permission to shoot at any problem that they can’t figure out after fifteen minutes of googling.
This isn’t substainable, of course. And bad things always happen when a democracy is taken by a bloodthirsty mob to the back of the woodshed and shot.I found an online documentary called After Prison in which ex-convicts talk about their experiences, and there was one interview in particular that got stuck in my head and won’t go away:
“Every day is something different, but the one thing that remains constant in prison is violence. Violence is always there. It’s always there, and that’s what controls everything.
“When you look at Society, it’s the same way but people just don’t look at it like that. But you wouldn’t listen to a cop if he didn’t have a gun. You wouldn’t listen to the Army if they didn’t have tanks. You listen to them because they’re using violence and they’re using force and sometimes they don’t have to use it, but the threat is there. In prison you know violence is there so people respect that if they don’t respect you.
“You might not respect the guard but you do what he tells you to do because besides having the authority, he has that violence behind him. And when you’re in prison you have to deal with this every day.”
So when law and order goes away, all that’s left behind are killers like Kyle Rittenhouse, and they’re not afraid to use violence to get what they want. The day Rittenhouse didn’t go to prison was the day that everybody else in America who isn’t a crazy, gun-slinging white man got locked up in a cell instead. We’re in prison and the violence is everywhere.
And the bars are getting closer every day.
JPL
If the Crumbley’s were black MSM would be non-stop. MSM Is doing an okay job, but it would not be the same if the shooter were black. News is so predictable that you can tell the color of the skin without further search.
I hope the Rittenhouse is sued to the point of begging for food.
debbie
Karma is real, so I am confident Kyle will follow in George Zimmerman’s footsteps and become nothing more than a frustrated nobody loser. He’ll end up wishing he’d never gone to the protest.
oatler
In Their world, all violence is done by false flag antifa.
Sure Lurkalot
@JPL: They let the Crumbleys get away…fugitives. Hmm, wonder how THAT COULD HAPPEN.
JPL
Why is it those Rittenhouse killed should not have been there, but he should?
JPL
@debbie: yup
sab
@JPL: First Amendment only applies if your politics are correct.
Rusty
The rights laid out in the Constitution were delineated by wealthy, slave owning, men. We have only the rights that are helpful to them. The “right to bear arms”, is really a right to employ violence and to threaten violence. That is a right that is fine to have if you are sure that you will be the one threatening and committing the violence. If we instead had women, people of color, the poor, the LGBTQ+ community, and more decide what rights we should have, it would be a very different list (although I am sure we would keep most of those already in the Constitution). They sure wouldn’t pick the right to threaten and commit violence. That is the cultural war now. Do we have the rights of of the dispossessed (access to healthcare, education, food, housing, free of harassment for gender and sexuality, universal suffrage, etc. ), or do we only have the rights of wealthy, slave owning men, including violence against the dispossessed? Unfortunately the reactionaries now control the supreme court that defines what rights we get to have in this country.
Skepticat
@JPL: And why, if it was so dangerous he had to be so heavily armed, were the only people shot those he shot?
FelonyGovt
Another well-written piece on another sad and infuriating subject.
Brachiator
A very thoughtful post, Thin Black Duke. It takes on even more resonance in the light of the news that Florida governor DeSantis wants to establish a citizen militia, a group of vigilantes that would only be answerable to him.
Old Man Shadow
We live in a failing state which is either unable or unwilling to stop terrorist acts against its citizens.
Old Man Shadow
@Brachiator: Which he intends to use at least partially to stop refugees from coming to America.
RSA
This is the best rejoinder to Robert Heinlein that I have ever come across. Thanks.
Keith P.
Fixed. (Alec Baldwin is getting dragged for crying in *his* interview)
Ruckus
@RSA:
I agree. It is very well thought out and written.
An armed society. Is safe? For whom? Armed societies normally always are a war, with some other society. Which is why all the other societies have to be armed as well. And you know if those guns are just sitting there, they might as well get some usage. I think some one has has a rather warped sense of reality, that humans can and will always make the right call, mainly because they so often don’t. We do have the history of the world to show us that if you put weapons in the hands of men, the chances of living usually get lessened. Often by a lot. Put weapons in everyone’s hands and the cost of living just got more expensive.
Raven
@Sure Lurkalot: Who cares? They’ll get them and, when they do, there will be more charges for them.
DFH
TBL is right on. Sadly. Tragically.
Rittenhouse will likely end badly, perhaps. He could maybe get close to remorse. He might chase fame. I don’t know, but he’s as much a symptom of democracy’s disease as he is a human. The orange shitgibbon brought to the surface what had been sanctioned earlier, when Obama was elected and Rick Santelli shouted the Tea Party into existence. Radicalization accelerated. It was always there, bubbling out of sight for a couple decades, give or take. No doubt I wasn’t paying enough attention, although by most standards I’m aware and plugged in. Every decade has its problems and insights, its zeitgeist and false leaders.
But the trajectory of the evil we see and feel is getting steeper, fast. Reagan announced his run in Philadelphia, MS, unsubtly signaling his support for white supremacy with his state’s rights speech. Fast forward to today’s freelance crowd control (hat tip Josh@TPM) run exclusively by armed white men. Hard to avoid feeling that more shocks are ahead. I would imagine the Thin Black Duke has gone over this ground a lot.
BJ is a good community, thanks.
Sure Lurkalot
Sheriff uses his powers of intuition to declare the Crumleys aren’t dangerous.
They buy their obviously disturbed child a gun for Christmas, ignore all the warning signs of things to come…yes, they sound like wonderful parents who seem perfectly benign.
Villago Delenda Est
As others have noted, Robert Heinlein was an ass. TBD, inspired by Bowie, you’ve hit it out of the park. It’s going to need a visa because it’s on its way to South America.
The firearms madness must end. The ammosexuals can all fuck off.
MomSense
As Deray says, watch the whiteness work. So much of our criminal “justice” system is structured to protect white supremacy.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I was reading an r/news thread about the man who was incarcerated for the rape of Alice Sebold being recently exonerated and Rittenhouse came up.
And the general consensus it seemed was that the Rittenhouse verdict was correct based on the evidence presented at the trial. That the video of the incident showed a “clear-cut case of self-defense”.
And that Rittenhouse was a “dumbass” for going to Kenosha but a “good kid deep down” (I guess these people never saw the video that was shot of him attacking a girl beforehand). Further, it didn’t matter legally that he crossed state lines, he had “a right to have that gun”, and he wasn’t breaking any laws being there
One of the comments even lamented the fact that wingnuts (vocabulary indicating someone who leans left presumably) were using him as some kind of hero but that it was the “correct verdict”
I admit I never paid too much attention to the trial, but I do know that Reddit is very white and young. The above are the typical enlightened doofus centrist but really right-wing (“dude, you’re being political!”) types that populate much of the site.
It seems like the above is a very common take on the internet among “normies”. Sounds about white
HarlequinGnoll
i never liked that line from Alfred….”some people just want to see the world burn” and he and his companions burned down a forest to kill a bandit who he describes as “just throwing gems away” but could just as easily be described as being a Robin Hood. stealing gems…that are destined for warlords.
Quencher
“Angry white men …”
It’s not racism when I say it, mommy.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Quencher:
Bruh…
Citizen_X
@Quencher: Racist? Fuck off. There is a growing right-wing domestic terrorist movement in this country, which is driven by angry white men.
That is simply a factual statement.
MagdaInBlack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, right there with you, but don’t take the bait
Mike in NC
We barely survived four years with a deranged Russian asset sitting his fat fascist ass in the White House. We are living on borrowed time given the devolution of the GQP.
stinger
Outstanding commentary, Thin. May I call you Thin?
(At the start of their VP debate — their first meeting — Sarah Palin asked Joe Biden, a distinguished Senator and long-time member/chair of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees, if she could call him Joe. For the SOLE PURPOSE of using a name-based insult against him during their debate.
(I promise I will not insult you by using “Thin” as part of some schoolyard taunt.)
Kropacetic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Answer to “What happens when a sympathetic judge curates the evidence?”
Lulymay
@JPL: But, but, you have to understand: Rittenhouse was there with a gun and those other guys were just there to protest something, something, (oh, whatever)!
raven
@Lulymay: One of them had a gun and his mistake was not pulling the trigger when he had the chance.
Kropacetic
@Lulymay: You mean those rioters and looters? Had it coming, amirite…?
polyorchnid octopunch
@Brachiator: A Santis Detachment as it were.
Dan B
@debbie: The Crumbly kid wrote some things that seem to clearly be signs of severe mental illness, to the effect of his not wanting to live, that life is terrible, make it stop, somebody help, etc. And his drawings of people bleeding from bullet holes. Karma is on top of it and his parents seemed to welcome it.
We’ll see if a judge makes these inadmissible in court because young, white, male.
Dan B
@sab: And if your skin is ‘correct’, your national origin is ‘correct’, your gender is ‘correct’, etc.
Gin & Tonic
@Dan B: According to CNN, his parents withdrew $4k from an ATM today and turned off their phones. They must be real pieces of work.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: I look forward to their arrests.
Dan B
@Gin & Tonic: Well they had to because the Deep State is out to make them “Martyrs@”. Right!
Blame, cry, be paranoid, avoid logic, never take responsibility. Rinse, repeat. But first flee the
countycountry.phdesmond
“We’re in prison and the violence is everywhere.”
a suitable and eye-opening conclusion.
debbie
@Dan B:
I can’t imagine anything would be inadmissible, considering the way his parents have conducted themselves.
rikyrah
Excellent post??????
Tony Gerace
@debbie: Well, I hope that you’re right. I won’t be surprised to see young Kyle get a lucrative gig on Fox News, OAN or Newsmax. I’d be happy to be wrong.
Matt McIrvin
I just keep thinking about that old bumper sticker I used to see around that says that it is a “Liberal Hunting License.” Funny joke, ha ha.
Will the general order to kill come down someday? Will millions of them just start killing at once? They make these “jokes” all the time. They freak out about Muslims for less.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
I believe it’s possible to track cell phone locations even when the phones are turned off. And IIRC, they recently bought a late-model SUV. Assuming that’s the vehicle they took, I’m pretty sure it can also be tracked.
Honestly, kind of surprised they haven’t been found and arrested already.
Another Scott
Powerful piece TBD. Thanks.
In other news, …
Up to $10,000
eachtotal?(via JJMacNab)
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Another Scott:
That’s not at all how the mother looked in the photo I saw on the news.
Debg
Excellent piece, TBD. You’ve reminded me of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ writing on bodily integrity and how he didn’t have any as a young Black man.