By Fred Watson for the American Sun
On August 25, 2020, a seventeen year old young man shot and killed two convicted felons to death and shot and disarmed another. It was all caught on livestream. Within two days, charges were filed against that young shooter for a flurry of offenses. On November 19, 2021, a jury acquitted that young shooter of all charges. The trial, both actual judicial proceedings and broader media persecution, of Kyle Rittenhouse was complete. Society now has to live with the consequences of our new era of political trial spectacles.
Why did Rittenhouse matter so much? The right wing media ecosystem is pointing out the basic concept of self-defense and its long-standing tradition, but on a daily basis, Americans use weaponry to fend off attackers in self-defense or in defense of their homes. This was much bigger than that and for different reasons on the right and left. On the right, Kyle’s action turned around a 2020 that had left them feeling helpless and powerless to do anything in the face of leftist destruction of society. First, the helplessness to stop a nation that had gone into lockdowns only to see the system issue Get Out Of Home passes for protestors and extravagant funerals of career criminals. The right just took it. Then the absolute anarchy allowed in Minneapolis, which was all on television and the internet, but oh no, it spread and spread. Outside of few cities like Detroit and Miami, it appeared as if every blue city mayor was in a Slack channel making sure they’d all tell their police departments to stand down and all governors of said states would not send in the guard.
The right failed. Top to bottom. President Trump and his team were too stupid to point out the curious weirdness to people rioting when the entire nation felt Floyd’s death was a tragic end for a terrible life. No one was arguing with them so why all the destruction? If the president considered it a tragedy, why riot at the White House? “Lowest black unemployment ever” read his impotent tweets. The campaign had bungled using covid as perfect justification for the president’s policy goals, and looked weak on the riots. The military brass signaled their allegiance to the protestors. It was a color revolution with attacks on the White House itself, which at least AG Barr defused. Governors in red states with blue cities had slightly better control of their cities as Gov. Dewine (milquetoast con) kept the Columbus protests to minimal destruction due to state police presence with instructions. Right wingers sat at home and wondered why the world was falling apart and no one would do anything. The 2A crowd sat on their hands. Some suburbs did spontaneously coordinate to protect their own areas as perhaps best exemplified by the Seattle suburbanites hanging out at intersections with their Starbucks, labradoodle and AR-15 and Patagonia windbreakers.
Who did answer? A seventeen year old, doughy faced kid. He protected where his family lived, where he worked. He went and cleaned up the mess rioters made. He showed amazing cool under pressure and marksmanship to take out multiple attackers. He did it all alone with a mob chasing him. He shamed an entire group of people: right wingers. Someone finally stood up to the months’ worth of mobs and it was a kid. He became a folk hero overnight and energized an entire faction of America. Someone had finally said enough. Someone had finally stood their ground. He was the right’s boy, and they would defend his actions. It was all on tape, and he had defended his community and self. His instincts were all right and intentions were from the heart yet he was persecuted by our warped regime for it.
The left was in a different situation. They had rolled city after city. The left’s automatic allowance of rioting as a reaction to a criminal being shot by cops was on full display. They rioted with impunity and with the media glorifying their cause. Arrested for rioting? Don’t worry, the friendly DA will let you out to repeat it the next night. They had success after success, and the psyop was working wonders on America’s left and middle. Then a seventeen year old ended that. Suddenly, there were real consequences. This was also timed with the Republican National Convention, which while digital looked far more serious and slicker than the Democrats’. Kenosha was right at the same time that protestors attacked Sen. Rand Paul leaving the White House for the RNC. Public opinion turned on the Democrats, and within a week, everything rolled up because it hurt polling. Gone were the politicians saying riots should continue for weeks and weeks through the election. Another 1968 could not be allowed to happen.
The villain was tailor made for the left. A white male used the most evil firearm of all, the AR-15, to gun down unarmed men (mostly unarmed). He had not bent the knee to the BLM cult. He must be made an example of. The immediate calls of Kyle being a white supremacist went out. The talking points were distributed. Kyle was a white supremacist who crossed state lines with an AR-15 killing machine to murder men in cold blood. The AR has become a totem of evil, driving the left insane to the point where any black colored rifle becomes one in their memories of prior mass shootings. Despite everything being caught on film, and even the NY Times providing play by play that described a bang-bang self-defense situation, the machinery was set in motion to railroad a chubby loner. This was their chance to put all of MAGA on trial. This was an opportunity to chill the entire opposition and declare their right to rioting untouchable. To this day, many on the left believe Kyle brought an AR-15 across state lines and killed three black protestors.
Why was he even there is the cry from the left and quisling right. He was there to defend his community. No one asks why the three shot men were there. No one asks who let them out of institutions or organized their appearance there. They were there in a months long op to remove a sitting president. The official cover is their presence was just and righteously angry for the struggle for racial justice. Kyle’s was wrong. That is the leftist framework. The fact is Kyle was the boy from the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The right never figures out the deep truths to fables. They post on our regime having an Emperor’s New Clothes moment, forgetting that in the story, the king kept walking naked and nothing changed. Sure, the kid and public realized he was lying and a fool, but power remained undisturbed. Kyle was the boy from the fable with the wolf, not due to any lie. He is that boy because as in the story, that town was too stupid to put a man out there to watch their flocks. They left it to a boy with expected results. Kyle’s dad was not there. There was no posse of grown men there to protect businesses. There was Kyle and a ragtag group of people who abandoned him when the scene got hot. One boy who was left to deal with a mob.
This is another reason that Kyle became a folk hero. He was the very definition of one as a simple man who in a time of crisis did something good to defend order and community against the paramilitary forces of an evil regime. He shamed the right because beyond his actions, he revealed how powerless the right has become. The entire system arranged itself against him. Charges were slapped on him with an absurd bail amount despite years of the left crying about excessive bail and being pro-criminal. He had no legal defense fund infrastructure nor a legal network to automatically take up his cause. He had grifters and charlatans attach themselves to him and screw him over early. He withstood the attacks of the media for over a year, and there was not a thing the right could do in the supposed neutral media ecosystem. He stood alone once more because of all of the losses the right has sustained over the decades.
This was a political show trial, and the right realized how dire the situation is. The prosecution exhibited egregious behavior and even the FBI tried to save their case at the last moment. The asymmetries in place could not be more stark. If the FBI has hi-def video, why is not a single rioter charged with anything? The last realization for the right was that it is not just political commissars in your office you have to worry about, but even on juries. Polling showed 79% of Biden voters watched the evidence roll in and still supported a conviction. There is no reasoning with them. Would one hold out and create a hung jury to give the dirty prosecution another shot at this? Would multiple lefties hold firm and even browbeat other jurors into a conviction? Fresh in some observers’ minds was the Minnesota jury that somehow found Chauvin guilty of all charges despite two of the charges contradicting one another, therefore they had no clue what they were agreeing to, they just knew guilty was the right answer. The right watched potential jurors admit that they believed in extreme things to disqualify themselves like >gasp< the second amendment. Another juror idiotically cracked a joke about cops and the Jacob Blake shooting, removing himself. The right still plays tag when this is a shoot-out. Many on the right saw that the weakness is self-imposed when not already structurally created.
The left gets to repeat their lies and push their narratives of white privilege. The left even gets to lionize child rapists and women beaters. A rapist of multiple children being released from prison is bad enough and indicative of a failed state, but to turn him into a saint is insulting to his victims and the common man. There is no low the left will not sink to for their angels with dirty faces. The professional right was mixed on pointing out the race angle or the class angle, but a few noted the racial bloodlust of the left. Despite involving whites only, this was somehow centered back on blacks. There is a truth to this as the American establishment has created the Riot Clause to any police shooting involving a black. Portland police prevented riots by stating a police shooting was of a white man. The black rioting privilege is important, especially to white leftists because their street army is made up of criminals, the mentally ill and urban blacks. They must be paid or provided the opportunity to loot though so this is an election year phenomenon when the cash slush funds turn on the spigots. If the street army can be gunned down, it makes them think twice. A check on anarcho-tyranny, no matter how small, can affect rioters on the margin. Maybe not rioters, but it will make those professional managerial class allies think twice before forming walls for the Molotov throwers.
This is going to repeat itself. Funded riots are a way of life for the left now. The procedure is in place for more instances like Kenosha because the upper echelons of the right allow them to happen. When Sen. Romney marches with BLM, there is no leadership. White America, right wing America, is on its own. The events of 2020 made that clear. The post-verdict outrage from the left, from top to bottom on social media, makes it clear that there is no de-escalation. The events of the 2020s will only ramp up the tension. The riot indulgence will not go away. Will the self-defense veto remain?
This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end or even the end of the beginning. This is the beginning of the show trial era. Low level civil conflict is already here. America will see more of these flashpoints. The right needs to become fully aware of the stakes and circumstances so that these situations do not arise, and when they do, whatever protective powers are available, are still available for its people. Laws must be enacted. State power must be wielded. Consequences must be real for the left’s random soldiers spread throughout our nation at every level and institution. There were too many structural features geared towards a left wing victory. It seemed God was on Kyle’s side and a competent defense team. God? How else to explain the one surviving assailant being the one to testify and bolster Kyle’s case? How else to explain Kyle shooting three ex-cons and missing the one black who attacked him. The right will have to get off its ass and realize no man on a white horse is going to clean everything up. It’ll have to stop relying on a system thoroughly dominated by the left. The right is going to have to stop letting one boy watch the wolves.