Kyle Rittenhaus, the ‘Trial,’ and the Formation of the U.S.S.A.
By Steven Jonas
Like many other observers, when Kyle Rittenhouse went to trial, I assumed that it was highly likely that he would get off. There was the judge, Bruce Schroeder who was known to have a “God Bless the USA” ring-tone on his cell phone. Not that anyone could not have that ringtone, but in the U.S. culture it is most often associated with the Christian Right. Also, on one news show I heard that among randomly selected Black interviewees, Schroeder was considered the worst possible choice for a trial like this. Then there was the jury selection, done by the hired hand who did wonders for O.J. Simpson.
Then after the trial, I learned that Schroeder is an elected judge (party indeterminate). But what? You think that his donors (surely neither left-wing, nor Black, nor both) did not call him during the trial, so that such things as the appearing-to-be-random (ho, ho, ho) dropping of the gun charge against Rittenhouse — the one on which he was clearly guilty (given his age if nothing else) would almost certainly occur? And then there was the “you can’t use the word ‘victim’ ” coming from the judge. Obviously not prejudiced nor given to making prejudicial statements (ho, ho, ho) (to say nothing of screaming at the prosecution, and not because he thought that they were doing a bad job).
But then, as the trial wound on, it indeed became clear that the prosecution was doing a terrible job (although not from Rittenhouse’s perspective). Why? Because they didn’t raise the most obvious way (to me at any rate) to attack the “self-defense” defense, to wit. A) Rittenhouse voluntarily placed himself in a dangerous situation. B) Forgetting about the “under-age-toting-a-gun” and the “transporting-a-certain-kind-of-weapon-across-state-lines” stuff, Rittenhouse had absolutely no legal standing or legal authority to do what he was doing: acting as “an armed guard” for some random business. C) there were plenty of police in the area, and D) if that weren’t enough for the owner of the property, he/she could have hired authorized, licensed, of-age guards for his/her property, not relied on some unlicensed kid carrying a semiautomatic rifle, with no training/experience in guarding property while armed. Rittenhouse chose to put himself in danger.
By being there armed, with no authorization from any law-enforcement agency, Rittenhouse took the law into his own hands, in, as it happened, the context of an ample police presence. To repeat, he had, in terms of Federal law, an apparently illegal gun (we’ll see what the Feds do with this, if anything), but no badge, no papers, no authorization from any law-enforcement agency. He had only self-determination to be where he was. I think that a strong legal argument could have been made that “self-defense” is not applicable if one voluntarily places oneself in a dangerous situation, in which firearms might be used (and again, he was carrying a firearm), without any authorization. But the prosecution did nothing of the kind (as far as I can tell).
My first reaction to the outcome was that despite the skin colors of the perpetrator and the victims, this was just another way-station on the long, long road of “mis-justice” in the United States for both Blacks (and other minorities) and Progressives. But then, within a day-or-two, seeing the response to Rittenhouse by Republicans, the Republo-fascist Party, and those even further to the Right (although that is now getting to be a very small space), to the acquittal, combined of course with the apparently Trump-organized mob-assault on U.S. bourgeois Constitutional democracy that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, I believe that something rather different is now underway.
Rittenhouse is being hailed as a hero, someone who, for example, should receive a Congressional honor. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a motion to do so. Who else — well, Boebert, Gosar, and a whole bunch, actually — could have introduced such a motion. It read in part: “award a Congressional Gold Medal to Kyle H. Rittenhouse, who protected the community of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a Black Lives Matter (BLM) riot on August 25, 2020.” (Actually, there wasn’t any organized “rioting,” led by BLM or anyone else, but facts of course don’t matter to such folk when a racist trope is readily at hand. And of course, there was a major police presence there, presumably prepared to act if such a thing had actually happened.)
As of the time of writing of the original version of this column, a permanent U.S. Right-wing civilian militia had not yet been formed. But there are clear indications going back to Charlottesville and before that, and now with the acquittal of a person such as Rittenhouse, it will be, especially as such an eventuality will receive the blessing of such Republicans as Greene and (guess who?) Trump, who entertained Rittenhouse at Mar-a-Lago.
There are a variety of historical precedents for such an organization. One of the most important is the German/Nazi “Sturmabteilung,” the “Storm Division.” During the post-World War One period in Germany of the Weimar Republic, following the defeat of the Prussian Empire in World War I, the Nazis and gradually enlarged this organized-but-unofficial army that supported the Party in the streets of Germany. In then, as is well-known, slowly blazed its way to power, in a politico-violent process that culminated in the passage by the German parliament, the Reichstag, of the “Enabling Act” on March 23, 1933, which established the Hitlerian dictatorship. Not coincidentally, when the vote on the Act was taken, the Reichstag auditorium was surrounded by S.A. troopers in full uniform.
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Source: OpEdNews.com