Nov 19, 2021Liked by David Hamburger, Brendan Ruberry
Set aside the legal questions, as resolved by the court case, that remain troubling. There are also the moral ones that arise when someone brings a gun to a protest, however violent it may have become, on their own self-deemed authority alone to control it or subdue it or to put it down, however that might be done, even violently, too, if the person so self-authorized deems it right. Such an act is inevitably provocative and is meant to be provocative. It also strikes me as one definition of vigilantism.
Rittenhouse has been deemed not guilty by a jury in a trial. Singal asserts that it is a just verdict in a legal sense, even though some of the laws upon which the argument depends themselves are not clearly good laws, at least from some legal perspectives. But Rittenhouse, by intervening as he did, by his own choices and acts, has killed two men and wounded another. There is no way in the world, in a moral or ethical sense, he is innocent of those deaths and the consequent suffering he caused others. This is not an instance of an otherwise innocent person confronted by something dreadful in which he has to respond, though no moral fault of his own, in a dreadful way. (The problem is that to a just man even such a just act might be troubling; that is the considerable matter of some tragedies.)
It simply will not suffice to consider these terrible events, all of them, not just Rittenhouse's part in it, from a legal point of view alone. In fact, the moral questions might be the far more important ones to confront, especially since, in many ways, legal systems, even the best of them, are so often flawed, as surely this trial demonstrates from numerous points of view.
I am not suggesting I have a clear answer, merely that I think the questions posed are far more complex that seem to be acknowledged in Singal's essay. Many heinous things happened the night Rittenhouse killed two men and seriously wounded another. His acts are among them.
(By the way, some of the comments below I find appalling, for precisely the self-righteousness and -certainty they are decrying in the left wing press. It may be often flawed, but compared to the deliberate, malicious, neofascist power-grabbing lying on the part of the right it is relatively trivial. I say this even though I have a great disliking for post-modernism and all its various sins and the conformity, so often enforced, of the left's responses to language and culture.)
The best solution here is to never, never, ever tell police to stand down over multiple consecutive days of violent rioting.
KP was a police cadet; if the police were permitted to do their jobs that night, Kyle would have never felt compelled to fill the vacuum left by their absence.
Rittenhouse brought a rifle to Kenosha because, in addition to cleaning graffiti and assisting people medically, he intended to protect property. How was he supposed to do that without a weapon? Employ harsh language?
What scares me is how many defenses of vigilantism I read in some of the comments in response to mine. I had not expected that from readers of Persuasion, and I find its presence here deeply disturbing. It is another form of mob violence and arguments about who provoked whom neglect the core problem of anyone's taking what should be the rule of law into one's own hands and the consequent breakdown of the social contract.
I don't support vigilantism, as a general rule, if that was unclear. But I'm also not a Pollyanna who thinks it could never possibly be warranted, under any circumstances. Life is complicated. Vigilantism should be an absolute last resort, and even if justified, isn't the job of children, unless they absolutely have to defend themselves because there's no one else to do it. So, Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there, period -- I don't disagree with that at all.
But I do think that when the adults abnegate their responsibilities, undesirable consequences are likely. Having the police stand down in response to the 2020 riots was exceedingly reckless and naive. We got exactly the results one would expect, and honestly, I'm surprised we didn't see worse.
When you remove civil society's protections from people (explicitly not protecting them, their homes, or their livelihoods), it's naive to expect they won't revert to pre-civilized recourse. After all, isn't that what many of the justifications of rioting essentially were too? Black people weren't being protected by society, so it was all an understandable expression of grievance? Unsurprisingly, it's also the justification of the vigilantism.
The world works how it works -- no amount of scandalized pearl-clutching changes that, on either side. That's precisely *why* enforcing the rules of civilized society, as evenly and justly as possible, is so important.
My intent there wasn't to take a stance on who it applies to and to what degree, but rather just to observe that the justifications used for both rioting and vigilantism were the same: the contention made for both is that society isn't meeting its civil obligations in particular ways, and so resorting to pre-civilized methods of recourse is both necessary and justified. I'm suggesting that's a commonality. What it means is something I'm not entirely done working out. But it seems significant to me that large swaths of our citizenry, even those in opposition to one another in some ways, believe that serious civil obligations aren't being met.
How does a weapon help you protect property when the law does not permit a citizen to use deadly force in the protection of property? If someone throws a Molotov cocktail at a store, you can't subsequently gun them down and claim self-defense. I don't believe "Castle" doctrines would apply here.
The gun ultimately only protected him from an insane person seemingly provoked by the gun in the first place. That's not to say that the provocation was remotely justified, but guns have a way of causing problems whenever they are introduced into a situation, and ultimately end up being used to justify their own existence. Criticisms of over-policing aside, Breonna Taylor would be alive now if her boyfriend hadn't been armed and so quick to fire without even seeing what he was shooting.
"How does a weapon help you protect property when the law does not permit a citizen to use deadly force in the protection of property?"
Deterrence. There's no guarantee, obviously, but most people are likely to reconsider targeting a given place if there's an immediate threat of being shot. Doesn't really matter whether the person hoping to deter vandalism would be in the clear for doing such a thing, it just matters that the vandal(s) believe the person might do such a thing.
This comment strikes me as foolish since, however much one might object to some of the distortions and follies of the far left, it is, save in a few institutions here and there, in power nowhere I know. The right is in power or is dangerously close to acquiring it, including in the United States. I mean by the right the Republican Party and the right of illiberal democracies as they call themselves. Where does one find a Burke-like conservatism anywhere in the world today? Percentages are irrelevant. The vast prevalence of authoritarianism, the control of the media, the uses of lies and propaganda for purposes of power are to be found on the right. To state otherwise is pure mendacity.
"the far left, it is, save in a few institutions here and there, in power nowhere I know."
Then you know nothing of value.
A *few* institutions here and there, in power *nowhere*?
The "far left", i.e. Wokesters, dictates terms (or has terms dictated to it by) to virtually all big corporations (esp. the bulk of the MSM), the Deep State agencies and most of the rest of the Exec. branch, both houses of Congress.
To insist that Wokesters have less power than the GOP, is pure mendacity.
If you will quibble that Wokesters aren't "the far left", I'll just wonder, what are they?
They're certainly not "the far right".
The GOP controls nothing outside of a few big states, and numerous small ones.
A few big states and numerous small ones is all one needs to control the US Senate, which the Republican party seems set to do for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the GOP controls most governorships and state legislatures. The latter has allowed them to gerrymander to the tune of ridiculously lopsided majorities in state house caucuses and federal congressional delegations - which means they will be allowed to continue gerrymandering every decade unless a state's demographics so warp in ten years that Democrats get lucky, or we manage to pass federal laws reforming the process. Such reform will likely be impossible due to the Senate imbalance - and the fact that it would still have to withstand a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
None of which at all refutes my claims, that, now, Wokesters dictate terms to virtually all big corporations (esp. the bulk of the MSM), the Deep State agencies and most of the rest of the Exec. branch, and both houses of Congress.
"partisan news coverage and punditry on the left is becoming a serious problem in its own right." My goodness, partisan left-wing news BECOMING a problem??? Who knew, as if Russian collusion, Steele dossier, Jussie Smollett, Covington Catholic, UVA Phi Kappa Psi fraternity rape scandal, et al, never happened.
As to George Floyd, it was a horrible incident that never should have happened, but it did.
And, yet, other than the fact that it was a white officer and Floyd was black, there is ZERO - ZERO - evidence that Floyd’s death was racially motivated…PERIOD!
Again, a horrible situation that never should have happened and Derek Chavin is paying a heavy price, but Floyd’s death was an excuse - not racism…
The moment he fired his rifle, he was not legally guilty of murder because he shot in self-defense.
The moment he decided to go into a town hoisting an automatic rifle, let alone into a town where rioting as breaking out at night, he was morally guilty of needlessly and dangerously provoking others.
He was mentally and biological a juvenile. His actions should be judged through that lens. Also, in the coming weeks and months, the amount of credence given to his opinions about politics, gun rights, etc., should be in alignment with his mental and biological age. The adults in KR's life should encourage him to keep his head down, fade out of the public eye, and move forward in his life, but I doubt the media will allow it.
Among a slew of lies, not only from US media, but in other countries. Tonite on Carlson, Greenwald rattled off references to media in Brazil, Holland, and the UK, insisting that Kyle had popped *black* folk.
The Western "intellectual" classes are in the throes of a historic collapse.
Thanks for this Jessie. I have to admit I've been taken in by the line about him coming from another state. Technically true but misleading, and all too easy to fail to investigate if one doesn't maintain an objective journalistic mindset.
Not that it wasn't a problem before, but I think the bias we're seeing today really got a boost as a misguided remedy to Trump. Journalists were having to deal with a president who couldn't be shamed into being honest and was getting too much of an unfiltered assist in the regurgitation of his propaganda. In reality the problem was mostly due to headlines (normally controlled by the editors) repeating Trump's claims and leaving it to the article text to evaluate them. In a world with so much "news" that many people simply headline-skim this was a valid concern - one correctly counteracted, for example, by using terms like "falsely claims" instead of just "claims".
Unfortunately, this also gave an opening for woke journalists, ever frustrated with people's unwillingness to accept their expansive definitions of words like "racism" and "white supremacy" as definitive, to promote the idea of writing with "moral clarity" and to use controversial terms with objective certainty. This alarmed me from the start, and it set us up badly for the summer of 2020, when white guilt would have its way with the minds of many Americans - and not just progressives.
"Journalists were having to deal with a president who couldn't be shamed into being honest", but not, in prior years, "having to deal" with a whole slew of Elites who couldn't be shamed into being honest, and who could count on Journalists to cover for them?
Most of the MSM has long been trending toward the cesspool, ever since they were force-feeding us on the Trial of the Century, which Mike Wallace wisely dissed as being "not news!"
So Vox, Slate, and the Intercept got it (mostly) wrong, while the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker got it (mostly) right? That's a fair criticism, but falls a bit short of what should convince conservatives that because "the media" (misleadingly construed as singular) weren't "treating this case fairly", conservatives "would have to turn to alternative news sources."
The invocation of white supremacy is not off the mark. Yes, the people Rittenhouse shot were white; and no, there's no evidence that Rittenhouse had ex ante connections to white supremacists. But the civil disturbance into which Rittenhouse injected himself was an explosion of anger over racial injustice. Rittenhouse raised $2 million for bail from "supporters", and enjoyed the kind of high-end legal defense that could impanel a couple of mock juries to field test whether or not he should testify in his trial. Not everyone gets that kind of support, and the notion that race had absolutely nothing to do with getting it seems fanciful. Just imagine the fate of a 17-year-old Black kid who goes, toting an AR-15, not to protect the Kenosha Jiffy Lube, but to protect the seat of our nation's government, on January 6, and kills a few people in the process. It is not delusional to see racial disparities in the likely outcome.
Looking at the videos, I am struck by how young Rittenhouse looks. He's 17, but looks more like 15. A kid. "I'm an EMT," he says, falsely, running around with his AR-15. The impression is less one of malice than of a young boy enthralled with being a hero, a firefighter, a crimefighter -- the kind of games that engage boys before puberty, when thoughts turn to other games.
Mr. Rittenhouse is discovering the joys and challenges of becoming a national Rorschach test. Some will see a civic-minded, heroic young man, bravely volunteering to help his community before being set upon by thugs. Others will see somebody who went, armed with a lethal weapon, looking to stir up trouble, and succeeded. Rather than look at the blot on the paper, we would be better served by looking in the mirror and asking what kind of society lets a child arm himself with a high-powered weapon and drive to a riot, unsupervised, to be helpful. And what it means when, after the wholly foreseeable ensuing tragedy, that child is lionized.
What kind of society considers it acceptable to not protect its citizens from riots, such that there's plausibly a need for vigilante protection of people, homes, and businesses? Perhaps there never would have even been an opening for Rittenhouse's behavior in the first place had any of the adults taken their responsibilities seriously, instead of LARPing Twitter politics, while cities burned.
I can’t argue against any of this, but….Kyle Rittenhouse was an immature kid who did a breathtakingly stupid and reckless thing. He shouldn’t have been in Kenosha at all. But because he was, 3 people were shot, 2 of them fatally. Two people are dead because he decided to go to Kenosha. And now the right is publishing images of him as Captain America. I hope that someday, this immature, stupid, reckless kid realizes the magnitude of what he did and its consequences. Really realizes it, down to his bones, his guts, and his soul, and asks the forgiveness of God and of the people who died solely because he was stupid and reckless.
Was it not stupid and reckless for Joseph Rosenbaum to taunt armed people to shoot him and to verbally threaten Rittenhouse's life earlier in the day? Was it not stupid and reckless for him to chase and lunge at someone with a gun? Why did Gaige Grosskreutz bring a gun that day? Was that not stupid and reckless?
It seems to me that there was plenty of both all around. It's stupid and reckless for anyone to go to a riot or to not leave if a protest becomes one. Let's not pretend that the minor is somehow *more* culpable for his share than all the others.
"Of course, the fact that Rittenhouse also cried—and vomited—when he turned himself in to the police suggests that there’s at least a chance he was actually traumatized by what happened"
Do you really think he doesn't realize what he did? Seems like he had a handle on it even before he was jailed & prosecuted for 1st degree murder.
That seems like a bit of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali phenomenon - when leftists try to cancel a person en masse, said canceled person often ends up palling around with more right-wing people because it's either that or be an outcast.
Which leftists then use as proof they were "guilty all along".
I am not saying he was “guilty all along.” I think the verdict was fair, given the high burden of proof for the prosecution and their complete bungling of their case. But the bar episode makes me think he doesn’t, or at least didn’t then, fully realize the magnitude of what he did. I’m not convinced anyone his age is capable of fully realizing that. But I pray he will.
I will also say, though, despite the biased initial reporting, I think what we've seen in mainstream media during the trial has been much more sober. I at least was prepared for this verdict. Last year was a cornucopia of insanity - we can only hope this gives us some perspective and some lessons are learned. Sadly though, I fear the lessons media takes from this will be the wrong ones.
Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Donald Trump himself, all his enablers and powerful followers, Fox News people, Newsmax people, most of the Republican Senators and Representatives, the QAnon crazies, and, alas, hundreds and hundreds more members of state legislatures who have joined the Trump cult. And on and on. To assume AOC are any of those you cite have one tiny little bit as much power or influence is nonsense and goes against all the evidence.
This response is utter nonsense, of course, with no factual basis for any of its contentions whatsoever. What dismays me, about this reply and several others I have read among the comments on Persuasion is how irrational, angry, fact-free, and conspiratorial they are. I thought Persuasion was meant to be a forum for those of us who think of themselves as liberals still, men and women who still adhere to the core values of the Enlightenment, knowing all the while that even the values of reason and clear thought have their limits. But apparently a number of its readers, certainly among those who comment on its pages, have devolved into the darkness, irrationalism, and resentments of the extremes, especially those of the authoritarian right. I recall the great Lionel Trilling's admonition, "the moral obligation of intelligence." That is what far too often I find woefully lacking here. I will say no more on that matter.
I'm not necessarily defending *every* commenter here, but personally, I absolutely do consider myself dedicated to liberal, enlightenment values. I'd caution you against thinking that rational people can't come to differing conclusions, even given the same set of facts. But, as should be abundantly clear to anyone paying even a whit of attention, rarely is it the case that everyone is working from the same set of facts these days. Media consumption is extremely Balkanized, and most of us have been shunted into echo chambers of one sort or another. (Myself included, I'm sure, though I do make a good-faith attempt to counteract that effect.)
Others disagreeing with one's own adjudication of how best to adhere to certain values does not automatically mean those others don't sincerely hold those same values. There's a reason morality has been argued over since time immemorial. It's often not cut and dried. The self-satisfied feeling of being entirely sure one's interpretation of events is the *only* acceptable or rational interpretation is usually preceded by fundamental attribution errors and a failure of intellectual humility. That feeling is one we should all distrust.
"The self-satisfied feeling, of being entirely sure one's interpretation of events is the *only* acceptable or rational interpretation", is all-but the utter essence of Wokeism, and is in the process of bastardizing the rest of the Left.
We can only hope, that the IDW folks can reach enough fair-minded people, to begin to reverse this trend. Otherwise, this civilization will, in rather short order, be consumed by these mendacious brats.
Perhaps the best starting glimpse into the IDW outlook is Haidt's book The Righteous Mind, e.g. as discussed at https://peterlevine.ws/?p=14220 .
Another somewhat helpful look at our dilemma is from G. Packer, at
Your reply to my response is utter nonsense, of course, with no factual basis for any of its contentions whatsoever.
This, all too typically of *today's* left, you don't deign to provide a single specific to back your bile, e.g. on "irrationalism, and resentments".
It is today's left which is doing the most teeing off on the core values of the Enlightenment, as laid out by folks like Locke and Hume, and nowadays backed by folks like Haidt and Weinstein, but in some key respects subtly sabotaged by folks like Pinker.
"We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well." -Richard Hofstadter
And, to refer to "the Trump cult" is spectacularly dishonest, but all-too typical of today's woke Left, which is going thru an staggering collapse, from its prior honorable history, e.g. when it stood up to Dubya's BS in Iraq, etc.
Now, most of the Left sucks up to the Cheneys etc.
You bring up a good point. My first impression of Kyle was as a naive wannabe militant militia, roaming around alone - something no militia member would do - with romantic visions of taking the law into his own hands. He certainly wasn't embraced by any organized group that night. The facts were mostly there in the first week. Most people don't do the digging and comparing of news stories that might uncomplicated everything for them.
"My first impression of Kyle was as a naive wannabe militant militia".
Most likely, this result was not accidental, but rather deliberately ginned-up, to the point that (as Dersh is saying), the point was to arouse a *vigilante* mob against Kyle R.
Calling this a moral problem is ok as far as it goes. But it's really an unprecedented political problem. Forty-five or more states allow open-carry, most of them without any restrictions. Given that even the least restrictive gun control proposals - like background checks - fail, there is little chance a movement to ban open-carry would succeed. The country has crossed the Rubicon. Former fringe militias and supremasts have been legitimized. The BLM is spontaneous and its organizers young, inexperienced and obviously untrained in how spot provocateurs and outliers who could make trouble. The violence after peaceful rallies was a disservice to the cause. This is not the innocent '6Os. The political situation in which a President calls torch-bearing anti-semites 'good people' and armed militias show up to intimidate is unprecedented and demands a more sophisticated approach from the left-of-center The jury came to a verdict looking through the 'fog of war' as if hand to hand combat at an anti-police abuse rally were normal. That's deep. Maybe everyone will take a break to think things over in contest of American progress, but there will be worse "Kenoshas" before today's political passions recede.
Set aside the legal questions, as resolved by the court case, that remain troubling. There are also the moral ones that arise when someone brings a gun to a protest, however violent it may have become, on their own self-deemed authority alone to control it or subdue it or to put it down, however that might be done, even violently, too, if the person so self-authorized deems it right. Such an act is inevitably provocative and is meant to be provocative. It also strikes me as one definition of vigilantism.
Rittenhouse has been deemed not guilty by a jury in a trial. Singal asserts that it is a just verdict in a legal sense, even though some of the laws upon which the argument depends themselves are not clearly good laws, at least from some legal perspectives. But Rittenhouse, by intervening as he did, by his own choices and acts, has killed two men and wounded another. There is no way in the world, in a moral or ethical sense, he is innocent of those deaths and the consequent suffering he caused others. This is not an instance of an otherwise innocent person confronted by something dreadful in which he has to respond, though no moral fault of his own, in a dreadful way. (The problem is that to a just man even such a just act might be troubling; that is the considerable matter of some tragedies.)
It simply will not suffice to consider these terrible events, all of them, not just Rittenhouse's part in it, from a legal point of view alone. In fact, the moral questions might be the far more important ones to confront, especially since, in many ways, legal systems, even the best of them, are so often flawed, as surely this trial demonstrates from numerous points of view.
I am not suggesting I have a clear answer, merely that I think the questions posed are far more complex that seem to be acknowledged in Singal's essay. Many heinous things happened the night Rittenhouse killed two men and seriously wounded another. His acts are among them.
(By the way, some of the comments below I find appalling, for precisely the self-righteousness and -certainty they are decrying in the left wing press. It may be often flawed, but compared to the deliberate, malicious, neofascist power-grabbing lying on the part of the right it is relatively trivial. I say this even though I have a great disliking for post-modernism and all its various sins and the conformity, so often enforced, of the left's responses to language and culture.)
The best solution here is to never, never, ever tell police to stand down over multiple consecutive days of violent rioting.
KP was a police cadet; if the police were permitted to do their jobs that night, Kyle would have never felt compelled to fill the vacuum left by their absence.
Rittenhouse brought a rifle to Kenosha because, in addition to cleaning graffiti and assisting people medically, he intended to protect property. How was he supposed to do that without a weapon? Employ harsh language?
What scares me is how many defenses of vigilantism I read in some of the comments in response to mine. I had not expected that from readers of Persuasion, and I find its presence here deeply disturbing. It is another form of mob violence and arguments about who provoked whom neglect the core problem of anyone's taking what should be the rule of law into one's own hands and the consequent breakdown of the social contract.
I don't support vigilantism, as a general rule, if that was unclear. But I'm also not a Pollyanna who thinks it could never possibly be warranted, under any circumstances. Life is complicated. Vigilantism should be an absolute last resort, and even if justified, isn't the job of children, unless they absolutely have to defend themselves because there's no one else to do it. So, Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there, period -- I don't disagree with that at all.
But I do think that when the adults abnegate their responsibilities, undesirable consequences are likely. Having the police stand down in response to the 2020 riots was exceedingly reckless and naive. We got exactly the results one would expect, and honestly, I'm surprised we didn't see worse.
When you remove civil society's protections from people (explicitly not protecting them, their homes, or their livelihoods), it's naive to expect they won't revert to pre-civilized recourse. After all, isn't that what many of the justifications of rioting essentially were too? Black people weren't being protected by society, so it was all an understandable expression of grievance? Unsurprisingly, it's also the justification of the vigilantism.
The world works how it works -- no amount of scandalized pearl-clutching changes that, on either side. That's precisely *why* enforcing the rules of civilized society, as evenly and justly as possible, is so important.
"Black people weren't being protected by society...."
Does that apply more to G. Floyd, or more to David Dorn etc.?
"it's also the justification of the vigilantism."
Meaning, of the rioters?
My intent there wasn't to take a stance on who it applies to and to what degree, but rather just to observe that the justifications used for both rioting and vigilantism were the same: the contention made for both is that society isn't meeting its civil obligations in particular ways, and so resorting to pre-civilized methods of recourse is both necessary and justified. I'm suggesting that's a commonality. What it means is something I'm not entirely done working out. But it seems significant to me that large swaths of our citizenry, even those in opposition to one another in some ways, believe that serious civil obligations aren't being met.
It is the Woke who have been ginning up the breakdown of the social contract, no later than with their lies about Darren Wilson.
"Vigilantes" have been just responding to this onslaught.
How does a weapon help you protect property when the law does not permit a citizen to use deadly force in the protection of property? If someone throws a Molotov cocktail at a store, you can't subsequently gun them down and claim self-defense. I don't believe "Castle" doctrines would apply here.
The gun ultimately only protected him from an insane person seemingly provoked by the gun in the first place. That's not to say that the provocation was remotely justified, but guns have a way of causing problems whenever they are introduced into a situation, and ultimately end up being used to justify their own existence. Criticisms of over-policing aside, Breonna Taylor would be alive now if her boyfriend hadn't been armed and so quick to fire without even seeing what he was shooting.
"How does a weapon help you protect property when the law does not permit a citizen to use deadly force in the protection of property?"
Deterrence. There's no guarantee, obviously, but most people are likely to reconsider targeting a given place if there's an immediate threat of being shot. Doesn't really matter whether the person hoping to deter vandalism would be in the clear for doing such a thing, it just matters that the vandal(s) believe the person might do such a thing.
"compared to the deliberate, malicious, neofascist power-grabbing lying on the part of *the right* it is relatively trivial."
Does this "the right" mean 100% of "the right"? 60%? 30%? 3%?
By contrast, what % of the "left wing press" isn't malicious, power-grabbing, and lying?
This comment strikes me as foolish since, however much one might object to some of the distortions and follies of the far left, it is, save in a few institutions here and there, in power nowhere I know. The right is in power or is dangerously close to acquiring it, including in the United States. I mean by the right the Republican Party and the right of illiberal democracies as they call themselves. Where does one find a Burke-like conservatism anywhere in the world today? Percentages are irrelevant. The vast prevalence of authoritarianism, the control of the media, the uses of lies and propaganda for purposes of power are to be found on the right. To state otherwise is pure mendacity.
"the far left, it is, save in a few institutions here and there, in power nowhere I know."
Then you know nothing of value.
A *few* institutions here and there, in power *nowhere*?
The "far left", i.e. Wokesters, dictates terms (or has terms dictated to it by) to virtually all big corporations (esp. the bulk of the MSM), the Deep State agencies and most of the rest of the Exec. branch, both houses of Congress.
To insist that Wokesters have less power than the GOP, is pure mendacity.
If you will quibble that Wokesters aren't "the far left", I'll just wonder, what are they?
They're certainly not "the far right".
The GOP controls nothing outside of a few big states, and numerous small ones.
A few big states and numerous small ones is all one needs to control the US Senate, which the Republican party seems set to do for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the GOP controls most governorships and state legislatures. The latter has allowed them to gerrymander to the tune of ridiculously lopsided majorities in state house caucuses and federal congressional delegations - which means they will be allowed to continue gerrymandering every decade unless a state's demographics so warp in ten years that Democrats get lucky, or we manage to pass federal laws reforming the process. Such reform will likely be impossible due to the Senate imbalance - and the fact that it would still have to withstand a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
None of which at all refutes my claims, that, now, Wokesters dictate terms to virtually all big corporations (esp. the bulk of the MSM), the Deep State agencies and most of the rest of the Exec. branch, and both houses of Congress.
"partisan news coverage and punditry on the left is becoming a serious problem in its own right." My goodness, partisan left-wing news BECOMING a problem??? Who knew, as if Russian collusion, Steele dossier, Jussie Smollett, Covington Catholic, UVA Phi Kappa Psi fraternity rape scandal, et al, never happened.
This article is written for lefties who are teetering on the edge of being red-pilled about mainstream media
Appreciate the article and what it lays out…
As to George Floyd, it was a horrible incident that never should have happened, but it did.
And, yet, other than the fact that it was a white officer and Floyd was black, there is ZERO - ZERO - evidence that Floyd’s death was racially motivated…PERIOD!
Again, a horrible situation that never should have happened and Derek Chavin is paying a heavy price, but Floyd’s death was an excuse - not racism…
Singal and the jury have it right.
The moment he fired his rifle, he was not legally guilty of murder because he shot in self-defense.
The moment he decided to go into a town hoisting an automatic rifle, let alone into a town where rioting as breaking out at night, he was morally guilty of needlessly and dangerously provoking others.
He was mentally and biological a juvenile. His actions should be judged through that lens. Also, in the coming weeks and months, the amount of credence given to his opinions about politics, gun rights, etc., should be in alignment with his mental and biological age. The adults in KR's life should encourage him to keep his head down, fade out of the public eye, and move forward in his life, but I doubt the media will allow it.
I've read so many references to Jesse Singal and praise of your reporting, it's been a bright spot in all this dark mess. Keep up the good work.
Great piece of writing, appreciate summation and facts and compelling analysis.
"An astonishingly misleading description" is a lot of syllables to say "a lie."
Among a slew of lies, not only from US media, but in other countries. Tonite on Carlson, Greenwald rattled off references to media in Brazil, Holland, and the UK, insisting that Kyle had popped *black* folk.
The Western "intellectual" classes are in the throes of a historic collapse.
Thanks for this Jessie. I have to admit I've been taken in by the line about him coming from another state. Technically true but misleading, and all too easy to fail to investigate if one doesn't maintain an objective journalistic mindset.
Not that it wasn't a problem before, but I think the bias we're seeing today really got a boost as a misguided remedy to Trump. Journalists were having to deal with a president who couldn't be shamed into being honest and was getting too much of an unfiltered assist in the regurgitation of his propaganda. In reality the problem was mostly due to headlines (normally controlled by the editors) repeating Trump's claims and leaving it to the article text to evaluate them. In a world with so much "news" that many people simply headline-skim this was a valid concern - one correctly counteracted, for example, by using terms like "falsely claims" instead of just "claims".
Unfortunately, this also gave an opening for woke journalists, ever frustrated with people's unwillingness to accept their expansive definitions of words like "racism" and "white supremacy" as definitive, to promote the idea of writing with "moral clarity" and to use controversial terms with objective certainty. This alarmed me from the start, and it set us up badly for the summer of 2020, when white guilt would have its way with the minds of many Americans - and not just progressives.
"Journalists were having to deal with a president who couldn't be shamed into being honest", but not, in prior years, "having to deal" with a whole slew of Elites who couldn't be shamed into being honest, and who could count on Journalists to cover for them?
Most of the MSM has long been trending toward the cesspool, ever since they were force-feeding us on the Trial of the Century, which Mike Wallace wisely dissed as being "not news!"
We need new, large media institutions with true journalistic values.
So Vox, Slate, and the Intercept got it (mostly) wrong, while the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker got it (mostly) right? That's a fair criticism, but falls a bit short of what should convince conservatives that because "the media" (misleadingly construed as singular) weren't "treating this case fairly", conservatives "would have to turn to alternative news sources."
The invocation of white supremacy is not off the mark. Yes, the people Rittenhouse shot were white; and no, there's no evidence that Rittenhouse had ex ante connections to white supremacists. But the civil disturbance into which Rittenhouse injected himself was an explosion of anger over racial injustice. Rittenhouse raised $2 million for bail from "supporters", and enjoyed the kind of high-end legal defense that could impanel a couple of mock juries to field test whether or not he should testify in his trial. Not everyone gets that kind of support, and the notion that race had absolutely nothing to do with getting it seems fanciful. Just imagine the fate of a 17-year-old Black kid who goes, toting an AR-15, not to protect the Kenosha Jiffy Lube, but to protect the seat of our nation's government, on January 6, and kills a few people in the process. It is not delusional to see racial disparities in the likely outcome.
Looking at the videos, I am struck by how young Rittenhouse looks. He's 17, but looks more like 15. A kid. "I'm an EMT," he says, falsely, running around with his AR-15. The impression is less one of malice than of a young boy enthralled with being a hero, a firefighter, a crimefighter -- the kind of games that engage boys before puberty, when thoughts turn to other games.
Mr. Rittenhouse is discovering the joys and challenges of becoming a national Rorschach test. Some will see a civic-minded, heroic young man, bravely volunteering to help his community before being set upon by thugs. Others will see somebody who went, armed with a lethal weapon, looking to stir up trouble, and succeeded. Rather than look at the blot on the paper, we would be better served by looking in the mirror and asking what kind of society lets a child arm himself with a high-powered weapon and drive to a riot, unsupervised, to be helpful. And what it means when, after the wholly foreseeable ensuing tragedy, that child is lionized.
What kind of society considers it acceptable to not protect its citizens from riots, such that there's plausibly a need for vigilante protection of people, homes, and businesses? Perhaps there never would have even been an opening for Rittenhouse's behavior in the first place had any of the adults taken their responsibilities seriously, instead of LARPing Twitter politics, while cities burned.
I can’t argue against any of this, but….Kyle Rittenhouse was an immature kid who did a breathtakingly stupid and reckless thing. He shouldn’t have been in Kenosha at all. But because he was, 3 people were shot, 2 of them fatally. Two people are dead because he decided to go to Kenosha. And now the right is publishing images of him as Captain America. I hope that someday, this immature, stupid, reckless kid realizes the magnitude of what he did and its consequences. Really realizes it, down to his bones, his guts, and his soul, and asks the forgiveness of God and of the people who died solely because he was stupid and reckless.
Was it not stupid and reckless for Joseph Rosenbaum to taunt armed people to shoot him and to verbally threaten Rittenhouse's life earlier in the day? Was it not stupid and reckless for him to chase and lunge at someone with a gun? Why did Gaige Grosskreutz bring a gun that day? Was that not stupid and reckless?
It seems to me that there was plenty of both all around. It's stupid and reckless for anyone to go to a riot or to not leave if a protest becomes one. Let's not pretend that the minor is somehow *more* culpable for his share than all the others.
"Of course, the fact that Rittenhouse also cried—and vomited—when he turned himself in to the police suggests that there’s at least a chance he was actually traumatized by what happened"
Do you really think he doesn't realize what he did? Seems like he had a handle on it even before he was jailed & prosecuted for 1st degree murder.
I hope you’re right. But he also posed at a bar with members of the Proud Boys AFTER he turned himself in and was released.
That seems like a bit of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali phenomenon - when leftists try to cancel a person en masse, said canceled person often ends up palling around with more right-wing people because it's either that or be an outcast.
Which leftists then use as proof they were "guilty all along".
I am not saying he was “guilty all along.” I think the verdict was fair, given the high burden of proof for the prosecution and their complete bungling of their case. But the bar episode makes me think he doesn’t, or at least didn’t then, fully realize the magnitude of what he did. I’m not convinced anyone his age is capable of fully realizing that. But I pray he will.
You don't think Proud Boys being the only ones willing to listen to his side of the story had anything to do with it?
A reckless kid? What a diminishment of moral values that phrase carries with it.
I will also say, though, despite the biased initial reporting, I think what we've seen in mainstream media during the trial has been much more sober. I at least was prepared for this verdict. Last year was a cornucopia of insanity - we can only hope this gives us some perspective and some lessons are learned. Sadly though, I fear the lessons media takes from this will be the wrong ones.
Righty sources "tended to portray Rittenhouse as some sort of bona fide American hero"?
Name one, remotely as influential on Righties, as Presley, let alone AOC, are on Lefties.
Indeed, name one major MSM source which didn't tee off on Kyle.
And, how often, in recent years, have any major MSM sources failed to demonize any possibly pro-Trump white?
Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Donald Trump himself, all his enablers and powerful followers, Fox News people, Newsmax people, most of the Republican Senators and Representatives, the QAnon crazies, and, alas, hundreds and hundreds more members of state legislatures who have joined the Trump cult. And on and on. To assume AOC are any of those you cite have one tiny little bit as much power or influence is nonsense and goes against all the evidence.
"To assume AOC are any of those you cite have one tiny little bit as much power or influence is nonsense...."
Au contraire, AOC all-but dictates terms to Congress & the Exec. branch. Trump etc. are banished from virtually everywhere that really matters.
This response is utter nonsense, of course, with no factual basis for any of its contentions whatsoever. What dismays me, about this reply and several others I have read among the comments on Persuasion is how irrational, angry, fact-free, and conspiratorial they are. I thought Persuasion was meant to be a forum for those of us who think of themselves as liberals still, men and women who still adhere to the core values of the Enlightenment, knowing all the while that even the values of reason and clear thought have their limits. But apparently a number of its readers, certainly among those who comment on its pages, have devolved into the darkness, irrationalism, and resentments of the extremes, especially those of the authoritarian right. I recall the great Lionel Trilling's admonition, "the moral obligation of intelligence." That is what far too often I find woefully lacking here. I will say no more on that matter.
I'm not necessarily defending *every* commenter here, but personally, I absolutely do consider myself dedicated to liberal, enlightenment values. I'd caution you against thinking that rational people can't come to differing conclusions, even given the same set of facts. But, as should be abundantly clear to anyone paying even a whit of attention, rarely is it the case that everyone is working from the same set of facts these days. Media consumption is extremely Balkanized, and most of us have been shunted into echo chambers of one sort or another. (Myself included, I'm sure, though I do make a good-faith attempt to counteract that effect.)
Others disagreeing with one's own adjudication of how best to adhere to certain values does not automatically mean those others don't sincerely hold those same values. There's a reason morality has been argued over since time immemorial. It's often not cut and dried. The self-satisfied feeling of being entirely sure one's interpretation of events is the *only* acceptable or rational interpretation is usually preceded by fundamental attribution errors and a failure of intellectual humility. That feeling is one we should all distrust.
This reply is utterly outstanding, and it's drift should go without saying.
In a while, I hope to have time to do it real justice.
"The self-satisfied feeling, of being entirely sure one's interpretation of events is the *only* acceptable or rational interpretation", is all-but the utter essence of Wokeism, and is in the process of bastardizing the rest of the Left.
We can only hope, that the IDW folks can reach enough fair-minded people, to begin to reverse this trend. Otherwise, this civilization will, in rather short order, be consumed by these mendacious brats.
Perhaps the best starting glimpse into the IDW outlook is Haidt's book The Righteous Mind, e.g. as discussed at https://peterlevine.ws/?p=14220 .
Another somewhat helpful look at our dilemma is from G. Packer, at
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/ .
There, he vividly summarizes Wokeism, as follows:
"Just America *demands a confrontation*, with what the others want to avoid.”
Your reply to my response is utter nonsense, of course, with no factual basis for any of its contentions whatsoever.
This, all too typically of *today's* left, you don't deign to provide a single specific to back your bile, e.g. on "irrationalism, and resentments".
It is today's left which is doing the most teeing off on the core values of the Enlightenment, as laid out by folks like Locke and Hume, and nowadays backed by folks like Haidt and Weinstein, but in some key respects subtly sabotaged by folks like Pinker.
"We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well." -Richard Hofstadter
Could this Hofstadter quote be referring to recent outbursts (by Schiff, Mueller, Weismann, Maddow etc.) on "Collusion with Russian Hacking"?
Or, to the Deep State's cow about Saddam's WMDs?
If not, why not?
Until those who were up to their necks in such BS come clean on how wrong they were, they have no cred on anything of minimal importance.
And, to refer to "the Trump cult" is spectacularly dishonest, but all-too typical of today's woke Left, which is going thru an staggering collapse, from its prior honorable history, e.g. when it stood up to Dubya's BS in Iraq, etc.
Now, most of the Left sucks up to the Cheneys etc.
"failed to demonize any possibly pro-Trump white" below the class-level of the typical MSM smartypants?
For perspective on such matters, see Taibbi at https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-rittenhouse-verdict-is-only-shocking , Bari Weiss at https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-medias-verdict-on-kyle-rittenhouse , and Cathy Young at https://cathy.arcdigital.media/p/kenosha-kyle-rittenhouse-and-the .
For more perspective, see https://www.bookwormroom.com/2021/11/20/a-meme-sums-up-90-of-the-lefts-kyle-rittenhouse-lies/ , and https://www.bookwormroom.com/2021/11/21/now-for-part-ii-of-the-rittenhouse-saga/
Was it a surprise? The impression I got all along, from a variety of sources, was that it was a 50/50 proposition, especially after that one witness.
The only aspect that made it 50/50 was justified fear among the jurors. The jury was especially courageous this week.
You bring up a good point. My first impression of Kyle was as a naive wannabe militant militia, roaming around alone - something no militia member would do - with romantic visions of taking the law into his own hands. He certainly wasn't embraced by any organized group that night. The facts were mostly there in the first week. Most people don't do the digging and comparing of news stories that might uncomplicated everything for them.
"My first impression of Kyle was as a naive wannabe militant militia".
Most likely, this result was not accidental, but rather deliberately ginned-up, to the point that (as Dersh is saying), the point was to arouse a *vigilante* mob against Kyle R.
The good thing is that the justice system works and rule of law functions in the time of tribalism, populism and nationalism
Calling this a moral problem is ok as far as it goes. But it's really an unprecedented political problem. Forty-five or more states allow open-carry, most of them without any restrictions. Given that even the least restrictive gun control proposals - like background checks - fail, there is little chance a movement to ban open-carry would succeed. The country has crossed the Rubicon. Former fringe militias and supremasts have been legitimized. The BLM is spontaneous and its organizers young, inexperienced and obviously untrained in how spot provocateurs and outliers who could make trouble. The violence after peaceful rallies was a disservice to the cause. This is not the innocent '6Os. The political situation in which a President calls torch-bearing anti-semites 'good people' and armed militias show up to intimidate is unprecedented and demands a more sophisticated approach from the left-of-center The jury came to a verdict looking through the 'fog of war' as if hand to hand combat at an anti-police abuse rally were normal. That's deep. Maybe everyone will take a break to think things over in contest of American progress, but there will be worse "Kenoshas" before today's political passions recede.