The core question in the Kyle Rittenhouse case was simple: Is it just to sentence a man to life in prison for defending his own life? Mercifully, a jury of 12 reasonable, courageous people answered the question the only way reasonable people can.
The seething rage we’ve seen in response to the not guilty verdict, while unsurprising, shows how dangerous the Left’s political agenda is to the rule of law. They cannot accept the outcome because Kyle, they say, has the wrong skin color. It may sound crude, but for the Left, it really is that simple. The facts don’t matter to them now, and in truth, they never did.
From the beginning, this case was an anti-white, political show trial. Kyle’s real crime was daring to oppose a mob that had the sanction of the mainstream media, the Democratic Party, and crooked prosecutors to terrorize Kenosha. For this, he was persecuted and defamed by the most powerful institutions in the country, and threatened with life in a cell.
The Democratic Party machine and its sleepwalking figurehead, Joe Biden, joined Big Tech and the mass media in slandering Rittenhouse as a “white supremacist” and “domestic terrorist.” Rittenhouse, they said, had “crossed state lines” armed with a big, scary AR-15 to kill “peaceful protesters.” None of it was true. He shot rioters who had threatened his life. His gun was already in Kenosha, and he was lawfully permitted to possess and carry it. The whole narrative was bogus.
What Rittenhouse endured was like something out of a Communist regime. As Blake Masters recalls, GoFundMe systematically shut down accounts for Rittenhouse’s legal defense while allowing similar campaigns for BLM rioters. Some of those who donated to help him out were harassed and at least one, a policeman, was fired from his job.
The terror served a purpose. It’s necessary to recall the political context in which Kyle went to Kenosha to defend property. At the time, America was in the middle of a violent leftist upheaval that caused more than $1 billion in property damage. This was an inconvenience for the Democratic Party machine, which was desperate to remove Donald Trump from office by any means necessary, even as they stoked the unrest. With a wink and a nod, they fanned the flames, and then covered up the destruction. They denied the riots were taking place at all. They called them “mostly peaceful protests,” and for good measure, blamed the chaos on the Right. It was the Proud Boys and the KKK—as if it were 1925—who were doing all the burning and looting, they said.
In this upside down narrative, criminal rioters became “mostly peaceful” victims, and heroes who dared to interfere with the destruction, like Kyle, became the enemy.
The story the media told about Rittenhouse was designed to inflame the prejudice and animosity of liberal America. Anyone with an unclouded view saw that Kyle acted in self-defense. We had it on video. But his accusers didn’t need the evidence. They knew that they didn’t like Kyle Rittenhouse. They didn’t like his perceived politics, his skin color, or his rifle, and that was enough. They made up their minds that he had to suffer. Prison would have to do what the mob could not.
The narrative reached its perverse logical conclusion in court, as the chief prosecutor, a shameless, loathsome man named Thomas Binger, defended arsonists and attacked Kyle for getting in their way. What was a dangerous “vigilante” like Rittenhouse doing in Kenosha, anyway? He wasn’t there to support Black Lives Matter, so why did he come? Why was he trying to put out fires? Didn’t he know that the town belonged to people like Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz?
Prosecutor Thomas Binger’s delusional “case” rehashed the propaganda the media had coached the public to believe about Rittenhouse. Behind all of the rhetoric was a simple point: Kyle is a bad person who does not deserve the protection of the law. His politics and his race made him fair game for the mob, who were “heroes” with the right, and the duty, to chase him down and bash his brains out. Ironically, while portraying Kyle as a violent “vigilante,” Binger was defending the actions of a lynch mob. As James Kraus, Binger’s rotund sidekick, put it, “everybody takes a beating sometimes.”
There are some who argue that Rittenhouse should have stayed home. But his actions were noble, and his motivations sincere. His only mistake was not reckoning with the unwritten “rules” of the post-Black Lives Matter world, which rigged the game against him and gave the rioters free rein to destroy. He did not anticipate that standing up against anarchy would make him a criminal in the eyes of the powerful.
Despite a campaign of lies and terror, the media were denied the role of judge, jury, and executioner. To many, this comes as a bitter shock. America increasingly resembles a one-party state, in which punishments and rewards are doled out based on loyalty to the ruling Party, with a capital “P”. The jury’s decision, there is no mistaking it, was an act of civil disobedience that has stirred the hearts of millions.