By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Just seconds after a Kenosha jury of five men and seven women found that Kyle Rittenhouse used his AR as it was intended, for self-defense, the anti-gun zealots went bonkers – crying, wailing and gnashing their teeth – nearly apoplectic with rage and disbelief.
When the other side is screaming, babbling incoherently and imploding on the national stage, it’s best to just leave them alone. Pop some corn, sit back and enjoy the show. Sun Tzu said that, probably.
No one in the entire country went more dinky-dau than Congressman Jerry Nadler, who represents Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Nadler wants to further weaponize and politicize the Justice Department by forcing them to investigate Rittenhouse for civil rights violations. There is, however, a major problem with Jer’s lawyering: Kyle didn’t violate anyone’s civil rights. Three convicted felons did, which is why they got shot. Besides, the FBI is far too busy wiretapping parents who disagree with their local school boards to get involved in a state case that’s already concluded, especially one without a clear federal predicate. The gavel has come down, Jerry. Time to move on.
Those of you familiar with the subtle musings of MSLSD’s Joy Reid will not be disappointed either. Reid wrote on her blog that the Rittenhouse Trial “was designed to protect white conservatives who kill.”
“Law enforcement – including a department known to cover up its own lawless acts of violence – seemed to give cover to Rittenhouse from the get-go,” Reid wrote.
Cover? They charged him with multiple felonies including several counts of murder – to give him cover? Okay, Joy, now I see why you’re paid $1.5 million and Maddow makes $35 million.
Cliff Schecter, whose day job is running a public relations and political strategy firm, wrote for the Daily Beast that Rittenhouse “just killed our right to peacefully protest.” How Schecter arrived at this political strategy I do not know.
“We’ve now lost our guaranteed First Amendment right to peacefully assemble to a half-cocked, cocaine-cowboy version of the Second Amendment,” Schecter wrote. “Mix that together with a witch’s brew of right-wing propaganda and white power, and the result is that any time you march for your rights you have to accept that any dime store Kyle Rittenhouse can point a weapon of war at you and pull the trigger.”
To be clear, Kyle Rittenhouse pointed his weapon at no one until they pointed a weapon at him. There is no evidence whatsoever that future protests will be impacted by the jury’s verdict, unless of course the peaceful protesters try to murder someone else.
On Sunday, CBS News’ senior national correspondent Mark Strassmann repeated the debunked lie that Rittenhouse “drove in from Illinois armed for battle.” The truth is, and it was confirmed during the trial, which somehow Strassman must have missed, that Rittenhouse’s AR was already in Kenosha. Any senior national correspondent should have known this. CBS declined to comment about or fix the error, which comes as no surprise, especially for this trial, especially for CBS.
There are dozens if not hundreds of other examples: NPR painted anyone who supported the verdict as a right-wing extremist, and CNN is still trying to come to grips with the 15 months’ worth of fiction they disguised as news before they’re hit by defamation lawsuits, but the most extreme silliness is coming from the usual we-need-another-law crowd.
To be clear, Kyle Rittenhouse exercised his right of self-defense. I believe self-defense is a God-given right, but feel free to insert the name of whatever deity you bend a knee to on Saturday or Sunday. (Atheists I know refer to self-defense as a natural or inherent right). The point is this, a divine right cannot be revoked by any new legislation, and it’s certainly immune from one of Joe Biden’s executive orders. Governments and authoritarian presidents come and go, but our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones remains, as long as we safeguard it more zealously than those who want to take it away.
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