[MSNBC] Rittenhouse, a teenager who fatally shot two men and injured another at an antiracist protest last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was acquitted on all charges on Friday afternoon. He had been charged with homicide, attempted homicide and recklessly endangering safety, and could've faced a life sentence if convicted.
For many the verdict is an outrage and a brazen miscarriage of justice. Rittenhouse is a Blue Lives Matter enthusiast who went to protests against a police shooting with a military-style rifle that he obtained illegally, falsely told people he was a medic, and ended up killing and hurting people who felt threatened by him. The overwhelmingly white jury appears to have given Rittenhouse the benefit of the doubt, after a trial in which the judge at times appeared to show favorable treatment of the defendant, and in a country in which it’s almost impossible to imagine a Black defendant accused of similar crimes receiving such easy treatment.
In other words, the Rittenhouse verdict easily reads like a referendum on the nation’s ongoing clashes over the state of racism in American life: not just an expression of mercy toward Rittenhouse, but white vigilantism.
The whole situation would never have emerged anywhere but in a deeply ill society.
But I think that’s probably not the best way to look at it. Instead, this case was both smaller and bigger: It was decided based on a narrow question of self-defense under a permissive law, not Rittenhouse’s ideological predilections. At the same time, Rittenhouse’s series of encounters was only possible in a society with truly harrowing social maladies, including a pathological obsession with guns and a rising culture of right-wing militias. Did Rittenhouse set out to shoot people that night? That question is unanswerable. But the whole situation would never have emerged anywhere but in a deeply ill society.
Here are three takeaways from this trial — and the national conversation surrounding it.
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Yeah, I don't think so. |