Dakota Beacon

Most Americans have been watching the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to help put out fires and give aid to injured victims (irrespective of what “side” they were on).  By now nearly everyone knows that Rittenhouse was charged in the shooting deaths and injuries of three individuals during the riots in Kenosha in the summer of 2020.  Seventeen years old at the time, Rittenhouse had been trained in gun safety and other disciplines, such as CPR and various means of helping the injured and saving lives.  

He went to Kenosha to help protect property as well.  During the rioting, he was attacked viciously, beaten with a skateboard, jump-kicked, threatened with the guns of others.  He fired his AR-15 at his attackers, killing two, injuring one and missing another altogether.  This was while he was on the ground and under threat of being killed himself. 

Despite the flaming rhetoric of the mainstream media and then-Democrat candidate Joe Biden, all of whom libeled Rittenhouse - without any evidence - as a “white supremicist”, a “vigilante” and other epithets, as people watched the video evidence unfold, it became ever more clear that he had acted entirely in self-defense.  As the court trial proceeded and we got a look at what was passing for a prosecution, we heard absurdities like this:

“When you bring a gun you lose your right to self defense.”

“We all take a beating now and then.”

“Of all the fires in Kenosha, why were you running away from that one?”  (Answer:  “Because it was a fire . . . “)

“Why didn’t you just put down the AR-15 and walk away, Kyle?”

And something like this:  “When you play video games you’re trying to kill everyone, right?” (Answer:  “Those are video games.  Not real life.”)

And from the media, as well as the “President” persistent characterization of the people who were shot as “victims”, Rittenhouse as a “vigilante”, a “white supremicist” - all of which was improper in advance of a trial which put a young boy’s life on the line.  All of this despite the indisputable fact that everyone Rittenhouse shot was white.  And not only white, but white trash.  One was a convicted recidivist pedophile, one was a wife-beater, one had beaten his own grandmother.  One had attempted to attack his girlfriend and was under a restraining order.

One of these men had a gun illegally due to earlier convictions.  One chased him and beat him with a skateboard (if this sounds innocuous, look up the pictures of some victims of skateboard beatings - it became a much-repeated piece of advice to walk on the opposite side of the street from anyone with a skateboard).  One grabbed for the barrel of Rittenhouse’s gun, another pointed a Glock at his face.  In a night of terror, Rittenhouse exercised accurate judgment in shooting only at those who were immediately attacking and threatening him.

This utter nonsense plus a raft of wrong-headed tactics such as prosecutors attempting to castigate Rittenhouse for exercising his right to silence after being charged, for which they were often vehemently scolded by the judge, and seemingly tying their shoelaces together by putting Rittenhouse’s surviving “victim”, Gaige Grosskreutz, on the stand, who promptly attested to the fact that in his case, Rittenhouse had acted entirely in self defense, Grosskreutz having aimed his pistol at Rittenhouse in the seconds before he was shot.  

People began to speculate that the prosecution was actually deliberately sabotaging its own case.  Prosecutorial misconduct was abundant.  In addition to the attempted abrogation of Rittenhouse’s 5th Amendment right to silence on the matter, the prosecution also withheld evidence in the case of the identity of “Jump-Kick Man”, who had been attacking Rittenhouse during this episode and supplying inferior, i.e. not the same, photographic evidence, thereby violating the defense’s right to discovery.  They brought charges they could not prove or establish - that he had the gun illegally, that he had taken it across state lines, that the gun itself was illegal due to its size, none of which was accurate.  They talked back to the judge, they  defied his directives.  It is difficult to imagine that they ever thought they could win this.  Perhaps they felt pressured to try the kid by the street mobs.  Maybe they didn’t think they dared to pass on it.   Maybe there was other political pressure as well.  They really had to know they had no case - they certainly behaved that way in court.  

The mobs outside the courthouse doors seemed to have been enough to delay the obvious acquittal by three days, but in the end, the jurors reached the inevitable verdict - “not guilty”.  While many cheered, Rittenhouse collapsed in his relief,   Most clear-thinking Americans saw this as justice finally delivered, with a general sigh of relief.  Many of us were genuinely concerned that, as Tucker Carlson had suggested, the jurors might decide to leave justice in the hands of the mob instead and deliver Rittenhouse to them as a sort of ransom for Kenosha.  Surely they had reason to fear the worst.  They knew they were being doxxed.  In fact, as part of the circus performance, MSNBC had a reporter basically stalking them - he was apprehended running a red light to keep up with the jury bus.  The judge threw them out of his courtroom and banned them from the building for the duration of the trial.  He questioned, at this point, the wisdom of televising of proceedings - weighing the right of the people to an open court and the right to know against the right of a defendant to an unbiased and un-intimidated jury.  It’s a helluva choice to make.  How did we get here?

That is actually a very important question for us to take away from this experience.  We got here by our politicians being more interested in the sound of their own rhetoric than in responsible public service - it seems more profitable to lead a mob than to call for law and order.  We have heard politicians from coast to coast, including our “Vice President”, calling to defund police, to support rioters, even to the extent of bailing them out.  In this effort they are joined by a lot of our celebrity class - actors, athletes and others.    Our “president” called Rittenhouse a “white supremicist” on the basis of nothing, in advance of impaneling a jury, potentially biasing that jury - at least if anyone were still listening to him.

The “President” today reiterated his earlier sentiment.  His comment was along the lines of being “angry and concerned” and he called for “peaceful protests” - a couple of ideas in conflict with the comment that the “jury system works” and “we must abide by the verdict of the jury”.  We know the current definition of “peaceful protest” - at least the definition written in the summer of 2020.   It is interesting in light of his directive earlier this month, upon the court challenge to his “vaccine mandates”, that businesses must simply ignore whatever the court decides and go ahead with his orders in spite of them.  If the “President” of the United States is ordering the people to ignore the findings of our courts, there is little doubt what he wants to see.  

The way it generally works is this:  society degenerates and devolves into street violence, egged on by demagogues who find some instant profit in it, if police interfere with it and someone gets shot there is more fuel for the fire.  And then businesses are destroyed, calls are made to “defund the police”, eventually everyone is held hostage by lawless mobs and the only relief available is a police state where no one is free.  That is the precipice on which we are now balancing in America.  It is, of course, exacerbated by such policies as wide open borders and is generally accompanied by a low-information call for gun control to “combat violence”, an obvious effort to disarm Americans and deprive them of self-defense.   

In all of this, of course, Joe Biden concurs.  

What was decided today in Kenosha?  Well, our right to self defense, the Second Amendment, stands.  Rittenhouse was vindicated and came off looking like a pretty upstanding young man.  We were treated to a judge who was unafraid to defend our Constitution and our rights under it.  

Amid the celebration of this proper verdict questions remain.  Why was Rittenhouse in this situation in the first place?  Some blame him for being in the middle of a dangerous situation “looking for trouble”, bringing a gun to a volatile place.  Taking on thugs, some said inciting them.  But was he?  Why was he there?  He says to provide some help in protecting property and people, to render medical aid where necessary.  Rittenhouse has, considering his young age, somewhat extensive training in safety, including handling guns, he was a lifeguard, he knows how to do CPR.  He was “guilty” of civic-mindedness, if anything.  So should a 17-year-old boy be policing the riot-torn streets? Putting out fires in dumpsters?  Trying to stop vandals and shoplifters?  Rendering first aid on the bloody streets?  If not him, then who?  

Where were the police?  Were they told to stand down and let the burning continue?  Let the beatings continue?  Let the shoplifting and vandalism continue?  Turn the city of Kenosha over to a violent mob?  Were they ordered not to interfere by politicians?  Well, they were.  And should they have violated their oaths in order to follow such orders?  Clearly not. Rittenhouse was doing their job instead.  When the police do not do their job then someone else will.  Perhaps someone with a conscience, perhaps not.  In the case of Rittenhouse it appears that he honestly wanted to help.  And when he wanted to turn himself in to the police, it seems he had a devil of a time doing it.  The police on the scene, when he approached, drove right past him.  Nothing they wanted to see there.  The police watched the violence all night long and did nothing to stop it.  Eventually Rittenhouse returned to Illinois where he turned himself in to police in a cooler, quieter, safer setting.  It’s difficult to imagine that a teenage boy, walking toward police with his hands in the air, trying to turn himself in, could have so frightened the police.  

It looked for all the world as though there were only one man on the streets of Kenosha that night.  

The future for Rittenhouse, if he isn’t attacked in the meantime by some violent mob or person, could hold some good things.  He obviously has a ton of civil suits to pursue and most of us hope he will - Candace Owens advises him to do so, Glenn Beck says he will finance the cases.  Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, has offered him an internship.  He has had his character and courage forged in the fires of Kenosha and even more so in the klieg lights of the media and the courtroom.  He seems to have successfully run the gauntlet.  

We will need more people in the days to come, I fear, who will be able to do what Rittenhouse had to do.  If we all stay “safe at home”, our homes will not be safe for long.  Once the locusts have consumed the cities they will move on to more fuel in the suburbs and small towns.  None of us is safe when we have given our country, our society, over to mob rule.  Thankfully the jury was up to the daunting task laid before them.  A judge had the courage and the pepper to stand up for the law and the rights of the defendant.  Rittenhouse elected to take the stand to defend his own honor and to tell the true story.  In the event, they were more than enough to reach justice . . . at least this time.  We owe them all.  

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