The Driest Eye

 I'm obviously not the intended audience for Kyle Rittenhouse's time on the stand, because in my universe, I would never have entertained the idea that putting him on the stand would necessarily elicit sympathy, so it would have been best avoided. But it certainly happened, and somehow, news stories got written with "burst into tears" or the like in them. 

But I don't see any tears here. He looks like he swallowed a hot chip the wrong way. He looks like he tried for a snot bubble and it came up dry. He even looked over to see if anyone was responding to his "breakdown". And I feel very mean for saying this, and you know what? My eyes are dry, too. 

This kid was in a state that was not his, with a gun he had no right to carry, claiming he was offering medical aid which he wasn't qualified to render, in a place where he knew there was physical conflict which meant possible physical threat, but was scared even though carrying that gun. He chose all the things that put him in this circumstance, and his heavily and genuinely weeping mother helped.

The judge appears to be in Rittenhouse's corner. The farce was capped off by us hearing the ringtone of "God Bless the USA". And he also might have been doing some holiday catalog shopping during the trial. That's how much this guy seems to have already decided how the case should go. He doesn't see the people Rittenhouse slew as "victims"--they are the wrong kind of people to be calling "victims". Implying some people are, well. You know. Fine to kill. 

I wish this opinion was a bit more rare, but I see Supreme Court Justice Alito wondering why people shouldn't be armed on the "crime-ridden" city subways, because obviously, shit is just looking to go down in these big cities. Whoa.  We got us a Bernie Goetz fan here. A guy who doesn't miss an opportunity to watch "Death Wish" am I right? (This is a whole part and parcel of our national gun-toting religion.)

See, my problem with this scenario is when the so-called "law and order" people start waxing heroic about vigilantism and extrajudicial violence, when they are supposed to uphold the Constitution which is actually very much about due process and not--that sort of thing. This is why I wonder with a sinking heart how the nearly all-white jury will look at the killers of Ahmaud Arbery. Will they suppose this was a case of a fouled-up citizens arrest? Once again, we have people, with guns, making decisions they had no authority to make, that even duly constituted authorities can get entirely and regrettably wrong. 

I mean, consider this: in a political system built on a framework holding the innocence of the accused as a value until proven guilty, the fatal result of the Charlottesville free-for-all is that "poor" James Fields' fault lay in being the first to ram a car into protesters before elected officials tried to legalize such a thing. Regardless of those people's rights to do....anything at all, Express their First Amendment rights to speak freely or peaceably assemble.  

And so we get to the conservative/fascist problem: the idea that the the law protects some, but the others can have order. At any price. When do we universally acknowledge the price of order is too high if it comes with violent oppression and valorizes privileged lawlessness? 

Not a minute too soon, if you asked me.