The way we see it, there is a lot of plainly wrongheaded commentary and expression of anger about the Kyle Rittenhouse non-guilty verdict last Friday. However fervently one may disagree with that conclusion, the overarching issue in our judicial system is whether the evidence of guilt was so compelling as to leave no room for any reasonable doubt as to where the evidence led. It only mattered whether or not reasonable people could disagree as to guilt.
It may sound presumptuous, but we just don’t see how, in the light of those videos and testimony about provocation – from even one of those who were shot – anyone could believe that establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt was even close. Nor have we come across any serious analysis that it was. What we did see were people who were only about not missing an opportunity for a statement about racism, about making a point about value of uninhibited protest, and about attacking “white supremacy.”
It was about providing a welcoming audience for the fictive factual realities offered by the mainstream media.
It was about sending a message it is “the street” and not the rule of law or precedent or elections that will determine how we go about our business. And it was most certainly about how one gets in the way of the woke agenda at one’s peril.
We have been slowly conditioned to expect this sort of ideological assault. But it was still disconcerting to hear a president of the United States buying into it. So, after urging respect for the jury’s verdict, he declared himself “angry and concerned.” And therein lies an important tale.
Thus, it is not just that the President simply declared to the world that he didn’t think the jury came to the right conclusion (although, one would have thought that he at least owed us all a rebuttal to the presumption that it did come to the right conclusion).
But, importantly, Biden said nothing about the crowd outside the Kenosha courthouse calling for a verdict of “guilty” on pain of “no justice no peace.” Surely this was a chance for him to strike a blow against the insidious drift toward anarchy and permanent unrest. All he had to do was to say that rules count. But he didn’t.