On the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict

***When state legislatures across America started pushing open carry and stand your ground laws that removed any sense of discretion about firearms, and any modicum of reflection before one uses deadly force, it was only a matter of time before wanna-be cops like George Zimmerman and "Killer" Kyle Rittenhouse started shooting unarmed people.

I have never, ever, seen a trial judge as cozy and deferential to a murder suspect as Judge Bruce Schroeder was to Kyle Rittenhouse. The “avoid the appearance of impropriety” phrase that judges issue was rendered moot from the very first when Schroeder said before jury selection that the two decedents would not be called “victims” before the jury--something else I have never seen in nearly 200 jury trials up to, and including, capital punishment cases.

***There's something perverse in the notion that one can start trouble with unarmed people, bite off more than they can chew, then start shooting and killing in "self-defense." This can only be addressed by state and local advocacy for new laws that curtail the base nature of those cowards who would shoot first and ask questions later.

***Yes, cowards; a good many men in America who are quick to reach for a firearm do so because they are pussy cats that can't fight. Both George Zimmerman and "Killer" Kyle Rittenhouse definitely fit this description.

***I have watched my entire life as the media questioned what they called "dysfunctional" Black families when young Black defendants stood trial, but over the past three weeks, the media have been rather deferential to Killer Kyle's "single mother" who could not account for her 17-year-old son's whereabouts the night he shot three people, or his child support arrearage daddy, the type that the media often refer to as "deadbeat" when referring to Black fathers, who was conspicuously "absentee" during Killer Kyle's trial proceedings.

***If you believe that Killer Kyle went to Kenosha last August to "protect businesses," then you probably still believe that the Earth is flat, that Jesus Christ looked like Barry Gibb, and that Santa Claus is making his list and checking it twice in the run-up to Christmas Eve. I sense that Killer Kyle was the kind of easily manipulated "Incel" (involuntary celibate) man-child who was radicalized by right wing rhetoric--and just itching at a chance to confront Black Lives Matter protesters and the repeatedly mentioned "ANTIFA thugs" that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and many others constantly demonized while arguing that leftists were seeking to use the killing of unarmed Black men, like George Floyd, as an excuse to take over the federal government.

***Lest we forget that white allies have often died in the pursuit of Black equality. Just as Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were lynched alongside James Chaney, a Black man, when Mississippi was burning in 1964, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Hubert were killed simply because they believed that Jacob Blake, a Black man shot in the back by Kenosha police, deserved justice. Unfortunately, as Killer Kyle had no proximity to real law enforcement (unlike the KKK members who were sheriff's deputies in 1964 that lynched Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, or more recently, the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King in 1991), the Justice Department cannot swoop in and arrest Killer Kyle for violating those men's civil rights. The only remedy the families have is to sue Killer Kyle in the same way that the Goldman and Brown families sued O.J. Simpson for being civilly liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman in 1996.

***Killer Kyle will appear on Fox News' Tucker Carlson's show on Monday, and I've already seen one photo of the now acquitted 18-year-old grinning like the Cheshire Cat as he rode away in a vehicle yesterday; he has learned NO lessons.

Photo of Kyle smiling broadly as he left the Kenosha Courthouse after the verdict

I sense that Killer Kyle will be a pariah in the same way that the aformentioned Zimmerman and Simpson have been and, like those men, that trouble will find him again some day down the line.

But Killer Kyle's smiles, his Proud Boy hand gestures, and his instant celebrity status among the right will not assuage the demons that will haunt his post-pubescent mind for the remainder of his life after killing two human beings. While that's his Cross to bear, I continue to remind that the beauty of social media is that instances like these reveal the true feelings of those among us who claimed that Trayvon Martin should have complied with Zimmerman's questioning, or that Michael Vick deserved prison and a lifetime banishment from the NFL for dogfighting, but conclude that Killer Kyle was "justified" for starting trouble that ended in homicide AND should be praised and paid as an American hero.

What are those true feelings, you ask? That All Lives never did matter...