Friday’s show was vile, yet instructive.
At the end of the program, an emailer astutely made the observation that the opposing sides in America are becoming identical to one another. How sadly true it is.
Politically speaking, I have often pointed out that if you head to the left you approach Socialism and then lurch to Communism. If you head to the right you approach Totalitarianism and then lurch towards Fascism. And in the end, the difference between Communism and Fascism is nothing more than a few vowels and consonants.
Sadly, we’re now seeing that play out in much more simplistic ways within our own society:
- Democrats bemoan Trump’s endless lies as they, themselves, lie endlessly.
- Trump decries Socialism, heralds the free market, and claims to be fighting for Americans’ and their pocketbooks, all while he wages an endless war on Amazon by suggesting the Post Office needs to raise Amazon’s rates and that “the company will pay it, not the customers.” This is a man who cheers trickle down economics but doesn’t understand (or care) that his rage against Jeff Bezos will trickle down to every average American instantly and hammer their pocketbooks.
- For the last three months, Portland has burned nightly amidst endless riots, yet coverage of it across the national media has been non-existent. Suddenly, when a group of Trump supporters made their way to Portland on Saturday night and the events ended with a death, the “angry Trump mob in Portland,” were the lead story across America and the world.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/08/30/maga-caravan-descends-on-portland-in-violent-fatal-
- When protests or riots occur, nary a word is uttered about the Coronavirus, yet when President Trump holds a political rally he is said to be “deliberately killing people.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Saturday President Trump is “deliberately killing people” with his rallies amid the coronavirus pandemic. “He holds rallies where people get infected. On Thursday, no social distancing or masks, sending a clear message that the CDC should be ignored.” “His plan is to kill people. Let’s just say it,” Murphy continued. Take that quote and change the word rallies to protests and wonder where Mr. Murphy’s outrage is. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chris-murphy-says-trump-is-deliberately-killing-people-by-holding-rallies
- It wasn’t too long ago that Donald Trump derided presidential executive orders as “power grabs” and a “basic disaster.” He’s switched sides in a big way: In each year of his presidency, he has issued more executive orders than did former President Barack Obama during the same time span. He surpassed Obama’s third-year total just recently.
- As Senator Rand Paul left the White House Thursday night, he and his wife were surrounded by protestors angry over the death of Breonna Taylor, a woman killed while police were serving a “no-knock” warrant in Louisville, Kentucky in March. As the mob surrounded Paul and multiple police officers, they shouted “say her name” over and over again to him, because, after all, he’s a Republican, therefore he’s a racist police apologist. The only problem is that Rand Paul is the author of the Breonna Taylor act, which would end no-knock warrants, the very thing Taylor’s family has asked for. Idiots. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rand-paul-attack-police-arrest-investigation-white-house-rnc-protests
And then came Friday’s show and the despicable ignorance of the RAD army rearing its’ ugly head. I want to believe it was nothing more than a very vocal and completely uninformed minority, but I refuse to blindly assume anything any longer.
Nothing better illustrates the axiom that the further you go to an extreme, the more you become your opponent, than the case of 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse. Watching rabid Trumpsters and anti-rioters become the very people they oppose is more entertaining than seeing a gazelle chased down by a lion on the Serengeti.
Here you have, as Dawn observed on Friday’s show, a group of people screaming in favor of “law and order,” who are disregarding both as they amusingly try to create a logic that will fit their narrative.
Here you have a group of people who, when videos like the shooting of Jacob Blake emerge, scream “we need more details before we leap to a conclusion,” yet immediately defend Rittenhouse on the basis of a couple choppy videos that lack any actual context or timeline.
Here you have a group of people who simplistically say that if Blake would have just followed the officers’ commands, he wouldn’t have gotten shot, yet refuse to say that if Rittenhouse would have just stayed home, he never would have killed anyone.
Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, is accused of a single shooting incident during a night of unrest in Kenosha earlier this week that left two people dead and a third person seriously injured.
Since his arrest on Wednesday, the Illinois, teenager had been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, one count of reckless homicide, a count for attempted intentional homicide and two counts of recklessly endangering safety. Court records show he’s also being charged with possession of a dangerous weapon while under the age of 18.
In other words, an underage teen who is a resident of a neighboring state, illegally armed himself to protect the property of total strangers, which is the literal definition of vigilantism, and the “law and order” crowd can’t seem to figure out how wrong all of that is. The absurd, angry, and, erroneous emails we received after discussing this topic was beyond appalling and glaringly hypocritical. Callers claimed that they knew the series of events based on videos they had seen and nothing more. One caller claimed that the instigator of the entire series of events (seemingly a man named Joseph Rosenbaum who has also been endlessly slandered by Rittenhouse’s defenders) threw a Molotov cocktail at Rittenhouse, while the criminal complaint alleges it was nothing more than a plastic bag. (Although there are also accounts of gunfire in the immediate area at the identical time as well). https://www.thedailybeast.com/teen-vigilante-kyle-rittenhouse-killed-unarmed-kenosha-protester-who-threw-plastic-bag-at-him-court-docs-say
Meanwhile, Daily Caller reporter Richie McGinniss went on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News Thursday night as an eyewitness to tell the story of Rosenbaum lunging for Rittenhouse’s gun, (thus apparently justifying the use of force of shooting Rosenbaum as a form of self-defense). Never mind that whether lethal force was required in that scenario is debatable, more telling was that McGinnis, during his appearance on Carlson’s show, left out the plastic bag incident that started all of this. Odd that McGinnis told police investigators the plastic bag incident happened, but he left it out of his 15 minutes of fame interview. Huh.
Pause; to be clear, Joseph Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse’s first victim, was a scumbag with an endless criminal record and the world is a better place without him, but it wasn’t Rittenhouse’s job or responsibility to remove that garbage from the Earth. The fact that Rosenbaum was a convicted sex offender, at the age of 18 (which could have been as grey as having sex with a 17-year-old) doesn’t afford anyone the right to kill him, nor does it make Rittenhouse’s actions less heinous, especially since Rittenhouse didn’t know Rosenbaum from Adam. https://www.bailbondshq.com/arizona/azdoc-inmate-JOSEPH/172556
As for the literal charges against Rittenhouse, those are wildly debatable. For starters, attempts to slander him as a white supremacist are as irrelevant as mentioning Rosenbaum’s criminal history. Some go as far as Daily Show host (and proven idiot) Trevor Noah, who said “Nobody drives into a city with guns because they love someone else’s business that much…they do it because they’re hoping to shoot someone.” In other words, he was looking to murder people. Others (far too many in our audience) disregard entirely Rittenhouse’s role and laud him as heroic. The proper course will, of course, be found in the middle. Legally speaking, murder seems extreme based on the evidence at hand, but there is no denying that crimes were committed by Rittenhouse. The best, logical, reasonable, “defense” of Rittenhouse I have heard, lacking all of the lies, distortions, and lame conclusions of my audience, can be found here:
https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/kyle-rittenhouse-first-degree-murder-absurd
Additionally, Rittenhouse’s attorney paints a compelling defense (as is his obligation) that is relevant to the jury that will eventually hear the case, but is meaningless to the fundamental premise of Rittenhouse’s actions. While painting Rittenhouse as a saintly man-child who had earlier in the day finished his altruistic lifeguarding job, only to then spring into action to help the community he so loves by offering aid to protestors and then answering the call from a local business owner pleading for help defending his business, the attorney, of course, disregards the cause-and-effect of his clients’ illegal actions, while admitting “It was a gun Rittenhouse legally couldn’t carry in Wisconsin due to his age.” A gun, that had it been left where it was, would have never shot three people, killing two. Rittenhouse lit the match. He’s the arsonist. https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/attorneys-representing-kyle-rittenhouse-say-he-was-wrongfully-charged-after-acting-in-self-defense
The truth is that the truth of the events after Rittenhouse arrived in Kenosha is quite frankly, irrelevant, in regards to applying blame and guilt in this case. Rittenhouse is nothing more than a drunk driver. Period.
If you don’t drive drunk you can’t murder someone while driving drunk. This is a standard that has been universally accepted by society and the justice system for five decades and it applies in the most simple and obvious terms to this case; If Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t cross state lines, whether it be for his job or to be a vigilante, arm himself in violation of state law, and act as a vigilante protecting property he has no connection to, he wouldn’t have been able to kill people. There is no rebuttal to that, and yet dangerous morons that apparently listen to my radio show are trying to find one. It’s beyond deplorable and reprehensible; it’s unspeakable.
Lest this be seen as an attack on a portion of my own audience (which it absolutely is), allow me to be clear that it is much more broad than that; it’s an ongoing attack on our entire society (what’s left of it), and it’s childish need to pick a team and then blindly defend such, even when it violates their own spoken morals, principles and integrity.
Look no further than the “Gun Owners of America,” an organization that claims it “represents the views of gun owners whenever their rights are threatened,” which adamantly defends Rittenhouse without ever pointing out that he was breaking a gun law that gun owners universally agree on. The NRA itself, and over 90% of all gun owners in America agree, that unless you have been trained, lawfully deputized, and/or enlisted in the military, you can’t carry a gun on the streets of America if you’re under the age of 18. Never mind the issue of vigilantism at any age. https://www.ammoland.com/2020/08/media-demonizes-apparent-self-defender-kyle-rittenhouse/#axzz6WR8zLtSl
Had Rittenhouse had any claim or connection to any of the property he was “defending,” he would still have been violating state law by carrying the AR-15, but the issue would get slightly greyer. All Americans have a right to defend their property, but in all states other than Texas, no American has the right to use deadly force to defend their property. https://reason.com/2020/06/02/are-people-allowed-to-use-deadly-force-to-defend-property/
Had Rittenhouse been the owner, or the son of the owner, of a building he was standing in front of and a rioter walked up to him and somehow placed him in threat of death or serious bodily injury, Rittenhouse would have been justified in shooting that rioter. Had the rioter merely walked up to said building and lit it on fire, the law states clearly, he wouldn’t have been.
All of which, of course, is beyond academic since Rittenhouse met none of those criteria or standards and had no business doing what he was doing. The claim that Rittenhouse, according to his attorney, answered a public call of a random business owner to help protect his property is beyond irrelevant. Other defenders, like the article I posted earlier, and morons that listen to my show, site photos earlier in the day of him cleaning up graffiti and applying medical aid to an injured citizen as some sort of explanation as to why we should applaud Rittenhouse and allow his behavior to go unpunished.
Others use tunnel vision and point simplistically to video showing a mob chasing him, after he shot Rosenbaum, as a claim of self-defense, ignoring entirely the very premise that it was the illegal action of arming himself in Wisconsin and taking to the streets that led to the events in question.
Entirely UNLIKE the Jacob Blake incident, there is no evidence that will surface to refute the events in question. Rittenhouse got behind the wheel drunk and/or he lit the match, whichever analogy you prefer. The moment he did, he lost all credibility and reasonable (but not legal) rights to a defense.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/27/us/kenosha-wisconsin-shooting-suspect/index.html
