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Rittenhouse posted bail, and then met with Proud Boys members
in a Kenosha County bar where he posed, flashing white power signs.
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Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — After the Kyle Rittenhouse testimony last week, most everyone agrees this killer is dim, reckless and puerile.
But defenders of Rittenhouse's self-defense claim are proffering new justifications on the eve of closing arguments and jury deliberation this coming week.
One line of killing-justification proliferating on social media is the claim Rittenhouse's victims may have criminal records, so Rittenhouse's killings can be adduced as retroactively praiseworthy. Critics of the killings are similarly off-base in their condemnations under this justification, it is asserted.
A second line of killing-justification is the claim that all of the people on the street protesting the maiming of Jacob Blake are arsonists, (no matter the lack of criminal records or even arrests in this argument), so all Black Lives Matter protesters present in Kenosha deserve to be killed, including the victims of Rittenhouse.
That these lines of argument are insane does not stop a lot of Rittenhouse supporters from advancing their defense of this homicidal racist.
But this weekend former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard weighed in on the side of Kyle Rittenhouse, omitting mention of his Proud Boys connections, and his stated wish to fire off his AR-15 on people whom he adjudged as guilty of crimes.
This is the kind of militarism that seems to pass muster in Gabbard's new book.
Gabbard claims Rittenhouse's motive are pure, and he just wanted to protect Kenosha.
Gabbard is off the deep end. Facile and sophomoric, her dangerous mainstreaming of vigilantism gives the green light to kill, as long as increasingly narcissistic Americans deem it necessary.
Writes Gabbard: "With no evidence, MSM & antifa-loving politicians immediately labeled Rittenhouse a white supremacist terrorist. It’s obvious now that he was just a foolish kid who felt he needed to protect people & the community from rioters & arsonists because the government failed to do so."
Really?
Everyone on the streets of Kenosha on Aug 25, 2020, felt individually that he or she was present out of principle, but only one person fired off his AR-15 at people, killed two people, maimed another, and traumatized families and communities for decades.
Don't believe what people say about a murdered relative. No one is ever the same. Everyone on the streets of Kenosha that night could be suffering from PTSD over Rittenhouse's horror.
Gabbard argues that since in his own mind, Rittenhouse was there to protect the City, this gives him the right to kill.
Not even Rittenhouse's attorneys pursue this absurd line of argument, but this is good enough for Tulsi.
No sympathy from Gabbard about the Rittenhouse victims, or Jacob Blake. But Gabbard did post subsequent ruminations about World Kindness Day.
This is Wisconsin.
People here celebrate wrongful convictions, police misconduct, but I do feel optimistic that open vigilantism won't fly, no matter the effort to superimpose reasonableness onto vicious killings, and stamp deserve-to-be-killed onto victims.
In the meantime, Tulsi Gabbard is reaching out politically to the lowest of low lives who live behind anonymous accounts, threats, calumny and bile.
See:
The new logic of the right is to accuse those criticizing killing as being "pedophiles." These are the people Tulsi Gabbard is courting.
Twitter will not take down the posts.
