I have not followed the Rittenhouse case as closely as many, but I’m old – we’ve been there before. Remember the 70’s, the 80’s? Last year a hundred thousand Americans died of overdoses; theft is not prosecuted in some cities. Did we think our lives would be peaceful? Did we then, as we pulled out some of the pillars that held the roof over our society, protecting and ordering it? Some of those pillars were being reconstructed, but the last few years have seen their destruction, again and more thoroughly.
Rittenhouse, certainly out of self-defense, killed, but these deaths are not just the result of the actions of the men, apparently unhinged and certainly violent and predatory from long before Blake was shot, that attacked him. The fault also lies in those in charge, who have little humility in taking over our lives from cradle to grave, but shrug off their first responsibility – to nurture an ordered society, where the rights of citizens are protected and civility reigns. They seem to want to take our guns but they certainly don’t want to protect us. Our leaders have lost a sense of the priorities outlined in our unique, beautiful, and profound Constitution. However, it codifies and organizes responsibilities long seen as a government’s duty: to protect citizens from threats external (the federal) and internal (the state and city). They found a sensible format for fulfilling those duties – one with checks and balances. Our tradition, of course, has always included a healthy bit of personal responsibility, of self-protection. Rittenhouse is in that tradition. Those who did not do their duty are in no position to scoff at someone who tries to protect the home town of his father and grandmother.
We can say, at least I would say, that even a well-intentioned 17-year-old should avoid riots. (As our eyes could see, whatever the networks said.) However, for most of our past 17-year-olds were considered adults – they married, fought, supported households; forbidding alcohol recognizes strong bodies but maturing judgement. Nonetheless, Rittenhouse’s mission appears to have been felt honestly, the desire to establish order is an appropriate response to chaos. When faced with one attacker, he remained, well, I’m not sure if calm is the word. Still he didn’t shoot a man bearing in on him until that man lowered his gun, pointed it directly at his head as he lay on the ground. Someone older might have handled all of it with fewer deaths, someone trained to be a policeman, a soldier. Someone like that might have been careful not to be alone, too. But, then, we might ask – where were older men? Who made decisions that led to that night, how could they have been so terribly irresponsible? Where were all the grown men (and womn), mayors and governors, that long summer? Watching the previous day, Rittenhouse understood life would never be the same for his father and his grandmother when property was treated cavalierly, violence and arson unchecked. A vacuum pulled him in.
People of my age have been there before. We remember the 60’s and 70’s, then the 80’s and 90’s, we remember the destruction and vigilantes. The gun as “peacemaker” in a lawless town is a mainstay of our culture. The frontier might not have been as we saw it portrayed in western after western, but the human tendencies portrayed are: we were quite aware of what happens when order breaks down, when our property (of all kinds, personal and real, familial and intellectual, our bodies themselves) is not respected and protected by an ordered society. In a vacuum, force and violence settle disputes, access property, force servility.
A rampaging mob in St. Louis chooses rooms in a man’s house, threatening death to pets, the rape of the man’s wife. And he is arrested for protecting that house. A hundred cars are torched in a single lot in Kenosha. Chaos generally leaves the weak vulnerable, as the unprincipled, the untethered strong are unrestrained. Pop culture, reacting, glorifies vigilantes. Sure we don’t want a country run by vigilante justice. It simply appears the only answer: quick and simple. It is satisfying entertainment at such a time.
In the fifties when many had seen how thin the veneer of Western order could be, Hollywood offered Shane. Later cities became more ragged, harsh, disordered. Vigilante plots responded to the chaos of riots and the years of crack. Dirty Harry movies began in 1971, ended in 1987; The A Team ran from 1983-87. The Equalizer ads indicate its contemporary protagonist (Queen Latifah) is a strong, competent but violent defender of the weak – as was Edward Woodward, in the series that ran from 1985-1989.
Kyle Rittenhouse felt he needed to be there, not necessarily from a grandiose vision of himself, hardly for racist reasons, impelled by many reasons, I assume, but underlying it was the knowledge that a vacuum existed in Kenosha where law and order should have been.
Why the vacuum? The local government had abdicated its role and left nothing in its place. Why? Well, we can posit motivations but few reasons; these leaders weren’t “doers” – they had no plan of action, had no sense action was their responsibility. We may suspect motives – do they want to confiscate guns? do they want to federalize police forces? Perhaps. But if our worst suspicions are not true, the truth is bad enough: the vulnerable are the losers. And there is a complication: human beings being what they are, the most vulnerable can also be the most destructive, the most irrational. We ask in the Florida school shooting, what was Cruz doing going into that school building, why did everyone in authority note that he was a ticking bomb and then do nothing about it? Why was one of those Rittenhouse shot released from a mental hospital (I’ve heard it was that very day and he was “agitated” as he left), why was this rapist of young boys on the streets – clearly both dangerous and sick, lighting dumpsters to push into occupied police cars? This wasn’t someone that was triggered by the Blake shooting, this was a man triggered by ordinary life.
Our leaders seem unwilling to face the fact that man may be fallen let alone sick. They are sentimental about illness, sentimental about race, sentimental about vulnerability – but sentimentality is not the sentiment of a problem solver. Clear eyed, sympathetic pragmatism is what we need – a doer, not an empty speaker of cliches, mouther of slogans. The mind is wonderful and complex, but that complexity can fail us. A leader needs to face that fact: to understand some are vulnerable to delusions and others to depressions and, unfortunately, some to act with irrational violence. Of course, such a man hasn’t the guilt of a purposeful criminal, but he is no less – perhaps more – a threat to his fellow citizens. Certainly he should not be free to roam the streets of a riot-torn town. Society (our leaders and our laws) has a responsibility to protect such citizens from themselves and others from them. (Of course, a government that sentences those who walked through the capitol on January 6 to solitary confinement and mental reprogramming while not charging violent rioters does diminish our faith in its competence.)
Mayors and governors should ask themselves how much responsibility did they have for the chaos in . . . well, how many cities was it? Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, New York, St. Louis, . . . Isn’t their first job to protect the rights of their citizens, to work toward answers, to heal. Surely it isn’t to manufacture racial strife – and it had to be manufactured in several cases before this last, egregious one.
Our bodies, our talents, our judgement and our circumstances are not going to be equal, our government cannot make them so. It is delusional to believe it can. Governments can’t make life fair – we are all going to die, we all make some bad choices and some good ones – a lot of those are not the government’s business and living with the consequences is what makes us wiser – even if sometimes we feel punished disproportionally for a moment’s silly choice. Equality in terms of protection of our lives and property, equality before the law – that is the government’s duty. It is difficult, but the government, failing at it, wishes to expand, to take on broader responsibilities it is likely to fulfill even more poorly.
To treat its citizens as equal before the law – that is a great enough goal. To respect each citizen as an individual, an individual with rights to life and liberty, to productivity, to a secure expression of self (in property and thought, in family and in commerce, in speech and in print, in belief and in self-protection). Respect for others’ rights gives us a civil society, and that respect is greater if automatic, widespread, characteristic of individual citizens. It is these boundaries our government must observe. If a broadly held assumption, it gives freedom, one not characteristic of Kenosha on that dark and bloody night. And, strangely, this also means we are at peace, coveting our neighbor’s life and property a passion we feel less and less as that assumption more and more is felt in our core. However, without that integral, shared respect, we are no longer a trust society and if we lose that (no minor danger today) we will lose something profoundly, deeply peaceful. A peace that allows us to live freely, to move freely, to speak freely.
Thanks for this. If our soon to be ex governor Evers had sent in the national guard and state police immediately, when the mostly peaceful burning and looting began in Kenosha, we wouldn’t know who Kyle is today.
Splendid, Ginny! Thank you. Sadly, I think our “society”, and “our democracy”, is past its use by date. We no longer have the trust society to which you refer because so many of “us” are not trustworthy. Adams warned that our constitution was meant for a moral and religious people and inadequate for any other. Only a moral and religious polity will be capable of “self” government. To adequately govern those who will not and cannot govern themselves requires the force and oppressive “state” to enforce the order the polity requires along with the benefits for which it clamors: equity, inclusion, tolerance etc.
I think that the best we can do is to do what we can locally and try to re-establish islands of trust and let them spread. Calls for grand international conferences as by Archbishop Vigano are theatrics in my opinion. While he has the best intentions, the globalists will not allow top down organization of any such effort. Success will be hard won, but it will have to come from the bottom up.
My $0.02 for what it is worth.
Thank you for this. I will send along to the usual suspects.
Jim Reibel
We have had less than competent governors in the past, but Evers is our first malevolent one.
the media, was by process of elimination, the so called public safety institutions of kenosha (depicted in the kenosha eye) and the cadaver that sits in the governors mansion
Ginny: “Mayors and governors should ask themselves how much responsibility did they have for the chaos …”
And we citizens should ask ourselves how much responsibility we have for putting the wrong individuals into those positions.
Classic case was Marion Barry, mayor of the Swamp. Sent to jail for drug dealing. Gets out of jail and the Swamp-dwellers re-elected him. How do we deal with that kind of issue?
Excellent thought-provoking piece, Ginny. Thank you.
part of a series
http://kenoshacountyeye.com/2021/11/07/john-antaramians-kenosha-city-is-one-murder-away-from-triple-the-average/
It is interesting that San Francisco was the location of the most reported vigilante movement in our country
Last Friday night Union Square, the location of many high end retail shops, was looted emptying the prominent Louis Vuiton store.
How long before we see vigilantes again? The old San Francisco variety operated at night and in secret.
Well, not entirely in secret. They were pretty open when they marched en masse and with a cannon pointed at the jailhouse door when they demanded custody of two prisoners, Casey and Cora.
http://www.celiahayes.com/archives/639
I think a lot of these idiots in Antifa and Black Bloc are cosplaying Mad Max and the apocalypse, with no real understanding of what that means in either personal terms, or to the society they currently parasitize. Same-same with most of the BLM types.
If the bit-switch gets flipped over to “Mad Max”, and we’re all wearing assless leather chaps (not a good look on me, I’m afraid–Don’t plan on partaking…), the idiots in these three groups are going to find themselves in a very ugly situation, because they’re entirely incapable of actually surviving in that world. The “normies” who can cooperate, and who actually built our civil society? They’re gonna take one look at the breakdown in order, and an awful lot of them are gonna be emulating that old Far Side cartoon where the two fishermen are sitting in the foreground, with multiple mushroom clouds in the background, and the one fisherman says to the other “Know what this means, Norm–No size restrictions, and screw the limit…”.
Basically, while the anarchists think they’re creating a world where they can do as they will, the reality is that that world is going to be able to do unto them with equal facility. The breakdown of order runs both ways, and as the truism goes, the cops aren’t there to protect the public from the criminals; in a larger sense, they’re there to protect the criminals from the public dealing with them as they would prefer. Break the bond of trust between Joe Average and the entire shaky edifice that is our legal system, and instead of Joe Average calling the cops on the kids he catches breaking into his garage, he’s simply going to apply the “three S” principle–Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up. No trust in the judicial system? Lots and lots of people are going to start dying for petty crimes. Corporate WalMart or Home Depot may be perfectly happy to write off theft and shoplifting losses, until they do the math and just cut their losses by closing the stores. The folks who take up the slack and see the opportunities inherent in opening high-priced replacements for those corporate behemoths out in the various ‘hoods? LOL… Yeah, buddy… Try shoplifting in a Korean- or Arab-run small business where the owners don’t have a margin to play with. They’re going to do things, things that are likely to escalate until a bunch of people wind up “disappeared” in some way. Society in general is going that way–The Ahmaud Arbery case is an indicator. It is being sold as a couple of racists going after an innocent black man out for a run, but if you look deeper into the facts, it’s nowhere near as clear-cut. The trial is turning up a lot of facts that contradict the whole thrust of the case, and I suspect that the key reason those two “racists” did what they did was specifically because they weren’t getting law enforcement to do a damn thing about a weirdo constantly going back to the same property and snooping around. Arbery ain’t what he’s being sold as.
We had an area that was rife with a bunch of meth and other drug issues, up here in Snohomish County. Rumor has it that some of the old-timers got tired of their stuff being stolen constantly, and that actions were taken, leaving a rather large number of “missing persons” who’d last been heard of casing the properties of some of those aforementioned old-timers. Lotta old mineshafts up there, is all I’m sayin’… Oddly enough, the county sheriff ain’t demonstrating a lot of interest in finding those missing people, either.
If anyone is wishing for Mad Max, be certain of what you want, because it ain’t going to be roaming the wastelands in your custom-built apocalypse-mobiles and doing as you wish to all and sundry; it’s rather more likely to consist of ugly deaths and shallow graves for you and all your like-minded friends, because there are a bunch of high-functioning sociopaths out here whose only reason for following the rules are that they’ve done the cost-benefit analysis, and recognized that ignoring society’s inhibitions leads to prison. Take that away, and they’re the ones who’re going to wind up dealing with the Mad Max wannabe types, not the gentle idealists of today’s judicial system… And, they’ll likely enjoy doing it. Lots of “it”, and “it” ain’t going to be pretty, for those who think they’re going to run things in the brave new world they’re trying to bring into being.
the regulators were referred by lt briggs, the chief of the magnum force squad, considering there is whole sale looting of cargo containers coming into los angeles, even ‘wild in the streets’ didn’t contemplate characters like boudin and gascon, the clockwork orange gang
I have been astounded at the attitude so many of our mayors had (and governors) in just sitting back and letting people riot and loot. As you say Ginny, they had an obligation to protect the city and its citizens.
And then to hear these “journalists” describe it as a “peaceful protest”.
And in CA now, because voters in a referandum decided that anything stolen under $1000 is now a misdomeanor and not a felony, shoplifters brazenly carry thinks out stores with impunity.
I feel like I am living in bizarro world….
The mayors of those looted cities along with governors of those states made the political calculation that standing down their police forces would make them look good and Trump look bad. And they were right. Unfortunately, the looting continued after their guy was elected; see: the East Bay and DuPage County, IL. It’s hard to restore public order after you’ve allowed it to be destroyed.
The mayhem is spreading to the suburbs, which means that the midterm elections will be a bloodbath for the Dems.
well they got paid off in the so called covid bill, even seattle and minneapolis, (but not austin and portland gor a clue)
Thanks, Ginny
So we see now very clearly that the overwhelming number of people are mindless conformists, who can be scared into submission very quickly, and turn on scapegoated minorities.
Which tells me that we’re ripe for right-wing authoritarianism, if the right person can see what time it is and seize the moment. Because all this woke/”get those dirty unvaxxed and force them to get jabbed” nonsense doesn’t fit in with American history and traditions nearly as well as a movement to crush it does…
Not too sure what point you’re trying to make, Brian.
This sort of thing ain’t going to go on for too much longer, before people start voting in “reactionary” law-and-order types, and taking action themselves:
https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2021/11/21/watch-mass-looting-moves-to-san-francisco-suburbs-it-was-insane/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/11/21/looters-empty-louis-vuitton-stores-in-san-francisco-and-chicago-n1535047
Waypoints on the road to hell, ladies and gentlemen. When this stuff starts happening in places like Walnut Creek? Which is, I might point out for the unaware, within spitting distance of Nancy Pelosi’s district…
I suspect that 2022 will be a bloodbath for the Democrats, and that their foils in the Republican party will have to take up their slack. I further surmise that after said Republican members of the Uniparty finally and emphatically discredit themselves, we’re going to see some even more drastic political upheaval. I really doubt that people are going to put up with this crap as a routine for much longer.
One of these “loot gangs” will show up in some quiet suburban/rural town to try the same thing, and the locals are going to take a decidedly negative view of it all, because they don’t want their merchants and businesses put out of business by the side-effects. That’s gonna look a lot like the James Gang raid on Northfield, Minnesota, but with more semi-automatic weapons deployed.
It’ll be blamed on “racism” by the incompetent and venal media and other “authorities” in our society, though… Not their own fecklessness.
That’s because you’re very slow, Kirk.
I’d say it’s more because you couldn’t write a clear paragraph to save your life, but that’s my opinion…
Who, precisely, are you excoriating? I’ve read that confused mess five times, and I honestly can’t tell who you’re railing against. Clarity of expression ain’t there, whatsoever.
that’s why there’s 1.9 million dollars in the human infrastructure bill to prevent crimethink in local media, see how waukesha is just a footnote, or worse, in the eyes of the prog media,
our local fishwrap has desantis derangement, almost at the same level as with orange man,
It’s all wasted money and effort; as soon as people observe the local Walgreens isn’t there, any more, and they have to drive thirty miles to get their prescriptions filled through a cage? Minds and opinions will change, followed by the laws and the people elected to enforce them. The last time this happened, we got “Three Strikes and You’re Out”. Which, upon the success of that policy, got turned into “We’re putting too many behind bars…”, and here we are. It’s cyclic; mark my words, Boudin is going to get recalled, and unless they pull out the stops on the electoral fraud, he’s going to be going bye-bye, and whoever takes his place is going to be a Dirty Harry law-and-order type.
Either that, or vigilantism of a stripe we haven’t seen since the 19th Century will become a thing, again. I’m kinda surprised that more people, especially small business owners, haven’t simply snapped under the weight of it all. We had a rash of construction-site thefts up around here, and then it simply… Stopped. Somewhere towards the end of that theft spree, some of the local methheads also apparently moved on, and I don’t know if they felt the impending attention of the sheriff, or if some of our local contractors simply decided to implement the three “S” principle… All I know is that the thefts stopped, and there weren’t any accompanying entries in the rolls down at the county jail, nor any actions noted in the Sheriff’s Report in the paper.
Law enforcement is a basic necessity for civil society; you remove it, and something will fill the void. If not the vigilante, then the Mafia. I don’t think a lot of the loveys really grasp that point…
Which is that by “easing up” on the criminally-inclined, you’re actually being a hell of a lot crueler to them, because what got them time in prison under the old standards is suddenly going to cost them their lives, when the public stops bothering to call 911.
this is why they[ve developed a whole new framework to prevent correction
https://www.maciverinstitute.com/2019/11/milwaukee-courts-data-driven-debacle/
This ain’t going to end well:
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1462847881518501890
I wonder how long it is before they’re trying and lynching the prosecutors, judges, and defense attorneys right next to the criminals…?
I think that it would be very instructional for a lot of the idiot class we have running things, these days, to actually go back and read the stuff like Sgt. Mom has posted vis-a-vis how the old “Committees of Vigilance” worked, and what led to them coming into being in the first place.
Soros and his minions may think they’ve captured the seats of power in the criminal justice realm, but the reality is that the power has always rested in the hands of the people. They perceive the system isn’t working for them, any more? They’ll ignore it, and build one that does satisfy their needs.
Won’t be a pleasant process for the loveys, though. They’re going to reap the whirlwind.
Swear to God, it’s like nine-tenths of these people haven’t read history, or even have any idea how we got here. They’re forcing a recapitulation of the whole sordid thing, all over again, from first principles… And, it’s gonna be ugly.
that was scott walker’s persecutor, whose office made that determination
Oh, reaaaaaally… I did not make that connection.
Simply faaaaaascinating, that.
Like I said–The malefactors are gonna have company, dangling from the trees and lamp posts. It’s only going to take a few of their enablers being dealt with that way before the point is going to be made, and I dare say that it’s gonna be like that case in Ohio. Y’know… Ken McElroy? That ring any bells for anyone?
That’s what happens when people lose all faith in the rule of law, and that’s where all these jackass idiots are taking us. It’s a multi-part systemic failure, but you can see the outlines of what’s coming. National Guard doesn’t show, to enforce civil order? Cops stand down, ignoring riot and arson…? Someone will do the job, and it ain’t going to be a pleasant thing to observe or participate in.
You might be able to make something like this happen in a society where the populace is like the one in Iraq, cowed down and brutalized by literal generations of oppression and servitude to authorities. In the US, I think we’re still close enough to a frontier mentality where you do for yourself for that kind of anarchy to go on for very long. There will be reaction to all of this, even if it does take the form of private security forces being hired by companies like Walgreens and Nordstroms in order to ensure that they’re not bankrupted by looters.
My money’s on public disgust leading to a different attitude towards criminality, and a wholesale turnout of the current incumbent assholes who’re letting this happen. I suspect that the Uniparty is not long for this world, and that a lot of their local apparatchiks are gonna be out of jobs shortly. Chesa Boudin will likely be the first, and if he avoids the hook pulling his stupid ass off-stage, then there’s going to be an ugly reaction. People are not going to live like this, and they have the tools to make sure they don’t have to.
Christ on a crutch… I got into a conversation over the weekend with some hyper-liberal refugees from the Seattle chaos, and they wanted my advice on arming up and training to use said arms, ‘cos they see what’s coming. Interestingly enough, there’s some cognitive dissonance there, because they still don’t quite get how things got to this point, or what policies led to it. Baby steps out of the morass of left-wing thought, I guess…
Follow-up data point:
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/meet-progressive-da-behind-waukesha-bail-catastrophe/
I’m not seeing where this Chisholm character was behind the Scot Walker BS, but I don’t have time to do more research on that. This whole thing is rather indicative of why these clowns are going to be held accountable alongside the actual criminals, though–Note the precious way in which “…Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has called for an investigation into the “inappropriately low” cash bond offered to alleged perpetrator Darrell Brooks Jr.”.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/milwaukee-da-launches-investigation-into-waukesha-suspects-inappropriately-low-cash-bond/
Like he’s really unaware that this was going on, or that it’s an intended outcome of the way he’s carried out his office.
Swear to God, these guys are gonna be protesting they never meant for any of this to happen, all the way to the gallows tree. And, I’m gonna be sitting there, observing, and saying “I tol’ ya so…”.
You can tear down a lot of things, in the legal system, but once you’ve reached a certain point, and you go past? Things are gonna go bad, and go bad very quickly. We’re getting closer and closer to that point. If it proves that these ass-clowns can’t be removed via the ballot box, then the next step is probably going to be a whole hell of a lot of violence. Which they will have only themselves to blame–The actual constituency for criminals ain’t all that big, when you get down to it. The normies are the ones with the numbers, and they’re the ones you’ll need to worry about manning the Committees for Vigilance. I don’t think the Chisholms and the Boudins of the world realize that fact, but I fear they’re gonna learn it the hard way.
Well, after listening to Tucker Carlson’s interview of Kyle Rittenhouse, I was impressed with his clarity, humility, and especially empathy. He seemed to have come to that night with a presence of mind. He saw himself as in the right, but still within the law – I had not realized he had tried to turn himself in to police who sat in their cars, telling him to go away, and only was able to turn himself in to the Antioch police department. That he would take the series of steps after an evening that surely would make most of us less than clear-headed was remarkable. That he showed sympathy for the citizens of Kenosha, recognized that the people we would see as his antagonists, as rioters, tried to avoid the man who was spewing threats and would eventually attack him shows an ability not to see others as groups, and his sympathy for his friend who drove him for 3 hours after he had no access to running water for several weeks in prison – some of this told with a sense of humor as well as calm was remarkable. At 17 he was more mature than a good many of us are with many more years of experience – and a good deal less angry and less aggrieved than most of us are under less trying experiences.
Kyle Rittenhouse did better that night than a lot of “trained professionals” would have, and certainly demonstrated more fire discipline than your average soldier or cop would have in that same set of circumstances.
Hell, TBH? If I’d been in his shoes, in uniform and carrying a government-sanctioned and issued weapon…? Lemme tell you what: The minute they put me on the ground, it would have been “set selector switch to fully automatic”, and let the good times roll. I’d have had zero qualms about putting the majority of those assholes on the ground, just for participating in the rioting that was going on around me.
Of course, I’d have also made sure I didn’t find myself in that situation in the first damn place, because I’d have been with a unit of trained soldiers, but… Yeah. Rittenhouse showed remarkable presence of mind and was extremely diligent in regards to the whole “shoot/no shoot” discipline.
Frankly, I think that’s a point that the defense should have made: Put a cop or a National Guardsman up there on the stand, and ask them what they would have done in Kyle’s place. I don’t think the prosecution or the general public would have liked the answer.
Kenosha happened because the civil authorities completely abandoned their responsibilities and indeed, actually fanned the flames of insurrection and riot. That they then had the temerity to put Kyle Rittenhouse on trial just goes to show whose side they’re actually on, and it isn’t the side of law and order accruing to the benefit of the general public.
Honest to God, if I’d been separated from my unit and found myself in a situation like Kyle Rittenhouse did, I’m not sure I’d have done as well as he did, or acted in as restrained and circumspect manner as he did. Part of it would be down to the fact that I know what mobs can do, what they’re like, and they terrify me. I don’t think Kyle has that same set of internalized facts, and he treated the situation as though each instance was a separate encounter, rather than a chain of events perpetrated by the crowd. I suspect I’d have been backing up towards the sanctuary of the police line from about the moment Rosenbaum came out from behind that car and went after me, and I’d have been shooting anything at all that looked like a threat and was in range. I certainly would have been shooting to kill after the idiot Huber came after me with a skateboard, and I’d have likely put a couple of anchor shots into Grosskruetz after confiscating his Glock. Anyone else even remotely demonstrating an intent to close with me and do harm? Same thing, no qualms, no issues. You want to cosplay a rioter; you’re going to get treated as one when it comes to fire control.
Taking part in a riot like that implies that you’ve decided to play by big-boy rules, and that you’re willing to participate in acts of violence likely to result in death or injury to others. At that point, the calculus works out to “Demonstrate threat, get shot…”.
Overall, that crowd was lucky that Rittenhouse was as restrained as he was. It was a remarkable performance that I believe few so-called “professionals” could or would match. I know I’d be in the mindset of “Well, the mob wants to kill me? Fine; I’m taking as many of them with me as I can…”.
And, yeah… I’m pretty sure I’d have been crucified afterwards by the authorities above me, but y’know what? I’d still be alive to be in front of a court martial or jury… You let a mob like that get you down, and you’re more than likely to die in a very ugly way.