Posted on 11/22/2021 3:47:10 AM PST by Kaslin
This past Thursday, YouGov released a poll showing that 76% of Democrats thought Kyle Rittenhouse was guilty of homicide. Only 5% believed that he was not guilty.
Similarly, 69% of blacks thought he was guilty, and only 6% felt that he wasn’t.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote on Twitter that the verdict is a “heartbreaking miscarriage of justice and sets a dangerous precedent which justifies federal review by DOJ.” President Biden, who famously called Rittenhouse a white supremacist, also expressed Democrats’ anger: “While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken.”
By contrast, 65% of Republicans didn’t think that he was guilty.
I closely listened to the trial and consistently saw the prosecution’s witnesses make the clear case that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. I have a hard time understanding how anyone could think that he was guilty of going to Kenosha to purposefully murder people.
Unfortunately, the polarization over the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is pretty easy to explain.
There's the relatively benign if misleading reports on Friday by ABC, CBS, & NBC Evening News broadcasts announcing the verdict. All three outlets called the riots “protests” and avoided saying anything about Rittenhouse being attacked before using his gun. NBC at least went as far as saying that there were “protests and unrest.”
Others went much farther. On MSNBC, Rutgers Professor Brittney Cooper claimed: “Today what we were told was that white self-defense trumps everybody else’s sense of safety and protection. Even when white folks are carrying the gun and they are under no threat at all. As Kyle Rittenhouse admitted himself, he was not threatened. He didn’t think that there was a threat. He came there to intimidate, and he was allowed to do so.”
Of course, Rittenhouse said no such thing. He clearly said how he was threatened and in fear of his life. He never even remotely implied that he came there to intimidate anyone. But the other guest on MSNBC agreed with Cooper, and the host never contradicted her.
Another speaker on MSNBC feared: “The first thing that occurred to me after this ruling is oh, well, okay, now it’s open season. Like, if I’m walking around and I’m a white nationalist, coward little kid with an AR-15, and I see someone drive by with a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker and I feel threatened, I can open fire. If I go by a youth group chanting standing outside the local Target and I feel threatened, I can open fire.”
On CNN, Van Jones warned of “white vigilante violence … there is a group of people that thinks they have the right to take the law into their own hand.”
Those were all claims made after the trial.
On MSNBC during the trial, Joe Scarborough falsely claimed that Rittenhouse fired 60 shots, or Joy Reid claimed Rittenhouse drove four hours with his AR-15 to get to Kenosha. Of course, Rittenhouse’s apartment in Antioch, Illinois, is only 21 miles from Kenosha. The AR-15 wasn’t Rittenhouse’s, but a friend’s who lives in Kenosha. Never mentioned in the media, Rittenhouse’s father and grandparents live in Kenosha, and he spent much of his time there.
Not only were the “protests” actually violent riots, but there was also something that the mainstream media did not want Americans to know. The part of the Kenosha that Kyle Rittenhouse was protecting was “the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots.” Is that where “white supremacists” go to help people?
How do we know that the media knew that? A former reporter for the New York Times, Nellie Bowles, put up a post at Substack that discussed the bias in reporting on the riots. Bowles writes the paper sent her to report on the “mainstream liberal argument … that burning down businesses for racial justice was both good and healthy. Burnings allowed for the expression of righteous rage, and the businesses all had insurance to rebuild.”
“It turned out to be not true,” Bowles wrote. “The part of Kenosha that people burned in the riots was the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots. It was very sad to see and to hear from people who had suffered.”
Bowles said she filed her story, and editors told her it would not run until after the election, citing “space, timing, tweaks,” according to her post. The piece eventually ran after Joe Biden won the election, Bowles said. “Whatever the reason for holding the piece, covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority,” she wrote. “The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore.”
Is it any wonder that we have celebrities like Rosanna Arquette tweeting out: “I don’t want to live in a country that is ruled by violent ignorant racists.” Or Samantha Bee claiming: “Acquitting Kyle Rittenhouse sends a message to future Kyle Rittenhouses that they're free to incite violence and then claim self-defense.”
People who closely follow ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, Public TV, New York Times, and Washington Post think they are well informed. But they are protected from hearing important facts. Is the media accurate to call it “protests” when people destroyed over $50 million in property? In a town where the average home is worth $207,397, that is the equivalent of completely destroying 241 homes. Of course, the riot occurred in a relatively poorer area.
As Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz called the reporting “smears” “media malpractice.”
Kurtz described the media narrative as Kyle Rittenhouse as “a symbol of armed white people run amok.”
The mainstream media is denying people basic truth.
They don’t care. As long as people buy the narrative, they’ll keep pushing it.
The people who pay their salaries want the United States destroyed. To save the planet... or empower China...
Bttt
>>By contrast, 65% of Republicans didn’t think that he was guilty.
We’ve got a serious media deprogramming problem if 35% of Republicans think Rittenhouse was guilty.
“self-defense trumps everybody else’s sense of safety”
Yup.
Media=Enemies Domestic
Blacks don’t care about the truth as long as they can play the race card.
Republicans who live in blue areas suffer from a type of Stockholm syndrome and, against their own true sentiments, feel compelled to agree with their Democrat neighbors and work colleagues.
The media is responsible for this Christmas parade slaughter and many other acts of depravity and hate
“Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote on Twitter that the verdict is a “heartbreaking miscarriage of justice and sets a dangerous precedent which justifies federal review by DOJ.””
It should be pointed out that Nadler also claimed on national TV that there was no rioting going on during the summer of 2020. Kyle put an end to that lie and Nadler is still likely pissed about that too.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the meaning of vigilante is a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice.
I would say that the MSM, BLM and Antifa are the vigilante paramilitary wing of the Democrat Party.
The real vigilantes in the Kyle Rittenhouse case are those who pursued him and unsuccessfully tried to kill or do great boldly harm. The MSM successfully mislead the public, and continues to do so.
Maybe we should take a look at the MSM, Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grozzkreutz, and many others as the vigilantes and not confuse that with self-defense.
Was Gaige packing an illegal gun attempting to shoot Kyle? Was he taking the law into his own hands? Is that not an attempt at vigilante justice?
The entire MSM, BLM Antifa riots fit into the definition of vigilante justice. Their view of justice is twisted and warped and based on hate and prejudice is it not?
Well he did commit justifiable homicide, but not murder or an other kind of unjustifiable homicide.
Well the stupid democrats are going to be even more pissed off when Kyle sues a bunch of them into oblivion. Lots of them still believe Kyle shot black guys! And the collosal moron Jalen Rose thinks the black guy who was shot that was the spark for the riots was “unarmed” and that he died after being shot by cops. He’s still alive Jalen! Did I mention you’re a moron!?
I think it's actually more cynical than that.
I think that the people who own the media actually make more money by demonstrating to — various other powerful, wealthy people — that they are able to sell an alternate reality to "the masses" that consume their drivel.
Think of it in terms of virtual reality. The makers of virtual reality games make money by creating a totally immersive experience. The more completely they're able to fool their users into thinking they've left the "real" reality behind, the more successful they are, and the more money they make.
The people who own the MSM are not interested in conveying the truth. The people who pay them — who are not all advertisers, by any means — are paying for the creation of an alternate reality, which will be accepted by large numbers of malleable, unintelligent people.
The MSM isn't interested in telling the truth any more. That's too easy, and is being covered by other outlets that intelligent people can discover by themselves.
The MSM is now in the business of selling their ability to create an alternate reality to very wealthy people and entities that want to be able to buy large numbers of human sheep, for whatever purpose.
By portraying a fake vision of America, a fake vision of reality itself, the MSM is simply demonstrating its power, advertising its services to its actual customers. Many of whom (I believe) are not traditional advertisers, like Firestone Tires and Vicks Vapo-Rub.
Remember Occam's Razor. It may, or may not apply in this case, but your explanation seems much more complex than one of simple self interest.
Believing one has to lie to "save the planet";
Believing one has to lie to promote the interests of the Chinese, who pay you money to do so.
Both of those concepts seem much, much simpler and clearer than: believing those in the media wish to show other powerful players how well they can manipulate minds, while simultaneously destroying the culture and legal system they depend on, is far less intuitive.
Good point about Occam’s Razor, thanks for reminding me of that. Perhaps I’m over-embellishing.
Probably some of that are actually undecided or not answering.
Sullivan waxes poetic about the First Amendment, and it sounds wonderful. There were even enthusiastic concurrences which proposed that Sullivan didn’t go far enough. Well, we all love us some 1A, and I need freedom of speech and press in order for me to type and transmit this to FR, and FR needs freedom of the press in order to - at its owner’s discretion - post this comment for the world to see (or, alas, ignore).
But.
Contrary to popular opinion - but well known to the Warren Court perpetrators of Sullivan - none of the provisions of the Bill of Rights were understood - by those who proposed them or those who ratified them - to change anything at all. Why? Because the Federalists who proposed those ten amendments would have included their provisions in the unamended Constitution at the Constitutional Convention if they had believed that any of those provisions were not implied in the unamended Constitution. In fact, that is what the Ninth and Tenth Amendments imply.
Simply, the Constitution was written by people who understood Common Law. Common Law is organic - it accumulates gradually in court decisions to fill in the inevitable gaps between legislation and particular realities which arise after legislation is enacted. The AntiFederalists complained about the lack of a bill of rights in the unamended Constitution, and the Federalists were compelled politically to promise one by amendment - and the first ten amendments were passed to satisfy that promise. But any bill of rights which might have been proposed in the unamended Constitution could inevitably have been second-guessed as omitting something - since rights as we understand them were not compiled in one place anywhere. Trying to compile an unassailably comprehensive list of rights would have been - and still would be - a fool’s errand.
The point is that Sullivan changed the rights of some people - nominally, government officials including judges but often applied to “public figures” who have that status imposed on them by “the media" - by impeding their ability to sue for libel or slander. And the Bill of Rights was not intended to, and easily might have failed of ratification if any of its provisions had been perceived at the time as causing - a change to anyone’s rights.
Thus, the Sullivan decision would have been a scandal if handed down in the early years of the Republic. Since it compromises the ability of politicians to withstand unfair assaults on their reputations by “the media,” you would think that politicians would be the last ones to have wanted Sullivan. But of course as we know, there are legions of politicians who like Sullivan because they profitably go along and get along with “the media.” It is Republicans - and now even, in this case, juries - who need the protection from libel and slander which Sullivan presumes to steal from them.
In fact, an appeal for reversal of Sullivan should include a claim that it subverts the legitimacy of the jury system of official fact-finding by empowering a united portion of “the press” essentially to ignore the rightful status of a finding by a jury. By no stretch of the imagination is trial by juryunaccountable propagandists “due process.” And I suggest that for “the media” one could profitably, in any such suit, name "the Associated Press and its members, joint and several liability” as defendants. It is the wire Services generally and the AP in particular which, IMHO, unify “the press” into the unaccountable propaganda organ that they collectively constitute.
I
Sullivan is ripe for reinterpretation. But remember that the malice standard is much more than knowledge of the truth. It includes reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of a statement. Some writers and broadcasters know they tread dangerously on that knife edge.
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