Here's all you need to know about the Rittenhouse verdict's fallout, produced by 12 of the most gullible people on earth:
"Rep. Paul A. Gosar tweeted Friday that Kyle Rittenhouse would be welcomed in Arizona if he chooses to attend college on campus there. The 18-year-old is taking nondegree online classes at Arizona State University."
Rittenhouse "receive[d] multiple invitations to intern in Congress on Capitol Hill." The invitations came from Gosar and Reps. Matt Gaetz and Madison Cawthorn, who, as the Washington Post reports, "encourag[ed] others to 'be dangerous' and take up arms."
Online, far-right groups "erupted in jubilation."
A gun-control organization, Guns Down America, issued a statement as chilling as it is (mostly) true: "We live in a country where a White person like Rittenhouse is able to cross state lines with an assault weapon [he didn't] during a racial justice protest, take the lives of two, gravely injure a third, and successfully paint himself as the victim."
The right is now hoping the left becomes as "dangerous" as Rittenhouse, which would be precisely the wrong thing for the left to do.
(My own conclusion, however flawed it may be, is that Rittenhouse was at least guilty on the two counts of "first-degree recklessly endangering safety.")
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I rarely turn on cable news these days. Today, however, I made a point of tuning in Ari Melber's "The Beat," on MSNBC, since the host, an attorney, focuses on legal issues. I was expecting — don't ask me why — a reasoned, balanced, vigorously debated exploration of the Rittenhouse case and its verdict.
What I got was exactly what's wrong with MSNBC, a kind of sister network of Fox News. Melber's only guests? Two young Black women, identical views. You, I, anyone could have written the script. (Observed social-sciences journalist Jesse Singal before the announced verdict: "We seem headed toward a point where every major news story generates at least two distinct versions of reality that are summarily adopted as true by many partisans." The only error in that sentence is that we're not "headed toward" that point. Indisputably, we're already there.)
This is not the time to turn up the heat and foment more racial tension. There's kindling everywhere. Let the right and the far right (if there's a distinction any longer) flip out in ecstasies of recklessness — not that the two young women were being reckless, but you catch my drift: heated rhetoric is bound to morph more heated.