Speaking about the Rittenhouse trial, J. KB. of the Gun Free Zone has a trenchant perspective. Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.
Anyone who actually watched the Rittenhouse trial with anything remotely close to an open mind cannot help but come to the inescapable conclusion that not just did the prosecutor not prove that Kyle is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but proved that Kyle is innocent beyond a reasonable doubt … The evidence of self defense couldn’t be clearer.
Not on social media, however.
There, Kyle is guilty of being a mass murdering, sociopathic white supremacist who deserves every horrible fate imaginable.
. . .
I don’t know what percent of American this represents buy what I can tell you is this:
There is absolutely no commonality I have with these people.
None.
They have no interest in evidence.
For them, justice is purely a function of political alignment.
Kyle’s guilt is assured because he was opposed to the rioters and therefore opposed to their politics.
This is how the Soviet Union, East Germany, and every Communist country in Asia and Latin America operated.
This is what they want here. The justice system to be an enforcer of political ideology.
Those on their side have charges dropped regardless of evidence of guilt and those who oppose them are guilty regardless of evidence of innocence.
We cannot share a country with these people.
It’s impossible for two such divergent value systems to cohabitate in a single nation.
Unfortunately I think deciding which model of justice – impartial based in evidence or biased and partisan based on politics – is the justice system our nation uses will not be decided with it coming to blows.
There’s more at the link.
I’m hearing from more and more friends, acquaintances and contacts who’ve recently traveled through (or moved from) “blue states”. They describe life there as a dreary existence, regimented, masked, dictatorial, with precious little of the freedom to be oneself that previously existed. Almost without exception, they describe coming back to “free” or “red” America as a liberation, a release, a joyful experience, where life can be lived free from fear.
I fear J. KB. is right. I certainly would not live under a totalitarian ideological dictatorship, such as many of the commenters he describes appear to want. I, too, have watched their reactions to the Rittenhouse trial on social media. They aren’t listening to the evidence at all. They filter it through their presuppositions and prejudices, and refuse to take an objective view of the facts.
Take the prosecutor in this case, so roundly rebuked by the judge for crossing legal boundaries and ignoring constitutional and legal safeguards. Just think . . . in a country dominated by such an ideology, people like that would be the judges as well as the prosecutors, and would be carefully selected to form the juries, too. There would be no honest, fact- and evidence-based verdicts and sentences at all.
Sarah Hoyt says of them and their ilk:
In their minds humans and societies are neatly ordered spools of yarn, to be woven into any design they choose. In reality human societies and cultures are like several bits of yarn dropped into a basket and used as a play thing by your cats. Pull one end, and you’re actually creating a big mess elsewhere. If you’re lucky there’s no dead mice in the middle of it all.
There is a fatal disconnect. They’re champion planners. And they talk about their success, and therefore scare the living pants out of a lot of people.
But the only thing their plans have achieved is to destroy things that work and leave messes in their place. Their regimes don’t hold.
. . .
Don’t be afraid their plan is “all coming true.” Be afraid of the things they’re breaking as they lurch around with the beehives of panic and stupidity buzzing in their nether orifices.
Again, more at the link.
I think that’s a wonderful image: “the beehives of panic and stupidity buzzing in their nether orifices”. That’s their reaction when they look at those of us in “free states”, and realize that we haven’t bought into their totalitarian wet dream, and never will. Those beehives drive them to try harder and harder to impose their totalitarianism on the rest of us – to “break” us. That should be a beehive to us in turn, to make us resist them all the harder.
We no longer live in the same America as they do. They see themselves as an irresistible force, imposing their ideology willy-nilly on everybody else. The rest of us see ourselves – and our constitution, and our traditions – as an immovable object that will not be dominated.
In the absence of common sense, compromise and good will, there can be only one outcome of that conflict. One side will have to go to the wall.
Well . . . if that’s how it has to be, so be it. As long as I’m alive, it won’t be the side of freedom. I’ve seen at first hand, in all too ghastly detail, what it does to a country when totalitarianism triumphs. I won’t see it happen here.
This is where all of us who love freedom must align ourselves with our founding fathers, who “mutually pledge[d] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” in the same cause. Many of them fulfilled that pledge at the cost of their lives and/or prosperity. We should expect, and can do, no less. Not to worry. We’ll be in good company.
Peter
Could not help but think that after watching trial coverage and a rehash of what went down in Kenosha what was really needed there was a hundred Kyles or even 20, and the rioters and looters would have fled back to the cesspits they came from.
We hire supposedly experts to do things we ourselves are too busy or too untrained to do ourselves. That includes law enforcement, and when our employees fail us we have no choice but to step in and handle the situations ourselves.
The Constitution itself gives us all (with some small exceptions) the status of the unorganized militia, and when no one else will act it is incumbent upon us to stand up and do what's right.
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I'm afraid that there's a significant component in human nature which is longing for order of a highly regimented level because it's predictable. I've lived through east-European "enlightened" communism and immediately after its collapse there was a not so insignificant part of the population regretting the change and missing the old times, when "everyone was working and everyone knew where he/she stood". The less responsibility for their lives people are ready to accept, the more they'll be fascinated by the "wise government", providing for them so they can keep living in their more-or-less comfortable ignorance, slowly and surely becoming mindless drones in a hive-like society. It's a terrifying image, but I'm afraid we've already passed the point of no return and it's going to fall to the next generations to push a change through – in 30-50 years if society survives that long…
The idiotic reactions to the Rittenhouse trial are just the symptoms of the phenomenon…
Add in what has just happened to Project Veritas and you realize that we are currently very much in a war with totalitarianism.
"[T]he beehives of panic and stupidity buzzing in their nether orifices".
Sarah's a keeper.
In my travels, I've noticed that the troubling attitudes and actions mentioned here are more a function of cities than states – I've been in rural areas of "blue" states recently that are wide open, welcoming, optimistic and where even state employees ignore gubernatorial diktats and recent unreasonable laws.
While my state has a mask mandate currently, it is almost universally ignored in 3/4 of the state. I haven't been in the big cities recently, but I'm told by others it is mostly ignored there too.
Not on social media, however. DOWN ON ANTISOCIAL MEDIA!!!
Yep, bifurcation is real. And getting worse…
I've been thinking about this, and I'm afraid we're reaching a decision point.
This country was established by independence-minded men (yes, men; in the 18th century women certainly had influence but it was men who ran things, and for good reason – men are the more physically stronger and able "doers" and women are the physically weaker "nurturers," a division of labor that makes imminent sense when one examines the differences between men and women with an unbiased eye and mindset).
The foundational concept was independence of thought and action with the freedom to pursue it, established by solid boundaries against random or whimsical action on the part of rulers. A written Constitution was established, limiting the powers and available actions of governing officials, from the very top to the lowliest local magistrate, that Constitution a stable confinement of the black-letter law that would grow with a growing country.
Over two and a half centuries many have contributed to growing, developing and building these United States, its culture and community, people of all nationalities, political persuasion and religion, pursuing the opportunity to succeed, and, yes, to fail, and try again. It was a basic tenet of America's creation that while government is a necessary evil, it can be limited, controlled, and performed with minimal interference to the freedom to pursue dreams, desires and successes.
Like all human endeavors, the road has been rocky at times, conflict ever present, but manageable because of the Constitutional structure and legal environment that Constitution enables. Often final agreement was not shared, but results accepted because based on established and recorded Constitutional principles fairness of treatment, to the limit of human ability to achieve it, was guaranteed; the rules were known, and applied as openly, equally and fairly as humans can.
The recent rise of the Modern Left has turned all this upside down. Principles, and the procedures they drive, are not long established, precisely recorded and available for all to examine, they are hidden, determined on the spot, based on temporary condition, personality, possessions, or individual preference, and randomly applied, much like the varied edicts of a long ago distant king, but instead issued from myriad local rulers with the same force.
To follow such philosophy is so counter to what this country was established to achieve and represent, anathema to the independence and freedom to pursue it upon which this country was founded, and its people have long embraced.
J. KB is entirely correct – those who would destroy us cannot be accepted, they cannot be tolerated, they must be resisted by whatever means available.
Kurt Schlicter has written a series of engaging fiction works based on the principle of "shared existence" in which Americans share a country and continent with the Destructors, a peaceable separation in which each is able to live and pursue their philosophies.
It's nice fiction and an enjoyable read, but cannot exist in real life, nor can it be allowed to exist. It is Evil and must be treated as such. Such people did not share the burdens of building this country, they certainly have not earned the privilege of determining who may share in its liberties.
How this issue gets resolved remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: It cannot be allowed to continue.
"Not on social media, however." It's usually anti-social media…or so it seems to me.
Since moving 2 counties out of the big city, I feel that soul enriching boost every time I cross back into my county!
It's nice fiction and an enjoyable read, but cannot exist in real life, nor can it be allowed to exist. It is Evil and must be treated as such.
Apparently, you haven't read all of Schlichter's novels? Because the separation was unstable and ended in warfare.