The Tragedies of Kenosha
The stories conflict, as they usually do, amid a street scene of people looking for trouble. Among a core of protesters seeking a political goal, others joined with a different set of aims. Angry people with opposing views and fury in their hearts, prowling the city avenues half to express their rage at injustice and half to find the enemy only brings life-and-death trouble. The original political ideal, however noble, offensive, controversial or universal, loses out to mob violence. It’s the Jets and the Sharks, perennially played out in the parks, the downtown, the maze of neighborhood alley ways and roads. 2020 doesn’t seem much different from 1960. The intrinsic hatred of the other, the visceral resentment in recognition of whatever trait separates –race, politics, economic class, when in fact the others are us. The whole country divides into two camps, ready to rumble at the snap of a finger, the rage seething over. The root cause of individual grievances could be any form of injustice—debt, addiction, affliction, racism—but the rationale of the mob wending loud past the shops and office buildings gives cover and legitimacy to express themselves outside the niceties of democratic traditions of our constitutional rights to express and assemble peacefully..
African Americans protesting the shooting of a black man by police, one of too many in our cities and towns, fear they or family will be the next victim. They take to downtown to defend as well as alert. White people with their 2nd amendments dangling form the shoulder, fully loaded, decided their job was to confront the reeling unruliness of the other encroaching upon the business and property of their people. It was their turf and its whiteness needed defending as well.
“When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way…” You're home with your own—
When company's expected,
You're well protected!
In such a cauldron walked a teenager with a rifle. Kyle Rittenhaus, 17, traveled from Illinois into Wisconsin to be part of the scene, an adventure of a lifetime for someone with a penchant for guns, police uniforms and law enforcement. We believe respect for police and an admiration for their oath to protect and to serve at the risk of their own lives is admirable and right. However, there is a serious problem in PDs when unarmed Black men and women are abused and shot, and all of us who believe in Blue around the country must acknowledge the problem and eliminate it. For good. Love cannot be blind, and supporting them to be better is not a betrayal. The love for our police is not a condemnation of Kyle Rittenhouse, his failure to recognize the crisis is. We don’t see evil in his Facebook photo in full police regalia. Kyle’s proud display of his participation in a “public safety cadet program”, (according to NPR) does not differ from other young men and women who show off their membership in organizations, whether military like ROTC or Salvation Army or church groups.
You got brothers around,
You're a family man.
You're never alone,
You're never disconnected.
The story has nothing to do with whether you think Kyle Rittenhaus fought back in self-defense or pre-meditatedly took up arms. That will be for the court to decide, as both camps divide among ideological lines. A 17-year-old drives to a tinderbox of rage and riot, straps on an AR-15 rifle, marches into the front lines, finds those of like mind and kind, then patrols the streets. He said to the media, according to various reporting by NPR and others, that he went there to assist the police in dealing with rioters and he added: “People are getting injured and our job is to protect this business. And part of my job is to also help people. If there is somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle.”
Someone gets in our way,
Someone don't feel so well!
Two people are shot dead; a third is badly wounded. A kid is arrested for multiple murders. Families shattered and futures lie in their own graves of time stopped. While the dedication to military or police is not unusual nor in and of itself a manifestation of mental or emotional issues, convincing yourself the police need YOU—a gun-toting 17 year old’s help in calming the angry city blocks, on fire with flames and furor.
Kyle Ritternhaus saw his mirror’s reflection of a self-recruited guardian of property, defender of citizens, savior of besieged policemen and superhero taming the wild beast before him. At what point does normalcy tread into mental illness, or manifest a problem with reality? Maybe it was only a matter of time before enthrallment of armed, uniformed police became a vicarious reality. Maybe the fantasy - to march with a rifle down the streets always existed, one soldier in the brigade of law and order. He wouldn’t be the first to hold such daydreams—but very few seventeen-year olds will travel to the front lines without authorization nor authority, without training, nor organization. While clearly the nation faces a crisis in race, this is not exactly the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which drove many young men to enlist. It is a domestic disturbance in Kenosha, Wisconsin. TGBL does not specialize in adolescent psychiatry, but we surely hope someone out there can figure out the mind of Kyle Rittenhaus. To do so would help the yet-to-surface Kyle Rittenhauses, perhaps keeping alive so many futures.
This case begs the question: Where the hell are the adults in his life? We wonder if the boy’s parents or guardians watched him, monitored his activities, paid attention to the details and clues. Is it possible they even approved of his going off to urban war, as though he were Danny Boy answering the call of the pipes as the melancholy notes cascaded into his Illinois glen? Memo to Kyle, cc’d to parents, Kenosha PD: It is not part of your job to protect “this business” because you don’t have a job with the Kenosha PD, the Wisconsin National Guard, nor a SWAT team. You are a high school senior, not Det. Halstead on loan from Chicago PD’s Intelligence Unit to catch the “bad guys” with guns blazing. All the adults in your life, both the real and vicarious ones, failed in their responsibility to keep you safe and out of danger.
The second issue of major concern centers on the police. They asked Kyle if he wanted water and treated him as a comrade in arms, feeding into his fantasy of Supercop. He is a kid in a zone of deep unrest and they let him strut down the street on patrol as if he were Snowboy behind Capt. Riff snapping fingers like bullets announcing their arrival on a street they claim as their own.
We're hangin' a sign
Says "Visitors forbidden,"
And we ain't kiddin
This is outrageous, unprofessional behavior, encouraging and permitting a youth carrying a rifle at Ground Zero. Stop that kid, take his gun, get the minor out of there and call his parents. Period, end of story. Whether those deaths and Rittenhaus’ arrest directly result from the the consequences of police inaction will be up to Kenosha to investigate and decide if the officers deserve any reprimand or retraining, let alone keep their badges.
Maybe we’re wrong, the Midwest and Wisconsin small-city culture may differ from large urban metropolises, which hold a Bloomberg-like detestation for guns in public and on the streets. It could be perfectly normal for officers in casual-mode tossing water to a minor walking the streets, armed, dangerous, and now feeling every bit the supercop he’s dreamed about, now locked and loaded. But that water bottle from the Men in Blue now attests to his membership in the band of brothers--the sanctity of his mission, a destiny fulfilled:
When you're a Jet,
You're the swingin'est thing.
Little boy, you're a man;
Little man, you're a king!
But if this behavior from all parties seems perfectly normal, it’s time to remind the West that the age of the gunslinger is long over, the Plains Wars ended 150 years ago, posses ended with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and racism no longer justifies anything. So get on your horse and ride the hell into the 21st Century.
ED NOTE: Lyrics are from The Jet Song, “West Side Story”