Running racism in America thread

So if he was there to shoot black people, as the narrative goes, why didn't he? Surely if it was a BLM protest where plenty of black people were present, he had ample opportunity to do so.

 

Great day for fascists, christians and defense attorneys

 

this is joe biden's america

 

I'll take six months. Some form of incarceration.
Of course, there's the distinct possibility that conviction makes him an even bigger hero and therefore ultimately more wealthy than if he's never convicted.

 

Might make him dead in the shower, too.

 

The only reason I'm surprised is that the jury took so long. I assumed after the judge made his desires known that they'd come back in about an hour.

 

I'm not sure that's the narrative, but I'm also not sure it needs to be.

If Rittenhouse is merely a white teenage chaos tourist with an AR-15 who shows up at a riot in Wisconsin, kills two people and injures a third but isn't punished for having done so, is that not enough?

 

Never goes to trial if he was Black. Cops would’ve killed a Black man with an AR-15 at a protest.

 

Chris Hayes got roundly booed earlier for saying something to the effect of "I hope he at least does something positive with his life instead of taking the George Zimmerman route." I doubt it, both for emotional reasons (Zimmerman's response to the Trayvon Martin situation was to be convinced that black people were out to get him) and because he's probably going to need to do Newsmax spots for the rest of his life to pay his legal bills, and that's if he doesn't lose a wrongful death suit.

None of this is particularly surprising, but I don't think the prosecution played their hand very well. I figured they might convict him on a lesser charge, but going for the Wisconsin equivalent of murder one was never going to stick. There was too much 'heat-of-chaos' uncertainty and probably too many white folks on the jury for them to be unable to find an excuse to avoid sending an 18-year-old kid to prison for all but the rest of his life.

 

They apparently didn't do anything to provoke him. I am sure he looked.

He will also have that rush of invincibility that zimmerman had. I bet we have not hear the last of him.

 

The entire reason people are outraged by the not guilty verdict is because they believe he was a white supremacist who traveled across the country to go hunting black people. Just scroll back through the last couple of pages of this thread and you'll find people here saying that. If you listen to a lot of the talking heads on various cable outlets you'll find them saying or suggesting it.
If you followed the trial at all, you should realize it's not the case. The truth is closer to, he was a dumb teenager who made a bad decision to go somewhere he shouldn't have been, drove 15 or 20 minutes to a neighboring town, and got put into a bad situation when he crossed paths with the wrong people.

Considering the chaos following the first shooting, I don't even necessarily blame Huber, Grosskreutz and Jump Kick Man for reacting the way they did. They seemed to think there was an active shooter and were trying to stop him. Grosskreutz, in particular, probably would have had a strong self defense case if he'd shot Rittenhouse instead of the other way around. But Rittenhouse also did what he had to do to protect himself. He was about to get his skull caved in or shot by an angry mob. He'd already been kicked in the head and hit with a skateboard. It's not unreasonable to see how he thought his life was in danger.
It was a bad situation all around, and it had a terrible outcome. But I think the jury got it right.

 

I think he made a collectively stupid and reckless decision, when broken down into individual parts had rational explanations.

I think he was a stupid kid with a hero complex and access to a weapons who was in way over his head.