Marvel Studios Had it Right All Along

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

In Captain America: Civil War, an Avengers mission in Nigeria goes sideways. Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlett Witch, contains a suicide bomb blast, elevates the suspended explosion near a high building then allows the detonation to go off next to its windows. It was a rookie move. Over a dozen people are killed. Alarmed at the rise of superhero vigilantism, the UN Security Council drafts out an anti-vigilante resolution, the Sokovia Accord, that would curtail the legal authority of the Avengers and any other super-powered individual from entering any air space to carry out an agenda or mission. In this fictional scenario, 117 nations approve it. It seems to have the weight of global consensus. No action can be taken by an enhanced individual unless it is approved by a UN panel.

    This splits the Avengers in two. One faction is led by Captain America, who refuses to sign on to the Sokovia Accord. The other, the pro-accord one, is led by Iron Man.

    Obviously, superheroes don't exist any more than the Sekovia Accord but vigilantes do. Civil War raises some valid points, mainly regarding national sovereignty, international air space and other complex issues. But at the heart of Captain America: Winter Soldier is how much restriction, if any, can a governing body, such as the United Nations, impose upon individuals who won't recognize  the law?

    This was the question that never came close to being addressed during the Rittenhouse trial, nor during the McMichael/Bryan trial in Georgia: In fact, in the latter case, race was hardly addressed at all except by Bryan's clearly racist counsel, Kevin Gough, who bitterly complained, twice, about the black pastors in attendance. In fact, only one juror on the McMichael jury is black. This, despite the case being all about racial bigotry and animus.

     Race was a tangential factor, at most, in the Rittenhouse trial that ended with a unanimous acquittal in what is surely the most egregious miscarriage of justice since OJ and Ethan Couch. But as well as with the McMichael/Bryan trial, another discussion that should have been had with a legal cost benefit analysis- How much should vigilantes be reigned in, or should they, and to what degree? Is the destruction they cause, as in Rittenhouse and the McMichaels, worth the benefit to the community?

     To anyone with two eyes and two neurons to rub together, the obvious answer is no. Rittenhouse only contributed to the chaos in Kenosha August 25th last year and two men are in their graves because of him. Rittenhouse was the only one who shot and killed anyone, with the blessings of the Kenosha PD who even gave him water, encouragement and a free pass to go home so he could sleep in his own bed in Antioch, Michigan.

     And one of the most sickening spectacles in modern national memory was the sight of Rittenhouse blubbering like the man-child he is when the jury forewoman read the fifth and final Not Guilty verdict. His was the face of toxic, right wing masculinity, more fragile than glass, someone who weeps when he doesn't get his way and someone who weeps when he does get his way. Rittenhouse's face is the soft, blubbery face of conservatism today.

A Shot in the Arm

With no pun intended and with all respect to Gaige Grosskreutz, Vigilantism got a shot in the arm today. Because the jury verdict today dropped the ball by giving a vigilante a completely free pass that will then be used as legal precedent in future cases (and, in our gun-crazy culture there will be future cases). Because the jury allowed themselves to forget or disregard several key facets of this case that, by all rights, should've resulted in at least a few guilty verdicts on the five felony counts.

     They allowed themselves to disregard the very obvious fact that Rittenhouse drove in from out of state to "defend" a business with which he had no interest or connection prior to August 25th, lied and said he was acting as a medic, despite the then 17 year-old having zero medical training, carrying an AR15 to which he had no legal right to bear and chased down one of his victims after lying and claiming the man he was chasing had, in fact, chased him.

    He went to Kenosha that night to shoot and kill someone, to play out a scenario that had remained, until then, a fantasy. His white privilege informed him that when the blacks of Kenosha got all uppity about the Jacob Blake shooting, well, he had a perfect right to personally insinuated himself into it. He was there plainly looking for trouble and seemed genuinely alarmed and surprised when he found it despite threatening, wounding and murdering two people with a high-powered rifle.

    The jury told us that it's wrong to engage and act in a heroic fashion in an active shooter scenario, which Rittenhouse certainly provided, and that self-defense has been permanently expanded, at least in Wisconsin, to include anyone who raises his hands to you or approaches you with a skateboard. It gave a free pass to any other angry, incel gunman in the future who may want to take part in a demonstration or protest and to open up on anyone who looks confrontational.

     Kyle Rittenhouse is a soft, overweight Momma's boy who provides us with the perfect face of the modern conservative movement. Like Brett Kavanaugh, like Glenn Beck, like John Boehner, like NeoNazi Chris Cantrell (aka the Weeping Nazi) and so many other right wing snowflakes in recent memory, he is the weepy face of every white male who turns on the waterworks when they find the trouble they've been looking for, when they come up against the slightest opposition, when they don't get what they think they deserve and even when they do get what their white privilege promises.

     There will be more Kyle Rittenhouses, and more Kyle Rittenhouse-type trials, in the future. The jury in Kenosha guaranteed that. Rittenhouse is no superhero yet he's being treated like one by the far right. Matt Gaetz wants to hire him and bring him to Capitol Hill, where there was an insurrection carried out by vigilantes just like him and are, for the most part, being coddled with early release, short sentences and sweetheart plea deals.