This weekend, everyone is talking about the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on murder charges in the deaths of two protestors in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Although I am disturbed by the verdict and specifically the judge’s dismissal of the gun charge against Rittenhouse (who obtained his rifle illegally), I can understand why the jury bought the defense lawyer’s self-defense argument. Rittenhouse should not have come to the protest with an AR-15 in the first place, but it is clear from videos that the two of the men he shot were trying to take away his gun. To my mind, his acquittal on the narrow grounds of self-defense is not the biggest injustice here.
The real travesty is the fact that Rittenhouse’s decision to go to a Black Lives Matter protest armed with a semi-automatic rifle is part of a larger pattern of politically motivated violence, spurred on by extremist agitators and the media, by which I mean not only the flood of misinformation on social media, but the torrent of video games and TV shows that glorify violence as a way of defending one’s property and livelihood. I’m specifically thinking here of shows like Yellowstone, the very popular series featuring Kevin Costner and his family who resort to ugly violence to defend their land, as well as video games like Call of Duty, which the teenage Rittenhouse played constantly.
While violent crime itself is in a long-term decline in the U.S. (although the number of murders jumped this past year), there does seem to be rise in political violence, particularly by armed white men. Numerous examples abound: the Charlottesville rampage by white supremacists and the January 6 insurrection, both violent events egged on by Donald Trump’s incendiary remarks; the killing of an unarmed black jogger by three armed white men in Georgia, and most recently, the release of a violent anime video showing Republican Representative Paul Gosar killing a Democratic colleague and attacking President Biden. Gosar was rightly censured by the House for this despicable video but tellingly, only two Republicans voted for the censure. His GOP colleagues seem to think that it’s okay to post egregious acts of violence online, just as Rittenhouse, in his trial testimony last week, dismissed Call of Duty “as only a game.”
If only it were that simple. In a recent policy statement on media violence, the American Academy of Pediatrics cited studies that linked exposure to violence in the media, which include video games as well as television and movies, with aggression and violent behavior in youths. Of course, hundreds of teenage boys probably play Call of Duty every day, and unlike Rittenhouse, they don’t get a friend to buy them an AR-15. Nor do they drive 20 miles across state lines with the rifle to threaten people at a Black Lives Matter protest.
But when you put an obsession with video games together with lax gun laws and a troubled youth who identified with a far-right group (the Proud Boys) and wanted to feel important (Rittenhouse himself said in a social media post a few days prior to Kenosha, “I just wanna be famous,” what do you get? A combustible mix that can only lead to tragedy and in this case did. As a Washington Post editorial put it,
“Mr. Rittenhouse is not a hero but a hapless young man who armed himself with a gun he shouldn’t have had, foolishly put himself in a volatile situation where he had no business being, and ended up doing grievous and irreparable harm… the ease with which, at the age of 17, he could get his hands on what amounts to a weapon of war underscores how ludicrous and lax are the gun laws in this country.”
The true travesty in the end is our inability to recognize the degree to which violence has permeated every day life through social media and our own flickering screens and how our emotions are being manipulated by demagogues who want to win at any cost. I don’t blame Black Lives Matter protestors for being concerned that the Rittenhouse verdict will make it more dangerous for them and other participants to engage in peaceful protest. The big loser here is our right to engage in civic democracy.
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