My Sunday Post Thanksgiving Hangover Feeling

It’s been a busy last 4 days or so. I have nothing to allow except to express my amazement that LSU is bowl eligible.  I hope your Thanksgiving was good. I will talk to you later.

My Sunday Feeling

 I am no criminal lawyer.  At least not of the street crimes variety.  About all I know about are money crimes against the government.  But I had a feeling that the Kyle Rittenhouse case was going to be tough to prosecute when they charged it a year or so ago.  So I can’t say that I was terribly surprised when the jury acquitted him of all charges stemming from the deadly shooting that fateful night in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

He was barely 18 at the time of the incident.  He had arrived in Kenosha from his home in Illinois during a time of racial unrest, packing an AR 15 and an expressed desire to help “defend property.”  This despite the fact that he wasn’t from there and that his presence there was pretty much unbidden by any of the locals.  

In so doing he became both the poster child for white privilege and vigilantism on one side.  For armed citizen patriots doing their duty to support law and and order and to protect property from the mob on another.  

Kyle was lucky.  If you’re going to be a poster boy, be one for the side that has a lot of money.  And lots was raised by right wing groups for his defense. Able counsel was hired to represent him.  He was prepared well.  Hell, they had enough money to “focus group” two trial scenarios; one in which he testified and one in which he took the 5th.  He came out better with the mock jury when he testified than when he did not.  He also had investigators and a jury consultant.

Think he would have had these sort of resources with a public defender?  If the answer is “Are you kidding me?” then you answered correctly.

He also got lucky in that Wisconsin does not have the crime of manslaughter on its books.  Off the top of my head, manslaughter is basically defined as “acting in reckless disregard for the value of human life.”  Or as one of my law school professors memorably put it, the difference between negligence, gross negligence and manslaughter is the difference between “a fool, a damned fool and a goddamned fool.”  And I think many of us might say that only a goddamned fool would have inserted himself into a riot in another town in another state while armed to the teeth.  

But it’s apparently not against the law to be a goddamned fool in Wisconsin.  

He also got lucky in that it is vastly easier to sell a self defense theory when you killed two of the potential witnesses against you and the third one pulled a gun on you.  It’s also a fortunate thing that Rittenhouse is of the Caucasian persuasion and not only because this fact instantly made him less likely to get rung up by the system.  A black man bearing an assault weapon would have been shot  5 minutes after entering the city limits under these facts.  

At the end of the day, it is not much more complicated than a mostly white jury in an open carry state refused to send an 18 year old kid to prison based on the facts and the jury instructions on the law.  

Did the jury get it right?  Well.  They didn’t get it wrong.  The outcome is defensible as a matter of law.  

Was it justice?  That’s a far more elusive question. 

And, the Rittenhouse case is ample proof, once again, that money can buy a defense.  

So.  Where do we go from here?  Will the outcome in this case empower disaffected white folks, drunk with the notion that they are “good guys with guns” to take the law into their own hands?  What does it say about our country that a nobody punk like Kyle Rittenhouse is viewed as a hero in some quarters?  What will be the response of law enforcement going forward?  And where was Kyle’s mother all this time?  I’m around 18 year old boys a lot.  There generally is no filter between their brains and their mouths.  Are you telling me that these grandiose hero delusions that evidently compelled him never leaked out of her son at any time? There was nobody in this boy’s life that could set him on a better path?

I don’t have any answers to these questions.  

But this much I do know.  

Kyle Rittenhouse may have been found not guilty as a matter of law.  But he is not innocent.  

There is a distinction.  

And he’s no hero.  

  

My Sunday Feeling

Last Thursday was Veteran’s Day.  For the last 10 years at least I have gone out to the National Cemetery downtown to see my dad on that day.

I am not given to superstition or to magical thinking in the slightest.  And Buck, while certainly a patriot in a very real sense in that he wore the uniform, fought in the Great War, and was generally proud to have done both, never waved the bloody shirt.  Indeed, he didn’t have much to say about his experiences as a Seabee in the Pacific Theatre.  This is in keeping with other military men and women who have seen terrible things. They tend not to talk about it.  

No, he never hung out at the VFW.  Neither did he join the American Legion.  Never mind that these are fine organizations.  Buck Bowen was done with the Big One and the United States Navy when he returned to Indiana.  

As some of you may know, he passed along some wonky (to use my wife’s word) genes to his 4 sons as all of us have experienced cardiac stuff to one degree or another.  This “stuff” runs the gamut from thus far fingers-crossed asymptomatic (me) to absolute worst case scenario (Dave).   And Buck’s father died of a coronary, just as he would.  Undoubtedly, he had this genetic destiny in mind when he told me, who was all of 16 at the time, not to take him to the VA hospital here in case he ever had a heart attack.  Like I said, he was done with Uncle Sam once he got back stateside.  

Buck probably would not expect a visit to his final resting place on Veteran’s Day, or any other day for that matter.  But it seems like the least that I can do under the circumstances.  Especially since I never wore the uniform and have only had one weapon pointed at me.  And that was some girl’s irate father back when I was in high school.  I talked my way out of that one.  The Japanese were undoubtedly a little more unreasonable.  

As I stood over Buck’s white stone, I thought about how his second boy David left us about a year ago. The first of the brothers to achieve escape velocity from this vale of tears.  Buck, Donice and Dave.  All lost and gone forever.    

Last Thursday was sunny and crisp at that beautiful and hallowed patch of ground due east of my house adorned as it is with white markers as far as my old eyes could make them out. I found myself being touched by the fragility of it all.  Which is a place I rarely go.  

Life is altogether a Duke’s mixture of the wondrous and the soul crushing. I have recently written that I am struggling to make sense of it all-how God permits wonder to walk hand-in-hand with the soul crushing.  And I am having absolutely zero success.  

But yesterday morning was not a good time for such idle college dorm room theology.  Folks were gathering at the pavilion on the grounds there to formally commemorate the day and the men and women that slumber beneath those grounds.  Besides, I figured somebody could use my parking space. 

As I said, I am not remotely superstitious and I do not engage in magical thinking.  But I told Buck goodbye and I thanked him for his service.  I also asked him to tell Mom and Dave “hello.”

Maybe he heard me somewhere on that distant shore.  Maybe he didn’t.  Probably he didn’t.  

But still.  I could not help but think of the wonder of it all.  And in a universe where wonder still makes cameo appearances from time to time maybe it’s OK to give in to it when it does.   

Like when I’m standing over my father’s grave on Veteran’s Day.        

  

Day Pass

 I have nothing to allow today except that I’m looking forward to watching a Hendrix College basketball game in person for the first time in at least a year. 

Later…..