Admittedly, it doesn’t roll right off the tongue. And in patriotic songs like White Vigilantica the Beautiful, it’s a bit too long. Even if it’s a more accurate descriptive title than the old America the Beautiful, accuracy in music isn’t a prerequisite. John Lennon was never a walrus. And Goo goo g’shoob makes no sense at all.
A lot of things don’t make sense, though. Take Anthony Sabatini’s tweet, he, a Florida congressman.
Let’s parse that out. A 17 year old boy asks a friend to buy him an AR-15 assault rifle, then loads it with armor piercing rounds, asks mother to drive him to nearby Kenosha so that he can “protect“ a used car store from Black Lives Matter protestors who might be intent on setting remaining cars on fire. In the process he leaves the car store, and while wandering in the street he is attacked by one rioter, then another, and a third. He shoots all three, killing the first two, goes to trial and is acquitted on five charges all related to these shootings.
A psychologist had this to say. “"We watch politicians do what they're doing, and it feels very out of control," Dill-Shackleford said, noting some people may feel "angry for one reason or another" or "full of anxiety" about authorities who are supposed to be in charge of protecting us—be it political leaders, police, etc.—that aren't doing their jobs. Thus, Kyle Rittenhouse stands as a symbol of someone who took power back himself.
He claimed self-defense, but as the prosecution pointed out, “You can’t claim self-defense for a situation you created yourself.” But he did. And he walked.
But white vigilantica? Kyle was white. A black man in the same situation would have been convicted. Quickly. On all five counts.
You go, Kyle. Protect us. From you.
The not really Supreme Court is considering a New York law that imposes strict limits on carrying guns outside the home. In questioning last Wednesday justices seem prepared to agree that it imposes an intolerable burden on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, and that people seeking to exercise that right should not have to demonstrate to the government that they have a reason or special need to do so, perhaps excepting places like subways, theaters, and other “sensitive places.”
So what will that mean to white vigilantes? (I know that “white” and “vigilantes” is redundant). As white kids see that their boy Kyle walked away after murdering two people, and that packing heat is a constitutional right, the likelihood that more white boys with AR-15s and other “cool guns” will roam the streets looking for more Rosenbaums and Hubers, the two victims whose paths unfortunately crossed the armed juvenile property protector perhaps on the proposed Kyle Rittenhouse Day, the national holiday celebrating murder.
From the NY Times:
In Georgia another vigilante case enters closing arguments tomorrow. Ahmaud Arbery, a twenty-five year old black man was jogging in a neighborhood when a white man and his father chased him, thinking, as they said, that he might have been responsible for previously reported thefts in the neighborhood. Travis McMichael, the son, brandished a shotgun, and shot Arbery to death. The prosecutor questioned him, “All he’s done is run away from you,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said. “And you pulled out a shotgun and pointed it at him.” McMichael said Arbery forced him to make a split-second “life-or-death” decision by attacking him and grabbing his shotgun. Race hasn’t entered into the argument, but race is certainly there. N.B. Travis is white, has a young son, and he felt threatened. Threatened by a man who was paying no attention to him until McMichael chased him down and brandished a shotgun. Welcome to Southeast White Vigilantica.
And last. Another trial is about to wind down. The jury is deliberating in the case of plaintiffs who sued white nationalists in a Unite the Right protest that ended with one of the protestors dead and several injured.
White Vigilantica is not the country I remember. Twenty years ago we were one country. We’re now two. I can’t accept that I live in a country that lionizes a juvenile right-wing murdering t-shirt wearing gun lover, a Georgia redneck that hates and murders blacks, and a collection of violence seeking white nationalists frightened that they’ve been exposed for being the trash that they are. Imagine that these people submitted their DNA to 23 and me or Ancestry and discover that their closest relative is pond scum.