The Killer Kid

Kenosha and Kyle Rittenhouse

Rittenhouse, all of 17 and from a neighboring state, is charged with killing two protesters and injuring a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

He was illegally armed with an assault rifle.

He lives with his mother and has been subject to bullying at school.

The NYT reports that he was turned down by the Marine Corps, has had trouble keeping a job and was enthralled by Blue Lives Matter.

Both the leader of the Kenosha militia and Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s spokesperson, have disavowed him, leaving him to twist in the wind.

He is being held at a juvenile detention facility in Illinois, where he lives.

According to the Times, he said, “Bruh, I’m just tryna be famous.”

Lone white males, usually with troubled family histories and often perceived sexual inadequacy and inspired by a cause, are famous for acts of violence which will gain them notoriety.

John Wilkes Booth (Confederacy), Lee Harvey Oswald (Cuba), Arthur Bremer (Fame), Timothy McVeigh (White Supremacy/Militia) and Eliot Rodger (Incel) are but a few examples.

We can add Kyle Rittenhouse to the list.

Focusing only on Rittenhouse’s venue misses the larger issues.

America is a very violent place, we breed our mayhem-makers and then make it easy for them to obtain the weapons of death.

Kyle Rittenhouse, an immature and troubled kid, abetted by purveyors of the weapons of mass murder, found his battlefield where he could “play” army medic, and be infamous in the bargain.

The rest is history.