This verdict makes me feel sorry for Kyle Rittenhouse

Summary

The author reflects on the moral implications of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, empathizing with the burden of taking a life and questioning the societal messages that celebrate rather than rehabilitate individuals who commit such acts.

Abstract

The article delves into the complex emotional landscape surrounding the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, drawing parallels with the author's personal experiences of witnessing injustice. It contrasts the community's support for a neighbor who accidentally killed a child with the public's polarized reaction to Rittenhouse's actions. The author argues that exonerating Rittenhouse and idolizing him as a hero could lead to psychological turmoil and moral dissonance, emphasizing the need for accountability and truthful acknowledgment of wrongdoing to foster genuine care and healing.

Opinions

The author believes that telling someone who has done wrong that they were right is harmful and can lead to the creation of "monsters."
There is a sentiment that individuals who take a life, regardless of intent, carry a heavy burden and require genuine care and responsibility rather than celebration.
The article suggests that public figures and groups celebrating Rittenhouse's actions are contributing to a confusing and damaging narrative for him and society.
The author expresses concern for Rittenhouse's well-being, speculating that the dissonance between public praise and personal guilt could be psychologically distressing.
The author's personal experience with a neighbor who accidentally killed a child illustrates a community's capacity for empathy and the importance of processing guilt in a healthy manner.
The article implies that societal support for Rittenhouse should focus on acknowledging the gravity of his actions and promoting rehabilitation rather than heroism.

Telling someone that the wrong they did was right is damaging.

I had a neighbor who ran over a child with his truck. It was purely an accident. The child died. The whole neighborhood was devastated.

My neighbor never drove again. His truck sat on flat tires out back rusting out. He ended up losing his job as a construction foreman and worked odd jobs to make ends meet. He looked sad, fragile.

His family circled around, told him they knew it was an accident, gave him love and care. His minister sat with him on his porch nearly every Sunday after church. He often needed to process what had happened.

I remember one conversation I had with him when his son was about to turn 16, about how scared he was to give his son a car, which he saw as a weapon. He didn’t want what happened to him to ever happen to his son. But despite not having been behind the wheel of a car for a decade, he did end up teaching his son to drive, how to be careful, how to be responsible, that life was precious. Slowly he seemed to heal.

Today I picked up the teenage boys I always pick up from high school on Fridays. As we left the car rider lane, the news of Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal came on the radio. We all listened quietly.

“I wonder what it is like to have done something so terrible — by accident or on purpose — and to have to live with that while people tell you that you are a hero and that you did nothing bad,” my son said.

I remember being a young girl in Zimbabwe, where my family had recently moved. It was soon after the country had been liberated and whites still owned much of the land. My preschool went on a field trip to a farm and my mother was a chaperone.

At some point, the farmer said he had something special to show us. We walked to the top of a big hill and looked down at a field below. A small crop duster flew over and dropped a long trail of white pesticide over the field. It sparkled in the sunlight as it fell.

The edges of the field were marked by waving red flags so the pilot could see where to spread the pesticide. As the farmer warned us all to stay up on the hill because the pesticide was a poison, I saw that the little red flags below were not waving on their own but were in the hands of Black farmhands.

I will never forget the feeling of my mother’s fingernails digging into my shoulders as she turned me around and marched me down the hill, away from my classmates and the farmer, and back to the car. She told me that what we had witnessed was not okay, that those people were in danger, and that she needed to get home to talk to my father so they could figure out what to do about it.

I went to bed not understanding why the white farmer protected me and my white classmates while making other humans stand near the poison. But I felt it was wrong and my parents' outrage over it helped me know that my feelings were right. Throughout my childhood, my parents provided me with a roadmap on which to plot my emotions, even when my feelings or gut instincts felt in conflict with the world.

With this verdict, I pity Kyle Rittenhouse even though he is likely celebrating right now.

I’m not a wise woman nor am I very smart, but I do know humans. I know that humans who take a life become crushed souls, even if they insist otherwise. I know that humans who make grave mistakes need to be held responsible, not be venerated and lauded. I know that they need actual care, not coddling, and that part of care is telling the truth.

We are creatures who want to be good. How backward, confusing, and devastating it must be to be celebrated for being bad. That is how you incubate monsters.

I think about what my son said, my son who is only a few years shy of Kyle’s age, and I wonder what it is like for Kyle to go out and be toasted by the Proud Boys for murdering men and then for him to go home and be alone with his thoughts. I have no way of knowing what Kyle is thinking — a trial is all about show and rarely truth. But I do believe in every human there is an instinct that understands the horror, a moment that wonders about the man you have killed, a desire for the world to be a little less fucked up — but like the destiny of all seeds, its the soil it lands in that matters to the most.

It must be painful to live in a schizophrenic darkness unable to match one’s feelings to the world, unable to say what you did was horrible and that you were wrong.