The five jagged prongs of the fantasy version of the Rittenhouse case are 1) He carried a semi-automatic weapon “across state lines” to cause trouble; 2) the teen is a white supremacist, hence a racist, and was “hunting” virtuous social justice crusaders justly and peacefully protesting ; 3) the three men he shot were innocent victims, and two of them were murdered, 4) the rioting Rittenhouse was opposing was a protest over a white police officer brutally killing an unarmed black man, and 5) the jury’s failure to convict resulted from the inherent racism of the justice system.

Within those prongs are at least (let’s see…) twelve lies that can no longer be excused by confusion over the facts. Nor is it an excuse that someone like Witherspoon has been reading and watching the wrong news reports (as well as getting her political views from within a progressive bubble), because every American knows or should knows that such sources cannot be believed or trusted.

Aiding and abetting the persistence of the 12 Lies of Rittenhouse (I feel a Christmas song parody coming on) has been the news media’s detestable spin that the guilty verdict in the Ahnaud Arbery trial somehow mitigated the “unjust” Rittenhouse acquittal. The two cases has nothing substantive in common whatsoever, except to those either deliberately misrepresenting the cases or those hopelessly lobotomized by the news media reports and such attempts to poison the proceedings as President Biden’s repeated slur that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist.

“Justice is Possible…” shouted yesterday’s New York Times story about the Arbury verdict…Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! That headline would have been far more appropriate for the result in the Rittenhouse trial. The Arbury jury was given evidence that demanded conviction, including an irrefutable video of the shooting. The judge’s instruction that the jury would have to find that Arbury’s killers had conclusive evidence that the black man had committed local burglaries to make their so-called “citizen’s arrest” attempt legal wiped out the defense’s desperately contrived defense. In the Rittenhouse verdict, the video evidence and even the prosecution’s witnesses dictated that “justice” required acquittal, though many doubted that it would be possible with Biden and others recklessly misrepresenting the facts and a threat of renewed Kenosha rioting looming over the jurors’ deliberations.

In a neat obliteration of the attacks on the Rittenhouse verdict and the “reasoning” behind it, Prof. Turley wrote that “justice” now means “freeing ourselves not just from objectivity but from the criminal code.” He continued, in an excellent analysis for The Hill,

In this case, the legal question under Wisconsin law was neither complex nor confusing: “A person is privileged to threaten or intentionally use force against another for the purpose of preventing or terminating what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with his or her person by such other person.” Lethal force is allowed if “the actor reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself.”

Each use of force by Rittenhouse was preceded by attacks by at least four men. The jury simply had a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse acted without a reasonable belief that he faced great bodily harm.

[I am especially grateful to Turley for highlighting the bias-driven idiocy of Georgetown professor Paul Butler, who described the trial on MSNBC as “white supremacy on steroids” and said the verdict meant that “vigilante justice prevailed.” Butler is the tenured jerk whom NPR’s Michel Martin, now the weekend hostess of “All Things Considered,” allowed to interrupt and mock my 100% correct explanation of how sexual harassment law often works with long past conduct in my final appearance on the network as an ethics analysis. They shared a friendship, a color, and a hatred of Donald Trump, who might have been a victim of the phenomenon I was attempting to describe, so Martin chose to advance their partisan objectives over the alleged NPR mission of informing its audience. Yes, I’m still angry about that episode. But I digress…]

In the Times article about reactions to the verdict, a careful and deceitful use of words drove a narrative that the Rittenhouse and Arbury cases were similar, and that contrasting them was fair. “The Kyle Rittenhouse verdict is the America I expect — the Arbery verdict is the America I fight for,” Rev. Lenny Duncan, 43, a Black pastor in Portland was quoted as saying. Oh, because the evidence in the Rittenhouse verdict would make anyone paying attention expect an acquittal, Reverend? No? Why is it that you don’t “fight for” a justice system that is determined by the law rather than mob demands? I don’t understand.

The Times also felt that the view of anti-white racist Hawk Newsome, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, was worthy of publishing, as he called the two trials “a mixed message.” “You can’t outright chase down and murder Black people and those who support them,” he said. “But if you make it look like self-defense, you got a shot.” Right, Hawk, that’s what Rittenhouse did: he chased down and shot three men who weren’t doing anything but supporting black people, and “made it” look like self defense.

That’s not an opinion, that’s deliberate misrepresentation.

I’ve taken the pledge: I’ve annoyed several Facebook friends this week by going on their page to debunk various Rittenhouse lies. I expect to confront several more.

Join me! It’s for a good cause!

Friends don’t let friends post stupid.