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Salvo 11.15.2021 5 minutes

Unfortunate Son

Closing Arguments Delivered In Kyle Rittenhouse Trial

The Ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse

I stand with Kyle Rittenhouse. He is plainly innocent of murder and is being grotesquely persecuted as part of a pathetic political witch hunt. 

Extinct human civilizations are littered with the broken bodies and crushed skulls of children cruelly tortured and sacrificed in blasphemous rituals. Sacrifices were required to deflect and distract public anger over the elite’s glaring failures, to fulfill a narrative—or both. 

Our bankrupt elites today demand a similar sacrifice, for the same reasons. We are witnessing the slow-motion public scourging and torment of a boy with a good and noble heart. 

The mob bays for blood and the illegitimate king, tenuous on his wobbly throne, must appease their rage so it doesn’t come for his head. And, an example must be made to strike terror in the hearts of any who would do likewise. 

What is his crime? Refusing to die at the hands of armed criminal psychopaths. Saying no to their deranged street justice. Resisting. So the State stepped in to finish the job their payrolled murderers could not. 

Kyle Rittenhouse is the terminus child of the hollowing-out of the American rust belt. A young white teenager from a broken home, raised by a struggling single mother. His father, according to reports, is a former machinist who was swept away into the Sackler-fed opioid crisis. This is what white privilege actually looks like.  

But Kyle was born to serve. He wanted to help others. A baby Clark Kent, a do-gooder by nature. Is it any surprise that this boy looked up to other strong male role models? He worshipped the police, the local firemen. His mother was a nursing assistant, so he also trained in first aid.  

To Kyle, volunteering to help friends guard the small businesses of Kenosha was just what a boy like him does. How else could he look himself in the mirror if he had stayed home and not answered the call to serve? 

And now please forgive a brief descent into boomerism. The Vietnam-era anthem “Fortunate Son” tells Kyle’s story perfectly. “Some folks inherit star spangled eyes. Ooh, they send you down to war.” 

Unfortunately for Kyle, he “ain’t no senator’s son,” born with a “silver spoon in hand.”  

How is this relevant? Well, let us recall the way one particular senator’s son has been depicted in the popular imagination. Let’s say you are guilty of numerous drug and weapons charges, are a depraved crack and hooker addict, and are the longtime bag man for your despicable dad’s illegal Chinese bribes and Ukrainian payoffs. Let’s say you have been caught in highly inappropriate situations with underage women, including your own family members. But you are Hunter Biden, so you are permitted to enjoy a multimillion dollar lifestyle, a Venice mansion, and a thriving “art” career. You are feted. You are free. 

Kyle Rittenhouse, America’s unfortunate son, long separated from his father, may be permanently separated from his mother and his future. America, in her idiotic wisdom, is destroying the wrong son.  

He’s 18 and faces life in prison. Even if he is acquitted, his existence is essentially over. He will be hounded as a criminal for life, hunted by assassins, made a pariah. What can he look forward to? Severe PTSD, social shunning, the inability to appear anywhere in public, death threats, attempts on his life. How can he work, have a family, move on, heal? The State’s paid goons won’t allow it. 

It’s all story, and every story requires a villain and a hero. If your chosen villain manages to escape your poorly constructed narrative constraints and whoops!, emerges as the true hero to the audience—causing you, the elite narrative writer, to find yourself cast as the villain—then you’ve got a big problem.  

This gives me enormous hope. Kyle has indeed flipped their narrative upside down. It’s clear to most, even the sickest fiends on TV, that they look like the bad guys. The American public is about to get this one right, despite the media’s best efforts. 

How can you help? By remembering. Pass his legend down. Even if the jury convicts, do not budge from this position. Because make no mistake: your son will be cast as the villain in the sequel. 

Kyle is the baby-faced canary in the coal mine. Our only defense against this is radical truth and unity. America has become no place for sons. It’s an unsustainable situation and the solution is to make him into a towering folk hero, the Spartacus of our time against the Empire. Refuse to let anyone forget his innocence. Resist the narrative assault on what you know to be true! 

No nation can continue for very long on a foundation so degraded. At least, let’s hope. 

The American Mind presents a range of perspectives. Views are writers’ own and do not necessarily represent those of The Claremont Institute.

The American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, dedicated to restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. Interested in supporting our work? Gifts to the Claremont Institute are tax-deductible.

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