Comparing 3 Deadly Events: In Waukesha, Brooks killed twice as many people as Rittenhouse and the Charlottesville driver did combined

In order to explain why Americans — why reasonable Americans — no longer trust the mainstream media — or, indeed, liberals writ large — we need to compare three deadly events of the past four or five years

In reverse chronological order, they can be summarized by the names of the towns in which they occurred: Waukesha, Kinosha, and Charlottesville.

The case of Kyle Rittenhouse is made to overshadow the numerous concurrent court cases really involving blacks and multiple races that gives one (or that ought to give one, whatever the color of one's skin is) faith in the legal system, certainly from a leftist's perspective, or at least that gives the lie to the so-called second citizenship of blacks — were they not massively ignored by the mainstream media!

A black man who shot at policemen (presumably black cops as well as white, by the way), Andrew Coffee, was found not guilty on all counts of murder and attempted murder, thanks to the principle of defense (BUT, BUT, BUT! ONLY WHITE PEOPLE GET THIS! protests Sarah Hoyt, tongue firmly in cheek). 

And the white killers of Ahmaud Arbery, all three of them, were all convicted of murder. As for George Floyd, whether you are convinced his case was proof of racism or not, the white cop involved was, rightly or wrongly, sentenced to life in prison. So that ought to give one faith in the legal system, certainly from a leftist's perspective — if the MSM bothered to report (and compare, and contrast, and draw lessons from) them.

It reminds me somewhat of the debate in the presidential election of 2000, when Al Gore mentioned a hideous racial murder in Texas with a black man being pulled for miles behind a pickup truck. But, to the Democrat's horror, he charged Governor George W Bush was still against introducing hate crime legislation in the Lone Star state. Even though I was leaning left at the time (I was younger then plus I was upset at Bush's father not overthrowing Saddam Hussein), and supporting Gore, I had to admit that I (and that Al) could hardly argue with Dubya when he countered that "tougher laws" were hardly needed when the three killers of James Byrd had been convicted of capital murder with two of them sentenced to death (both since executed).

The Charlottesville gathering has been remembered, again and again and again, as a hideous event, which it no doubt was, even though one single death, offhand, hardly amounts to a massacre. (See also: January 6, aka the murderous insurrection against "our democracy." Incidentally, the conflation of "democracy" with the party founded by Andrew Jackson is far from new: during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Abraham Lincoln certainly used "the democracy" while speaking of the Stephen Douglas's Democrat Party, and more than once)

This brings us full circle to Waukesha:

In Wisconsin, Darrell Brooks has killed twice as many people as Rittenhouse and the Charlottesville driver combined. And the number may rise. 

He also has wounded twice as many people as Rittenhouse and James Alex Fields put together, and far more seriously, at that.

But while the two were immediately described in the strongest terms possible, including "white supremacist" and "domestic terrorist", the media, social as well as mainstream, insists on calling the Christmas parade attack "a crash" or "an accident" or a "parade incident," while attributing the six deaths (instead of the six murders) not to a person (much less to a "domestic terrorist") but to "a car" or to "an SUV."

CNN wrote about the charges in an article titled "A sixth victim has died after the deadly Waukesha Christmas parade crash, prosecutors say." HuffPo’s coverage read "Suspect In Deadly Waukesha Parade Crash Charged With Intentional Homicide." The Associated Press also wrote, "Child is 6th death in Waukesha parade crash; suspect charged."

The pattern continued with ABC, Yahoo, and Time Magazine all referring to the horrific incident, even after Brooks’ charges were announced [intentional homicide], as a "crash."

In fact, let us quickly rewrite the sentences above:

In an accident in Waukesha, a car killed twice as many people as Rittenhouse and the Charlottesville driver put together. The SUV also wounded twice as many people…

By the way, it hardly matters whether Darrell Brooks is black or white, he seems to be a leftist — a warrior in the valiant struggle against Republican racists and "domestic terrorists" (now including parents railing against arrogant school boards) — so he gets a pass.

• This brings us full circle to a fourth deadly incident, the 2017 attempted assassination of Steve Scalise and a handful of other Republican baseball players at the hands of a Bernie bro, one James T. Hodgkinson, who, as Instapundit regularly reminds us (and rightly so), is Already Being Erased From History.

While Brooks was released from jail on just $1000 bail, after trying to murder his girlfriend (again with a car), the January "insurrectionists" who hoped to overthrow "our democracy" without the benefit of a single firearm (we all know how confronting Europeans with modern weapons turned out for various Indian tribes and for a number of native peoples in Africa and Asia), by contrast, have been in solitary confinement for almost a year, and with no bail. These "horrific" criminals, who had the gall to stroll through the halls of Congress taking selfies with (armed) Capitol policemen, are invariably called "insurrectionists" and "domestic terrorists."

This, incidentally, leads Stream's John Zmirak to mention American Greatness 's Julie Kelly:

American Greatness now publishes the best writers on the right. Victor Davis Hanson … publishes now at American Greatness. So does the erudite and scathing Roger Kimball. And the brilliant, fearless historian Paul Gottfried. Plus the sober analyst of our Machiavellian status quo, paleocon Pedro Gonzales.

Best of all is the reporting of the intrepid Julie Kelly. She has braved the naked hostility of prosecutors and judges to uncover the truth about the abusive treatment of January 6 protestors. And her piece on Jacob Chansley — a non-violent, harmless eccentric and U.S. veteran [the QAnon Shaman has spent over 10 months in solitary confinement] — was appropriately compassionate:

 … Joe Biden’s Justice Department accused Chansley — who committed no violent act and has no criminal record — of being a domestic terrorist and recommended a harsh jail sentence to “deter” future domestic terrorists. “The need to deter others especially in cases of domestic terrorism, which the breach of the Capitol certainly was,” assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Paschall wrote in the government’s sentencing memo. Biden’s Justice Department set the sentencing range between 41 and 51 months and asked for the maximum prison time.

Paschall admitted in court that Chansely did not destroy any property or assault a police officer but claimed his conduct was “not peaceful.” Contrary to allegations contained in the government’s filings, Chansley walked through an open door on the east side of the building and spoke with Capitol police, …

 … [Judge] Lamberth commended Chansley’s remarks—“the most remarkable I’ve ever heard”—but nonetheless sentenced Chansley to 41 months in prison. “What you did was horrific,” Lamberth lectured.

All this leads to Instapundit's Glenn H. Reynolds asking the following question in the New York Post:

When is a racial hate crime not a racial hate crime? When it doesn’t advance the left’s, and the Democrats’, narrative.

When white teenager Kyle Rittenhouse shot three white men who were violently assaulting him, it somehow got treated by the press and politicians as a racial hate crime. President Joe Biden (falsely) called Rittenhouse a white supremacist, and the discussion of his case was so focused on racial issues that many Americans mistakenly thought that the three men Rittenhouse shot were black.

But when a black man, Darrell Brooks, with a long history of posting hateful anti-white rhetoric on social media drove a car into a mostly white Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring dozens, the press was eager to wish the story away.

  … Were the races reversed, of course, we all know that the press would be turning its coverage up to 11, with deep dives into Darrell Brooks’ associations, beliefs, friends and family and more. But doing that here wouldn’t fit the narrative.

In fact, though, there is a thread connecting the Rittenhouse shootings and the Waukesha mass murder. But the thread isn’t so much racism as awful Democratic politicians.

 … Both the Kenosha shootings and the Waukesha mass murder happened because the government failed to do its job. Those are the wages of progressive politics.

Update: I am watching Dennis Prager's Fireside Chat, which is also comparing the two Wisconsin events, and in response to the Left's charge that a 17-year-old should not carry a gun, he makes the case that in the United States, 17-year-olds are allowed… to… join the military. Now the army, navy, and air force are a source of stability in the U.S. (although the Left is hard at work trying to change that) so, at this point, it is appropriate to recall the famous quote by G K Chesterton,

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but the because he loves what is behind him.'

In that perspective, it is altogether proper to return to the Badger State and ask the following question:

Did Kyle Rittenhouse go to Kenosha with an AR-15 because he is a white supremacist who hates all Wisconsin rioters, and/or all leftists, and/or all blacks? 

Or did Kyle Rittenhouse go to Kenosha to protect the neighbors and the neighborhood where his loved ones lived (and worked)?

The answer, of course, is that initially, Kyle Rittenhouse did not fight, he did not threaten the rioters, he did not flaunt his rifle.

Only when the arsonists (several of them armed) became menacing, only when a mob started chasing him down, and only when the rioters tried to kill him (with a skateboard, which is perfectly capable of literally bashing a person's brains out, or with a gun) — in response to his extinguishing the fire in a dumpster they were pushing towards a gas station (more of a hateful act or more of a loving act? I ask you) — did he shoot back. 

But not before trying a peaceful solution, i.e., running away from the confrontation, crying "Friendly" to assure them of his non-violent intentions, and attempting to seek cover from the (present but non-operating) police force.

Speaking of which: In a way, there is a kernel of truth in the charge that Kyle Rittenhouse shouldn't have been there and shouldn't have been carrying a gun. Police officers should have been there! And police officers ought to have been doing their jobs — with their guns. But they were not! (Thanks to Democrat politicians.) Which is why civilians, young as well as old, took over their task…

Let the final word go to Ann Coulter, who explains that

Rittenhouse was not at a grade school, but in the middle of a riot that did $50 million in damage to the town of Kenosha

 … Name one "active shooter" in history who strolled about with a gun for hours, not shooting anyone -- until he was chased, cornered and assaulted. Rittenhouse had a gun not because he was violent, but because the "protesters" were, as the evidence abundantly demonstrated.

 … The same people who wanted to give Guantanamo war criminals civilian trials think an American who refused to acquiesce in his own murder didn't deserve legal representation.

Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial so that no one will dare stand in the way of the left's shock troops ever again.

Update 2: Over at Spiked, Brendan O'Neill makes some of the same points that I did:

Where is the anger over [the Waukesha massacre]? The social-media solidarity? The woke left’s ferociously tweeted concern about a rising tide of extremist violence? Even here in the UK the left and the Twitterati are able to rattle off the names of the three people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse – even while conveniently forgetting that one of them was a convicted paedophile – but I bet they couldn’t name a single victim of the far larger, seemingly more intentional act of violence carried out in Waukesha. The right-on remember and mourn the horrific killing of one woman by a far-right man who used his car as a weapon in Charlottesville in 2017, and yet already they’re staring awkwardly at the ground, virtually shrugging their shoulders, over the killing of six people by a man using his SUV as a weapon in Waukesha. Is this act of violence less important? Less horrific? Why?

 … Even the media coverage is radically different to the kind of reporting we see in the wake of other forms of violence. It is passive, treating the massacre almost as a natural disaster. Or as the evil handiwork of the SUV itself. ‘Here’s what we know so far on the sequence of events that led to the Waukesha tragedy caused by [an] SUV’, said the Washington Post. Caused by an SUV. The agency of the suspect is diminished. The problem, it seems, is killer SUVs. 

 … To see how perverse the woke set’s relative silence on Waukesha is, just do this simple thought experiment. Imagine if a white man drove a car into a crowd of mostly black Christmas revellers and killed six of them. Imagine if it was discovered that this white man had posted social-media comments saying we should knock black people the fuck out. Imagine if he had dabbled in white-nationalist thought experiments online. What do you think would be happening right now? It would be the only issue in media and political discussion – and rightly so. The left would galvanise itself. Marches would take place. There would be stern and frequent condemnations from the White House, rather than the quite perfunctory statements it has issued on Waukesha. It would be swiftly institutionalised as a turning-point act in modern America – proof of the existence of white supremacy, proof of the need for all-out change.

 … But after Waukesha? As I say, tumbleweed. The problem here, the cause of this selective outrage – of this racially selective outrage – is identity politics. The poisonous nature of the identitarian worldview has made itself crystal clear in the wake of Waukesha.

 … Truly, identity politics has rotted the soul of the new elites. It has corroded their humanity.