Rittenhouse of Cards
There are many reasons why the Rittenhouse trial has captured the attention of the public, and it has very little to do with the blood of comrades flowing down the mean streets of Kenosha. But more on that later…
If I’ve learned anything over the past few years it is this, regardless of the facts the media will steamroll anybody who stands in their way. This should be no surprise seeing as they are bought and paid for by the same upstanding individuals that brought you such classics as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, Sleepy Joe and a recently revealed virus whose most deadly symptom is totalitarianism. Yes, long gone are the good ol’ days where the propaganda was well crafted and artistic. No need any longer. It is cheaper to silence the opposition or lower their social credit score. It’s almost as if nobody appreciates the beauty of a well crafted tale these days. And that’s a shame. I long for the day’s where we could gather around the water cooler and chat about weapons of mass destruction, yellow cake uranium, and liberating the Middle East. Those tales had pizazz.
Don’t misunderstand me, those yarns led us to where we are today. But at least the tyrants of yesteryear had the good sense to keep the violence on the streets of somebody else’s cities. All we had to do was enjoy the show and submit to being groped at the airport. But this tyranny is on a whole different level. Twenty years ago we still had the ability to proclaim, “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” As misguided as we may have been at times, we weren’t afraid to lay our cards on the table and claim objective morality. That too has been lost. And while certain community organizers managed to foretell of violence in the streets of Wisconsin months before there was ever a riot, I’m afraid that our willingness to call a spade a spade was burned to ashes long before “random” violence broke out in the streets of our nation— but I suspect they saw that coming as well. We surrendered objectivity and absolute truth at the same time we gave up on goodness and beauty. As a matter of fact, the loss of these things are inseparably connected.
One cannot overthrow an empire like ours unless they first destabilize it from within. Small nation states are easily conquered via external force alone, but world powers need a longer and more subtle strategy if they are to be toppled. I need not go into the generational warfare that has been going on within our borders for 80 years, that story has been told already by others. Rather, I point only to the most recent attack on our nation. It is not against our buildings or our cultural institutions, but against the very foundation that everything else was built upon. The attack is upon Truth-incarnate. It is an attack upon beauty-incarnate. It is all out warfare upon Goodness himself. Our nation wars not against the idea of deity. They are fine with all sorts of gods. But the idea of the one true God has become reprehensible to them.
This leads me back to Rittenhouse…
His trial has become a water-cooler topic. But more than that, it may prove to be a watershed moment. I do not pretend to stand in the place of the jury. Nor have I paid attention to every intimate detail of the trial. But one thing is obvious for all who glance at the headlines and comment boxes on social media. The battle is philosophical and religious in nature. Kyle Rittenhouse may be the one facing a jury, but in the court of public opinion it is truth, beauty and goodness that are on trial. The cultural-tacticians don’t care about bringing down Rittenhouse. They’re after the entire house of cards. Facts do not matter. Court procedure doesn’t matter. The fact that a thug with a vaporized bicep admitted in open court that he was only shot when he chased down another man and pointed a gun in his face doesn’t matter. All that seems to matter is that one group of people cannot tolerate the idea of bodily autonomy and defense (the same group that is seeking to administer the ouchie to 5 year olds regardless of any objections) and the other group still thinks that what our nation has become is worth conserving. Make no mistake about it though, this young man —regardless of his guilt or innocence — is nothing more than a convenient symbol for the true conflict. This is not a battle of left versus right. It is not a conflict between white and black. It has nothing immediately to do with gun control. It is a battle for the mind and the soul of the nation. It is truth or deception. Objective-Goodness or foolishness. It is Christ our chaos. It always has been.
