The bitterness exhibited by liberals in the finding of Kyle Rittenhouse to be innocent of all charges should, in a just world, be mitigated, even retracted, by the finding against the Nazis who descended upon Charlottesville, VA, back in 2017, resulting in the death of Heather Heyer, as CNN reports yesterday:
A jury has awarded more than $26 million in damages after finding the White nationalists who organized and participated in a violent 2017 rally here liable on a state conspiracy claim and other claims.
But the jury in the federal civil trial said Tuesday it could not reach a verdict on two federal conspiracy claims.
The violence during the Unite the Right rally turned the Virginia city into another battleground in America’s culture wars and highlighted growing polarization. It was also an event that empowered White supremacists and nationalists to demonstrate their beliefs in public rather than just online.Though the jury deadlocked on the two federal conspiracy claims, it slammed the defendants on the other claims with major awards to the plaintiffs, who included town residents and counterprotesters injured in the violence four years ago.
… as well as three guilty verdicts, announced today, in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial, according to WaPo:
Travis McMichael; his father, Greg McMichael; and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were all convicted of felony murder in the fatal shooting of Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man — meaning they committed felonies that caused his death. But Bryan and the elder McMichael were acquitted of malice murder, which involves intent to kill.
By all rights, if the situation were as dire as was noised about in some liberal sectors, those trials would have gone the other way as well, and the corruption of America would be complete and irreversible, if I may indulge in some of the hyperbole I’ve seen and heard.
But it didn’t.
No doubt, the intellectually lazy, as well as those who loathe admission of error[1], will find an excuse of some sort – it’s Wisconsin, after all or the prosecution was incompetent, or it’s all about the gerrymandering![2] – in order to avoid considering the possibility that they, and their methods, are wrong.
I brought this up at the termination of the Rittenhouse trial before, but it seems really worthy of reiteration in the light of the contrast of the Charlottesville and Arbery trials: sometimes the group to which you belong, the cult, is wrong. Look, details matter. They really do. I’ve sat on a couple of juries, and getting the details right leads to conviction, while wrong details do not.
Perhaps, rather than griping about a trial on which everyone commenting didn’t sit on the jury and didn’t review and didn’t have the same opinion as the professional defense lawyers, one should review the facts and these professional defense lawyers analysis and ask oneself if the divergence between the party line on the one hand, and the facts on the other, is an important factor in our own behavior.
Or if it’s more important to automatically oppose “the other side” in everything.
I think I know on which side I stand.
1 And for those readers who are angry at me for that statement, you can count me among those who are intellectually lazy and/or loathe to admit to being wrong. HOWEVER, as a software engineer, I find that I’m wrong far too much, and admit I’m a better engineer – and person – when I own up to it and try to improve my methods.
2 Yes, that’s ridiculous, and that’s the point. Yes, nevermind.
