There are two Americas, and I refuse to live in one of them

 

Speaking about the Rittenhouse trial, J. KB. of the Gun Free Zone has a trenchant perspective.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Anyone who actually watched the Rittenhouse trial with anything remotely close to an open mind cannot help but come to the inescapable conclusion that not just did the prosecutor not prove that Kyle is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but proved that Kyle is innocent beyond a reasonable doubt ... The evidence of self defense couldn’t be clearer.

Not on social media, however.

There, Kyle is guilty of being a mass murdering, sociopathic white supremacist who deserves every horrible fate imaginable.

. . .

I don’t know what percent of American this represents buy what I can tell you is this:

There is absolutely no commonality I have with these people.

None.

They have no interest in evidence.

For them, justice is purely a function of political alignment.

Kyle’s guilt is assured because he was opposed to the rioters and therefore opposed to their politics.

This is how the Soviet Union, East Germany, and every Communist country in Asia and Latin America operated.

This is what they want here.  The justice system to be an enforcer of political ideology.

Those on their side have charges dropped regardless of evidence of guilt and those who oppose them are guilty regardless of evidence of innocence.

We cannot share a country with these people.

It’s impossible for two such divergent value systems to cohabitate in a single nation.

Unfortunately I think deciding which model of justice – impartial based in evidence or biased and partisan based on politics – is the justice system our nation uses will not be decided with it coming to blows.

There's more at the link.

I'm hearing from more and more friends, acquaintances and contacts who've recently traveled through (or moved from) "blue states".  They describe life there as a dreary existence, regimented, masked, dictatorial, with precious little of the freedom to be oneself that previously existed.  Almost without exception, they describe coming back to "free" or "red" America as a liberation, a release, a joyful experience, where life can be lived free from fear.

I fear J. KB. is right.  I certainly would not live under a totalitarian ideological dictatorship, such as many of the commenters he describes appear to want.  I, too, have watched their reactions to the Rittenhouse trial on social media.  They aren't listening to the evidence at all.  They filter it through their presuppositions and prejudices, and refuse to take an objective view of the facts.

Take the prosecutor in this case, so roundly rebuked by the judge for crossing legal boundaries and ignoring constitutional and legal safeguards.  Just think . . . in a country dominated by such an ideology, people like that would be the judges as well as the prosecutors, and would be carefully selected to form the juries, too.  There would be no honest, fact- and evidence-based verdicts and sentences at all.

Sarah Hoyt says of them and their ilk:

In their minds humans and societies are neatly ordered spools of yarn, to be woven into any design they choose. In reality human societies and cultures are like several bits of yarn dropped into a basket and used as a play thing by your cats. Pull one end, and you’re actually creating a big mess elsewhere. If you’re lucky there’s no dead mice in the middle of it all.

There is a fatal disconnect. They’re champion planners. And they talk about their success, and therefore scare the living pants out of a lot of people.

But the only thing their plans have achieved is to destroy things that work and leave messes in their place. Their regimes don’t hold.

. . .

Don’t be afraid their plan is “all coming true.” Be afraid of the things they’re breaking as they lurch around with the beehives of panic and stupidity buzzing in their nether orifices.

Again, more at the link.

I think that's a wonderful image:  "the beehives of panic and stupidity buzzing in their nether orifices".  That's their reaction when they look at those of us in "free states", and realize that we haven't bought into their totalitarian wet dream, and never will.  Those beehives drive them to try harder and harder to impose their totalitarianism on the rest of us - to "break" us.  That should be a beehive to us in turn, to make us resist them all the harder.

We no longer live in the same America as they do.  They see themselves as an irresistible force, imposing their ideology willy-nilly on everybody else.  The rest of us see ourselves - and our constitution, and our traditions - as an immovable object that will not be dominated.

In the absence of common sense, compromise and good will, there can be only one outcome of that conflict.  One side will have to go to the wall.

Well . . . if that's how it has to be, so be it.  As long as I'm alive, it won't be the side of freedom.  I've seen at first hand, in all too ghastly detail, what it does to a country when totalitarianism triumphs.  I won't see it happen here.

This is where all of us who love freedom must align ourselves with our founding fathers, who "mutually pledge[d] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" in the same cause.  Many of them fulfilled that pledge at the cost of their lives and/or prosperity.  We should expect, and can do, no less.  Not to worry.  We'll be in good company.

Peter