One of the principals I used to work for had a motto: it matters. Ultimately, what that meant is that everything matters. Unfortunately, that can’t literally be true. If everything matters then nothing really matters. This governing philosophy impacts so many things. It impacts our political priorities. It impacts our priorities in education. It impacts our priorities individually as we run through life.

Occasionally, the world of sports and the political world collide. Star basketball player Brandon Miller is a perfect example. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, he was involved in a fatal shooting in January. He did not pull the trigger, but the gun was supplied by him. From here we get into the normal rigmarole of whether he possessed the gun legally, knew how the gun would be used beforehand, or even if he knew the gun was in possession prior to the shooting. What we know is that the shooter asked him to bring the gun via text message before he arrived. He may not have read the text before leaving or didn’t realize he was actually bringing the gun.

This case is interesting for any number of reasons. For one, he is still playing basketball and has since the incident occurred. The university, his coach, and the athletic department presumably knew about the incident after it happened in January. We are in damn near March and he is still leading his team in scoring and driving them to a number two overall ranking. He hasn’t been charged with a crime, so I guess they legally can do that. However, as we have discussed before, there is a huge difference between whether we CAN do something and whether we SHOULD do something.

This is where we ask a few common sense questions. If your best friend calls you up or texts you after midnight and casually says, “oh, and can you bring the gun?” you would think just about everyone would ask some very pointed questions. After all, very little good can come of that situation. His attorneys will obviously argue that he couldn’t foresee what would happen. Maybe he didn’t know that a murder would occur, but he should have known something.

I’d be remiss not to point out the similarities between Miller and Kyle Rittenhouse. No, he didn’t bring an AR-15. He wasn’t protecting property. However, the language surrounding it is similar. Maybe he legally could possess the gun. Maybe he was returning the property to his friend. Maybe Rittenhouse could legally bring an AR-15 over straight lines. Maybe he had a legal right to defend himself. Maybe a lot of things. What we know is that neither of them should have been doing these things.

There is a difference between legal culpability and moral culpability. More importantly, notice the difference between the groups of people that make excuses for each of these young men. I guarantee that the intrinsic circle in the Venn diagram will be very small. As an educator, I can’t help but think that we’ve failed these young men. We’ve made excuses for both of them for different reasons. One can run, jump, and shoot better than most of us. Another fit a narrative of the good guy with a gun. In the not so distance past, both would feel some level of shame that would cause them to withdraw for at least a time so they could rebuild their image. March Madness is just around the corner. Sadly, the time for culpability or personal responsibility will have to wait.

Someone is cashing in on his 15 minutes of fame and those minutes are rapidly running out. Kyle Rittenhouse was a student at Arizona State University. Well that turned out to be false. This week he came out and said he was attending Texas A&M University. Apparently, that is news to them. So, he quickly retracted and said he would be attending Blinn Junior College for a year and then transferring to the big school in 2023. Well, as you might have guessed, Rittenhouse is zero for three.

I suppose there is a clown college up the road he can try if he continues to strike out at all of these fine institutions. I really don’t want to cast aspersions upon Blinn College and any other community college. They have a lot of terrific programs that give our students a chance to gain further certifications in the career pathway they chose. For those going onto a four year degree, they offer a very affordable way to get your basics out of the way. One thing they are not is selective. Every kid that applies at our school gets in. So, a failure to get into Blinn is really saying something.

Unfortunately, the end of my high school career was robbed from me. I didn't have the time other students get to properly prepare for the future.

I look forward to attending Blinn College District this year, a feeder school for Texas A&M.

I'm excited to join Texas A&M in 2023!

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) June 6, 2022

Geez, you can’t help but feel sorry for the kid. I mean, he goes across state lines with a semi-automatic weapon to guard property that’s not his. He subsequently shoots three people where two of them are dead. It could have happened to anyone really. Maybe we could all pause for a moment of silence to ponder the unfortunate future of Rittenhouse’s life. If only he had the time in between a murder trial, numerous guest appearances on conservative television and radio, and whatever speaking engagements he’s had then maybe he would have gotten into at least one of those schools.

Then again, and I’m just spit balling here, maybe those schools would rather not have a kid that’s already killed two people on their campus. Oh heck, who am I kidding? He just didn’t have time to fill out all of the paperwork to get in. I’m sure that must be it. What’s really unfortunate is that no one in his life has bothered to tell him he shouldn’t be bragging about these things. None of this is something to be proud of and really none of us care where he goes. We just like to have a quick laugh at his expense. It’s the very least that he can give us after all he’s done.

There are any number of things missing from modern society. Just listen to conservative commentators long enough and you will hear a long list. There’s the broken homes, there’s the lack of God, and then you get into the really offensive stuff. If we believe them then all of these things are to blame for all of the problems we have today.

So, speaking of shame is certainly ironic. It is ironic because we spend a great deal of time talking about how all of these things are just red herrings and then we land on the shame. Yet, this is different. It is nearly impossible to articulate, but we will give it a try.  Defamation of character is a serious deal. It causes someone to experience shame when they shouldn’t. We certainly feel for Depp if that is the truth, but unfortunately, some people are taking the wrong lesson from all of this. I bet you thought Kyle Rittenhouse went away, but apparently, he has been inspired by Depp. I know you thought he went away. I know you thought his 15 minutes of fame were up. I know you thought he would at least have the presence of mind to keep quiet until everyone had forgotten who this little son of a bitch was. I was right there with you. He apparently never learned anything from that experience.

As complaints go, this is a relatively minor one. After all, three people and their families never got justice for what happened to them. They were gunned down in the street and they were treated like the criminals. Hell, you had the judge in the case refuse to call them victims and then turn around and allow the defense to defame their character in open court.

That judge doesn’t feel shame. He should, but he doesn’t. Obviously, Rittenhouse has been robbed of this experience as well. It definitely impedes his moral development. At the very least, we had hoped that he would realize deep down inside what he had done. We are robbing people of that experience. We have robbed Rittenhouse of that experience.

Shame is the thing that keeps you from seeking the limelight after something like this. Shame is the thing that makes you realize you need to seek forgiveness or some sort penance even if your privaledge somehow exonerates you. Shame is the thing that aids in moral development. It’s the thing that tells you that you’ve done a horrible thing when you’ve killed three people.

Shame is the thing that tells you to go away. It is the thing that is missing all too often. It’s missing in this case because too many people have called this jackass a hero. It’s missing because that’s what he’s internalized and so he doesn’t understand why the mainstream media would say anything different. The best defense against defamation is the truth. The MSM has that in spades. Shame would have told him to leave well enough alone. Sadly, that shame wasn’t there.

Admittedly, this is more of a message for my friends and family that find themselves on the other side of this thing. So, those of you that are regulars around here can excuse my ranting for the time being. I just have to vent.

I’ve grown to understand that gun culture is going to be a thing. I’ll never condone it but I understand it exists. I’ll never understand the point of view that someone can bring a gun into a situation, openly carry it, wave it around, and then claim self-defense when something bad happens. I’m not a lawyer or a legal scholar, so I’ll just have to argue that from a purely logical/philosophical point of view.

So, the legal justifications for what happened in Wisconsin are what they are. I wasn’t in the court room. I don’t know what the full slate of evidence looked like. Maybe the jury had no other choice given what was presented to them. What I will never get is the beating of the chests after the fact.

If you are justifying the deaths of two people based on mistakes they made previously in their life then you are a despicable human being. No one deserves to die like that. It doesn’t matter what they had previously done. The kid couldn’t have known their criminal history and didn’t even know if they had looted, rioted, or burned anything down. Even if they had they didn’t deserve to die anymore than this kid.

How anyone can be happy about anyone losing their life and then call themselves pro life is beyond me. That road is a bottomless pit of human depravity. It is the last bastions of any kind of tenous hold on a smidgeon of moral authority. Whether anyone thinks this kid is legally responsible, he is morally responsible. We are responsible for everything we do in this world.

I’m told he wants to become a nurse. My sincerest hope is that he can make the most of this opportunity he doesn’t deserve. Maybe, just maybe he can save enough people to come somewhat close to making up for the two lives he took. I’m not sure how that is even possible, but I don’t wish anything bad or nefarious happen to him. This isn’t about him anymore. It’s about the rest of us and whether we can gain some perspective of things. I’m really trying hard to do it right now.

As I write this it should be noted that the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case has not been reported. By the time you read this, it likely has already come down. I’m notoriously not a gambling man, but if I were I’d lay down heavy odds that he’s walking home. I’m not a soothsayer here, after all, more than me is saying the same thing.

There have long been arguments about self-defense and it’s one of those discussions where I feel I must be taking crazy pills. At this point, I’m not arguing anymore. There really is no point in it. If someone can’t see the plain truth that is right in front of them then they likely never will. Many of these folks are people we used to count as friends. Some of them are family. It hurts to even think about what they are at this point.

Most of the commentators have been dancing around the shame. Where does it go? If you see the truth then you definitely feel it. When you see such a huge miscarriage of justice it’s hard to feel anything else. Our justice system seems capable of slowly making up for egregious errors in justice. Wrongfully convicted folks can appeal. They can challenge issues of law. They can introduce new evidence that wasn’t introduced before. There have been hundreds of folks that have had their guilty verdict set aside.

These aren’t perfect scenarios. There is no getting back the time lost. Yet, one of the miracles of our justice system is the fact that this avenue is available at all. What really isn’t available is the ability to overcome a rogue judge or an odious jury that is willing to put their thumbs on the scales of justice. Victims don’t get a second bite at that apple. They can’t wipe away an ineffective prosecution team or shoddy police investigation. To date, there is very little recourse for their families or those that care about them. They can’t cry foul when they see that the fix is in.

Shame leads to dark places. It can’t go anywhere and there is little we can do about it. It piles on itself and the weight becomes crippling. We can’t look each other in the eye because we know all too well what is going on. We can call it by name, but the unwoke mob will call it cancel culture and try to minimize the shame. They’ll trivialize it. They’ll poke fun at you for it. They’ll hang it like an albatross around your neck.

When someone like Rittenhouse walks away it eats just a little bit more out of our soul. It feeds that depression that so many of us feel. It stacks on top of the other shameful events that we can’t erase or explain away. It just stays there weighing us all down. Maybe those deniers can’t see it. Maybe they can’t hear it. Maybe they don’t know it’s there. They certainly will feel it at some point and by then it will be too late. By then the weight may crush us all.

The Washington Post is reporting that Wisconsin Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is presiding over the murder trial of young gun nut Kyle Rittenhouse, who gunned down two protesters last summer, has ruled on how lawyers can refer to the dead.  Recall that Rittenhouse, who was a minor at the time, was illegally in possession of an AR-15, and had illegally crossed state lines to join a white supremacist group “guarding” private businesses in Kenosha Wisconsin.  He killed two protesters who had confronted him for carrying an assault weapon in public.

Schroeder’s ruling?  During the trial, lawyers can refer to the people Rittenhouse killed as “looters”, “rioters”, and “arsonists”, but not as “victims”, because “victims” is a “loaded term”.  We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and we’re not coming back.