The growing disconnect between actual crimes and their coverage is unlikely to change in our age of rage. Rittenhouse had to be convicted to fulfill the narrative and any acquittal had to be evidence of a racist jury picked to carryout racist justice.
That is what occurred in the Rittenhouse trial. The jury stood between a mob and a defendant to see that objective justice was done. On that chaotic night on Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, few things were clear. What is clear however is that the shooting – and those killed and accused – became vehicles for broader narratives. Those popular portrayals crashed in Kenosha on a wall of 12 jurors who ruled by proof rather than passion.