the Cult of Kyle: why the shittiest people in the world worship Rittenhouse
I referenced gun-happy teenage murderer Kyle Rittenhouse a couple of times on the twitters this weekend …
… and the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex lost their fucking shit. so much so that the UK Daily Mail devoted an entire full-page story to … me.
(the link is here, and please don’t miss the highly entertaining and completely unhinged comment section)
if you’ve ever posted to social media about Rittenhouse, you already know that Kyle stans are every bit as rabid and over the top as Trump worshipers and Elon fanboys. in fact the Venn diagram of these three groups is probably just one circle.
why the rabid fandom? it’s not that difficult to fathom why:
Kyle Rittenhouse did the one thing they dream about doing: Kyle Rittenhouse killed people and got away with it.
if you’ve ever hung out on the pro-gun forums at places like Reddit and Quora, you know that these trigger-happy dipshits have convinced themselves that mortal danger lurks around every corner and that they need to be draped in military-grade weaponry at all times to protect themselves from a threat that exists only within their fevered heads, and they literally salivate over the prospect of blowing away some [insert any handy ethnic slur here].
these bloodthirsty lunatics want so badly to pull the trigger they can taste it. and Kyle did the one thing they themselves want so badly to do. Kyle pointed a weapon at the enemy. and Kyle pulled the trigger. and Kyle got away with it.
I once lived next door to a guy who hoarded weapons. if he liked you, he would do anything for you. he was the nicest guy in the world, except for the part where he honestly believed that after the imminent collapse of civilization, roving gangs of The Blacks™ from New York City would be coming north to take all his stuff. he was convinced that this was going to happen any day now. and this was long before Fox News existed.
I haven’t seen Ed in at least 40 years, but if he’s still alive, I’m sure he’s still sitting on his front porch with his rifle in his lap, convinced tomorrow will be The Day All Hell Breaks Loose.
now add this to the mix: the right-wing media ecosystem has spent the last three decades convincing the soft-brains that people with whom they disagree aren’t just their political opponents, but their mortal enemies. mortal enemies who need to be dealt with. so for guys like Ed, it’s not just The Blacks™ any more. it’s anyone to the left of whatever the hell they believe.
this is the mindset that made a teenage boy to ask his mommy to drive him and his weapon across state lines.
and this is the mindset that made a teenage boy’s mommy think it was a super fucking awesome thing to do.
and this is the mindset that made a teenage murderer the hero of thousands, if not millions, for killing people he didn’t agree with, and getting away with it.
ugh
I'm awfully glad you're here doing this so splendidly. This whole mishugas sickens me and I have no words. Thanks, man. Thanks.
The only reason to hoard weapons of war, is so you don't have to bother reloading. Although it'll take almost as long to drop the empty and pick up a loaded, so it's a, as we used to say when I was stationed in German, "machy nikky".
I personally will never understand that inability to think critically and imagine that civilization as we know it will somehow cease to exist, and total anarchy will prevail. It flies in the face of the history of the human race! How many continental size wars have we had in Europe alone, and yet once the armies stop shooting because the governments either came to their senses, or one side utterly prevailed, and afterward...civilization returned to "normal". I mean, we had a CIVIL WAR here in the USA only 158 years ago where we were SHOOTING AT EACH OTHER, and one general cut a swath of death and destruction 50 miles wide from Atlanta to Savannah, yet during and afterward, civilization continued to chug along.
In a sense I feel sorry for these pinheads because most of them will die, never realizing just how ignorant they looked to everybody else.
Thanks for taking the heat Jeff. I follow you on Twitter, though anymore I'm only seeing about 1/16 of the number of tweets of people I follow.