When Kyle Rittenhouse was at the Militia training school,

Even in 1775 militias were regulated, and mostly created by their state or the Continental Army. The “unregulated militia” (everyone else) did not run around with rifles, or play dress up.

Now, “unregulated militia” has taken to mean meth-head thugs, white supremacists, Libertarian terrorists, and Nazis getting together to play soldier on the weekend. Giving them any sort of authority would be disastrous, as they would almost instantly start committing war crimes and systematic genocide. I wouldn’t trust these people to guard a vacant Burger King, let alone a human life.

A 17 year is not trained to be in that situation. He, and all the other “militiamen” would commit the atrocities above at the drop of a hat. My nightmare is a red state deputizing these people. Like any militia, and without oversight, they would treat a city as their own personal playground.

has been a dog whistle for arming citizens to work in tandem as militias for the overthrow of democracy. It's used the specter of crime and violence and insincere skepticism that the police can protect us. (Ironically, with sufficient numbers of white supremacists within police departments, they may well join the militias in threatening peaceful protestors.)

Live Action Role Play. Paintball.

They fiercely believe that they're Seal Team 6 but in a video game.
Killing real people is an added thrill, of course.

This kid-- with the long rap sheet (and no time in reform school, of course... every charge just kind of dissipated) = thought he was going to become a police officer.

The way things are in a lot of police departments, he's probably getting job offers right now.

Im not sure if there is a father in the picture, the details of the mothers interaction with him suggest she was more buddy than parent and that resulted in several incidence with police intervention, unruly, disturbing the peace at 13-14 and pot possession and paraphernalia at 15-16.

In the midwest, for the last 60 or so years, it is not uncommon for these types of youths (white low to middle class early offenders) to be directed into ROTC or Police cadet programs or military school systems.

The thought is to introduce structure into unstructured lives. To bend the wills of these unruly children towards the rule of law, but the truth of the matter is the outcome has been the opposite and a large part of our current woes. Introducing bad seeds to these programs has often given them just enough knowledge to hide their dysfunction, to mask themselves into upstanding citizens who often use these interventions to follow careers into law enforcement. And Kyle Rittenhouse is not the exception, but the demonstration that it is not unruly children bending to structure and compliance, but unruly children bending law to become unstructured and undisciplined.

He had just such an intervention, there are pictures posted on social media, from his mother, of him in a police cadet uniform. His social media was pro cop, because he was immersed in the culture to give him structure, but all it did was feed an unruly child another tool of the broken police culture.

Policing is no longer the structure of protect and serve the people, but blood for treasure, and thats exactly what this man child walked away with, and then did as he was programmed to do, dehumanize the "other", venerate with gun comes power, and raise treasure and property above human life.

These unruly children of the last 60 years werent taught to be upstanding citizens by law and order molding them, they in fact have bent the will of the police culture, and are literally the bad seeds of our broken police forces.

as a state trooper were disorienting for me...but I didn't look further into it. Your research into his issues sheds light on him and the interesting fact of the DARE and other programs working or not.

based upon merit and abilities - not because the 'blue brotherhood' invites that individual in.

Alot of these cops are out of shape, stupid, scared, etc - in addition to being racist and rightwing - which leads them to using their weapons in lethal ways against all types of people. They do it more against black/browns but their policing skills against others is not good either. Basically they suck and their unions need to be busted.