Something Tells Me Kyle Rittenhouse Will NOT Live Happily Ever After

[Hortensis]

27. He has/IS a bad start in various ways, but he could have a

very long life ahead. And it could go many ways. I think over both short and long terms it depends a lot less on the world than on what he brings to life and how he reacts. He's an adolescent, still just growing up, still time to improve a great deal as a person, if it's in him. But lots of horrible people lead successful, and even disgustingly satisfying, lives.

Reminded me of Bernard Goetz, of course. The 1984 "Subway Vigilante" who shot four unarmed black teen hoodlums who accosted him, leaving one paraplegic and severely brain damaged, and starred in a national zoo of a trial that exonerated him? Goetz was 37, is 74 now, still lives in NY and apparently shows up publicly now and then, like now. He feels Rittenhouse's trial was "a sham at best" and its purpose to "satisfy the mob." We're the mob. NOT those who rallied both times to passionately protect their new murderer heroes.

Among Goetz's statements to the police, he said that he told one of his victims whom he'd missed but was cowering terrified, "You don't look so bad, here's another" and fired again. None of the witnesses heard it, though, and his defense claimed overactive imagination. To the police, "My intention was to murder them, to hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible." "If I had more bullets, I would have shot 'em all again and again. My problem was I ran out of bullets." "I was gonna, I was gonna gouge one of the guys' [Canty's] eyes out with my keys afterwards", but said he stopped when he saw the fear in his eyes.'

From Goetz's own site: "I decided to shoot as many as I could as quickly as I could. I did a fast draw, and shot with one hand (my right), pulling the trigger prior to the gun being aligned on the targets. All actual shots plus my draw time occurred easily within 1.6 seconds or less. This is not as difficult to do as some might think, and occasionally I give a description of the technique along with a re-enactment."

Back then I thought he was a nasty loon who'd most likely continue on a self destructive path his murders were part of.