Kenosha root causes

From The government — in failing to maintain order in Kenosha — deserves blame for the Kyle Rittenhouse incident by Ann Althouse.

None of the shootings by Kyle Rittenhouse would have occurred if Joseph Rosenbaum hadn't behaved in a deranged manner. Presumably, Rosenbaum would have done better if he had taken his medication, but he couldn't get his prescriptions filled because the pharmacy was boarded up — closed, because of the riots.

I'm reading more about his condition — here, in The Washington Post — and I see that the plastic bag he threw at Rittenhouse was a small collection of items — deodorant, underwear, socks — that the hospital had given him when he was discharged after a suicide attempt. That's what he had (and lamely threw at Rittenhouse). What he lacked was his drugs: "Hours after he was released from the hospital, Rosenbaum stopped by a pharmacy in Kenosha to pick up medication for his bipolar disorder, only to discover that it had closed early because of the unrest."  

 

They released a mentally ill man into a chaotic city with a prescription for medication that he could not fill. A suicidal man proceeded to get himself killed at the hands of Rittenhouse and to unleash the ill-fated rush to stop Rittenhouse. There are immense and unknowable costs to letting a city decline into chaos. 

Rittenhouse and every other individual — except a truly deranged person, such as, perhaps, Rosenbaum — are responsible for his own actions. We tend to focus on the actions of other human beings, and the trial was a spectacle commanding us to focus on Rittenhouse. The government puts on that show, and that show distracts us from the failings of government. 

There is a very strong argument here.  I have made it a number of the times in other contexts.  We have it going in my city, Atlanta, at the current moment.   For several years, City government and successive mayors have focused on inequality and retributional equity and social exclusion, etc.  They have not focused on infrastructure or policing or rule of law.  

You see these symptoms in Blue cities across the nation.  Low policing leads to not only a more fearful population but a population also preemptively arming itself.  You know, sooner or later, some law abiding citizen is going to surprise, confront, or defensively protect themselves from some ne'er-do-well.  Usually it will be a white home owner and a black thief.  We will then have days or weeks of inflammatory media focusing on the race angle (instead of class.)

Happened in New York, happened in Detroit, happened in New Orleans - it happens everywhere.  It is one of the most ironclad societal laws.  Decline in effective policing leads to an increasingly armed populace which leads to an increasing probability of a mortal encounter between a property owner and thief with possible racial overtones.

You let policing slide, and that is what happens.

Tony Evers as governor and John Antaramian as Mayor were responsible for the chain of events leading to the shootings.  They were predictably responsible.  Reduced policing in combination with increased resident anxiety statistically will lead to a violent confrontation.  

Joseph Rosenbaum, as a child rapist and a violent rioter, can engender virtually no sympathy.  None-the-less, that little detail magnifies the tragedy.

The plastic bag he threw at Rittenhouse was a small collection of items — deodorant, underwear, socks — that the hospital had given him when he was discharged after a suicide attempt.

He was suicidal.  He couldn't get his medication at the hospital.  He acted violently and irrationally.  He assaulted someone.  And he died.  Without his medications and without his small plastic bag of deodorant, underwear, socks.  Rittenhouse was innocent and the Government guilty of this tragedy.