How Much Do You Know About Kyle Rittenhouse?

True or False?

1. Kyle Rittenhouse 
1. was bullied as a kid  
2. was a bully at his school
3. fled the scene of the crime
4. turned himself in
5. was a Proud Boy
6. drove 200 miles to be in Kenosha
2. His
1. parents had three kids in less than four years
2. mother is a certified nursing assistant
3. sister is a Bernie Sanders supporter
3. Rittenhouse fundraising efforts 
1. raised over more than $1 million
2. were misused by his attorneys

Just letting you check how much you know.

I realized lately that the name Kyle Rittenhouse was bombarding my consciousness.  I knew he was the kid who traveled from Illinois to Kenosha and  killed two people who were demonstrating against police violence in Kenosha.  And his trial was starting.

But I realized I knew really very little about who the person was and what actually happened that night in Kenosha.  

So I googled Rittenhouse biography and came up with this New Yorker article on how he got to Kenosha, what happened there, and how the right raised money for him and the Proud Boys claimed him.  

Too often the relentless repetition from the media and social media implants images into our heads that take root there without our attention and we unconsciously and uncritically form opinions on things.  

For instance - something I learned in the article - 

"The Rittenhouse apartment was a mile south of the Wisconsin border, and Rittenhouse had been storing his gun in Kenosha, at the house of a friend’s stepfather."

There wasn't too much about his family life, but here's some of it:

"Wendy [his mom] sometimes felt too overwhelmed to help her kids navigate difficulties. In 2017, when Kyle was fourteen, she tried to resolve a conflict between him and two classmates, twins named Anthony and Jonathan, by seeking restraining orders. In a handwritten petition to the court, Wendy, who has dyslexia, wrote, “Anthony calls Klye dumb stupid say that going to hurt Kyle. Anthony follows Kyle around to take picture of Klye and post them on soical media.”

"That fall, Rittenhouse, a pudgy ninth grader in dark-framed glasses, joined the Explorers program at the Grayslake Police Department, near Antioch. The police chief viewed the program as a way to “teach self-discipline, responsibility and other appropriate ‘life lessons’ ” to youths who “may have a challenging home, social, or school life.” Rittenhouse participated in a similar cadet program through the Antioch Fire Department. Jon Cokefair, the fire chief, told me, “Most of the kids that are doing this, they don’t play football, they’re not cheerleaders—this is their focus.”

Jeff Myhra, the deputy chief who ran Grayslake’s Police Explorers program, told me that participants trained with harmless replicas of service weapons. Explorers wore uniforms and often helped manage parade traffic. Rittenhouse went on police ride-alongs, a practice that may impart a false sense of competence, or authority. One brochure declared, “Like Police Officers, Explorers must be ready and willing to encounter any emergency situation such as first responders to accidents or injuries.”

There's also a lot about how prominent Trump related lawyers swooped in to raise money for Kyle's defense and took big payments from the accounts for themselves.  

There is usually a way to find out more about what's happening than we get through normal life.  But we also have to take accounts like this New Yorker article with a grain of salt too until we have enough evidence that it's accurate.  

I recommend using normal channels of information to find out what's happening and who's getting attention.  From there it makes more sense to find someone who has done a deep dive to find out a lot more details about the person and/or the situation.  

You can find answers to the True or False quiz in the article.  Yes, I could give you the answers, but then you'd just have a lot of out-of-context trivia that would not make you wiser about what's going on.