Kyle Rittenhouse has to defend himself

 Teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse has been on trial since the night that he shot three people, killing two. He has been praised or condemned, and subjected to media analysis for more than a year. At the end of his actual trial, just getting underway, he will be found guilty or innocent of the charges of murder and attempted murder. He will remain a polarizing figure in the historical record no matter how he fares in court.

Teenagers do ill-considered things. We consider the ones who get themselves killed as unlucky, but the ones whose rash decisions lead to the deaths of others face a lifelong challenge. Depending on how the deaths occurred, they might be harder or easier to rationalize. Accepting responsibility for a fatal error is always hard, but when the error was an active decision to use deadly force to end someone else's life the bar is at its highest.

True remorse is a life sentence without parole. It's one thing to get drunk with your buddies and crash your car, killing one or more of the passengers while you, the driver, survive. There was probably a certain degree of consent among the partying carload. It is easier to rationalize drunken teens playing with a gun than it is to accept that a sober and well-intentioned -- however misguided -- boy picked up a rifle and was willing to walk into a volatile scene of social unrest and make snap decisions in combat with people he identified as disposable.

Humans react to the threat of violence in two ways: fight or flight. These two reactions may mix in strange ways, as you see in videos of demonstrators clashing with either law enforcement or self-appointed keepers of the peace, in the posture of someone who tries to deliver a blow while simultaneously turning to retreat. You see it in street altercations and playground fights, the untrained actions of fear and anger. Adrenaline flows, the brain buzzes, the body tries to interpret the commands, and neither the fists nor the feet look heroic.

Carrying a weapon that extends your deadly capability many yards in front of you generates some degree of confidence. That confidence frays rapidly when an actual confrontation calls for clear decision making. Supposedly trained police officers have trouble making the right choice every time. Military personnel discover the difference between training and reality when they are actually attacked. Knowing how to handle a gun is not enough. You have to know how to handle yourself. Elite units are elite units not because of their weaponry, but because of their ability. As with so many other human endeavors, the ones who turn out to be excellent prove that we are not all created equal. We are equal in moral responsibility and in our right to be treated fairly, but not in the distribution of qualities that favor achievement in one realm or another.

Kyle went looking for trouble. He may have hoped that his armed presence would subdue the unhappy mob without the need to take any out, but he was equipped to kill, and he did so. Whether it was self defense in the actual instant, he didn't have to be there at all. He decided that he could help the beleaguered business owners of Kenosha by showing up armed at an already inflamed situation, to act more or less independently of any centralized command.

He meant well, within his world view. At least it appears that way. That makes it worse for him, because it makes him more vulnerable to himself, should he decide that he was completely unjustified from the outset. He must defend himself against the worst interpretation of his own actions. No one can protect him from that. He can decide to absorb the approval of his supporters and use that to block any notion that he did something really wrong. It may come easily. But if it fails, he will be left with his own inner voice reminding him every day that two people are dead because of choices he made. It will form a wall between him and deep happiness, unless he can write off the lives of his targets as just a lesson learned in youthful indiscretion. The compulsion to defend himself, even from himself, is powerful and normal. He has to live with himself.