Fatal Mistake

As a 70-year-old author of four historical fiction novels, and writer of a thousand blogs, I probably read a little more contemporary news and commentary than most folks, just to stay in touch with what’s going on out there in evereverland.

While most citizens satisfy their connectiveness cravings with twit, fb, instahoot, point n shoot, netfluck, etceteretcetera, I hideaway, as the Beach Boys sang long ago, in my room, tapping out a sand-grain-on-the-beaches-of-time scoop full of old-fashioned text blather in an attempt to overcome my existential crisis and solve the problems of the world.

In partial agreement with the cassandra cryers on Medium, where I like to hang out, I often find myself strangely comforted by the frantic alarms of all those writers who are slowly coming to agree that the world as we know it is falling apart.

I suppose that strange comfort seeps up from my existential crisis because I have convinced myself to believe that, while I cannot change the world or save it, I can at least take comfort in the discovery that I am attentive enough to accurately discern just how it will happen that our world will fall apart.

Many years ago, 1970, while pledging a fraternity at LSU, I was shocked when I heard the older brothers swearing, “Jeez” this and “jeez!” that.

Later on in life, I got a little insight on these matters when I turned to the Bible for a little wisdom and historical backstory.

Nowadays, I prefer the full exclamation, ”Jesus”, and I choose to hope that in that faithful, rather than cursory, upward invocation there is ultimately some deliverance from the dystopian world into which we presently are hurtling with the speed of a discharged hollow point ballistic lethal weapon AR nightmare on a dark Wisconsin or Georgia night, or any other day or night for that matter.

Over there in Britain they have a sacred saying: God save the Queen.

Here, Stateside, I would adapt that slogan for yank usage in our present potentially lethal clusterf*k: God save the Constitution.

But I digress. As I was saying up above, at the beginning of this ramble, I do read a lot, which is why it surprised when I just read, an hour ago, in Unherd, a Brit-based writers’ hangout, this statement by Jacob Siegel.

“Rittenhouse could be seen on video, shortly before the shooting, offering medical aid to Black Lives Matter protesters.”

In all the reading I have done to try and understand this Rittenhouse controversy, why did it take me so long to lay eyes on the above sentence, which I consider is a game-changer in our national pursuit to understand this kid Kyle and what he was up to.

That statement sheds new light on who the young man was and what he was up to and where this present maelstrom of reporting on his fatal mistake will take him. . . and where it will take us as a nation that is trying to do the right thing.

Let’s not get too excited about this. 

Let’s remember what the original gun-wielding Sheriff of the wild west sometimes had to shoutout to his deputized helpers as they were chomping at the bit to arrest outlaws:

“Hold your horses, boys!”

Those horses could be the four harbingers of the apocalypse. Stop and think, boys, what you're getting us into when you set out to become a self-deputized gunslinger. You may find yourself in deep courtroom sh*t for about two years of your life.

Smoke