The Re-Education of Kyle Rittenhouse

Hey, Kyle. Heard you were thinking of not voting Trump. That would be a real shame. That would make us very unhappy, you understand.

The Poolish is a comedy news and current affairs newsletter by S Peter Davis. My main newsletter Plato Was a Dick is free to read.

Famous innocent victim of circumstance Kyle Rittenhouse, who rocketed to superstardom in Republican circles after showing up to a riot in self defense and opening defensive fire, is understandably a MAGA hero for his love of guns above all else, and having successfully killed some people with them—i.e. correctly using them for what they were designed to do.

So it was basically inevitable that he was going to vote Trump, right? You know, the leader of the party who showered him with riches and fame.

But Rittenhouse, for the very first time since settling into his new role as a puppet riding the GOP’s arm to the elbow, has been showing some worrying signs of independent thought. He is literally a single issue voter, and that issue is second amendment absolutism, so he’s become disillusioned with Trump who, you know, did a whole bunch of gun bans the last time he was president.

I’m not saying that Rittenhouse was primed up with a little Dutch courage the other night, but it is a fact that he’s just turned 21 and is therefore finally deemed mature enough to handle something as dangerous as a beer. So he got out his phone and did the bravest thing he’s ever done (and I’m including the night that made him famous): He recorded a video for social media announcing he was not going to vote for Trump but was instead going to throw his vote away by writing in Ron Paul as though it’s 2008.

The first thing that Republicans did was look up whether Ron Paul was still alive (surprisingly it seems he is) and the second thing they did was initiate plans to burn down his life and everything in it like a dry cane field.

Rittenhouse’s announcement inevitably set off the same types of people who casually call in bomb threats to children’s hospitals if their Christmas Starbucks cup doesn’t say Jesus on it enough times. Overnight he became a QAnon villain, a Democrat operative, and possibly the Antichrist. It was no longer than ten minutes into the controversy before they started transvestigating him.

It wasn’t even 12 hours after Rittenhouse announced this was his final decision with “no takebacks” before he dropped a wounded apology so wooden that it’s tempting to believe that Elon Musk did an over-the-air update on his Neuralink brain chip.

Rittenhouse assures that his total and abrupt about-face on these impotant issues came after “a series of productive conversations” that I’m sure were all just nuanced reassurances on policy rather than anything involving a dark room, one bright lamp, and two stern looking men reminding him about who made him and who can un-make him.