Kyle Rittenhouse isn’t crying for those he hurt. His tears, tellingly, are for himself | Moira Donegan

When conservative men like Rittenhouse and Brett Kavanaugh express their feelings, it is an act of thwarted entitlement - or a threat

His voice choked up and his face went red. The young man squinted and panted, his mouth pulled up plaintively towards his nose, his answers to the questions coming out in gasping little bursts. Kyle Rittenhouse, on the stand testifying at his trial for killing two people and wounding a third last summer at a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not crying for the men he killed, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. He was crying for himself, describing what he said was his mortal fear that night in August 2020, when he opened fire on the protesters using an AR-15. I didn't do anything wrong," Rittenhouse gasped, describing how he had confronted and ultimately killed the two men while he was guarding the lot of a car dealership. I defended myself."

Rittenhouse was 17 at the time of the shooting; he is 18 now. The young man's emotional testimony had a practical purpose: it was a performance meant to make him seem helpless and childlike, and to convince the jury in his homicide trial that there was a reasonable possibility that he was in fear for his life when he shot the three men. But to many, the emotion of Rittenhouse's testimony seemed to stem not from his memories of the incident, but from the indignant entitlement of a white man thwarted in the enforcement of his own privilege.