The Fools of Kenosha

Fools rush in.” Three centuries after they were written, those words ring as true as ever. And nowhere are they as relevant at present as in the case of Kenosha, Wis.

On Sunday, a black man named Jacob Blake was shot seven times by a police officer in Kenosha after Blake refused to comply with his orders. The details of what happened remain murky. We know that the cops were called in response to a complaint by a woman who claimed that Blake had taken her keys; we know that there was a warrant out for Blake that cited sexual assault, trespassing, and disorderly conduct; and we know that Blake had a knife “in his possession” at the time of the shooting. Beyond that, however, we remain largely in the dark. The nature of these cases depends heavily on the details, and, at the moment, those details are few and far between.

One would not know this by the reaction. Within hours of the video of the shooting hitting the Internet, the city of Kenosha was on fire. Cars were torched. Businesses were destroyed. A 71-year-old man was hit in the head with a concrete-filled plastic bottle, which fractured his jaw in two places. On Tuesday, a 17-year-old boy brought a rifle to the city, ostensibly to defend property, and ended up shooting two people dead — possibly in self-defense, possibly not. On Wednesday, the celebrities got involved. The NBA postponed all of its games, after a critical mass of players announced that they would not play. In baseball, games between the Brewers and Reds, Mariners and Padres, and Dodgers and Giants were postponed for the same reason. These adjournments drew praise from President Barack Obama, who explained that “it’s going to take all our institutions to stand up for our values.”