Check Your Privilege

So, about the gaggle of lefties who dressed in black and were using smoke bombs and pepper spray on Trump supporters at the Capitol last weekend? Turns out one of them is the scion of someone you might remember:

Citizen Kaine

The youngest son of U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, was one of six people arrested Saturday after counter-protesters disrupted a rally in support of President Donald Trump at the Minnesota State Capitol.

Linwood Michael Kaine, 24, and four others were arrested on suspicion of second-degree riot after the “March 4 Trump” rally in St. Paul; a sixth person was cited for disorderly conduct. Counter-protesters clashed with Trump supporters in the Capitol rotunda after they disrupted the proceedings with air horns, whistles and chants. At one point, someone set off a smoke bomb.

Linwood Kaine, a Minneapolis resident who attended Carleton College and goes by Woody, was released from the Ramsey County jail on Tuesday morning pending further investigation, law enforcement officials said.

I'm surprised; usually the children of politicians don't have to get their hands so dirty and can job this sort of thing out. So what did they do? More from the linked article in the Pioneer Press:

Speeches had been going on for about a half-hour inside the newly renovated Capitol rotunda when a group of people tried to disrupt the event. At one point, someone set off a smoke bomb — apparently striking a woman in the head, police said. 

A 61-year-old Plymouth woman said she was hit in the head at 12:30 p.m., about 10 minutes after she arrived at the Trump rally. The woman said she saw something coming toward her, tried to avoid the object, but it struck her in the forehead, according to Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman. She was not injured. It was not clear who threw the smoke bomb.

Security guards intervened, skirmishes broke out, and someone sprayed chemical irritant into the crowd. Some counter-demonstrators dispersed, and the rally resumed.

Woody Kaine was seen with four people who lit fireworks inside the Capitol, Linders said. Police are investigating whether Kaine was one of the people who was lighting the devices.

St. Paul police arrested Kaine and the four others near Rice Street and University Avenue, less than a block from the Capitol. After the group ran and a St. Paul police officer detained Kaine, “he turned around and squared up to fight with the officer,” Linders said Tuesday night. “The officer was able to place Mr. Kaine under arrest and take him to the Ramsey County jail for booking.”

Young Mr. Kaine is privileged in ways that most of us are not. His father may not get to hang out in the Naval Observatory these days, but he's a sitting United States senator and was the governor of Virginia before that. Given the fecklessness of local authorities, Kaine the younger and his tonsorially challenged colleagues will likely skate by with only minimal consequences for his actions. Pepper spraying the hoi polloi is no big thing, you see. Eventually young Mr. Kaine will cut his hair and get a sinecure in the family business; if he plays his cards right and puts the Mace on the high shelf, he'll get to be Ted Mondale some day. That is how privilege actually works.