First, They Come for the Assholes -- ALWAYS
And I said nothing, even though I'm a pretty big asshole
The Trump administration is working to craft a rationale for detaining Mahmoud Khalil, one of the leaders of the protests at Columbia last spring. But while they were doing that, Trump blurted out this:
Trump is all but admitting that Khalil was detained because of his beliefs. His lawyers will go to court and argue that Khalil is being detained due to a broad interpretation of a seldom-used law, but Trump is blowing their case by blurting out the truth. Trump basically did this:
Supporters of Khalil’s detention argue that Kahlil is a total asshole. Personally, I find that charge incredibly easy to believe: I’ve devoted many words to describing the nature, origins, and intensity of the asshollery in many “pro-Palestine” protests. Some of my saucier takes include calling the dumbest protesters “quarter-formed organisms only slightly more sentient than hamsters,” comparing them to the leadership of the Donner Party, and saying that the anti-semitism in many protests makes the “GOODBYE JEWS!” girl from Schindler’s List look like the head of the ADL. Telling me that Khalil is an asshole is like telling me that a football coach has an anger management problem: I find that incredibly easy to believe, it won’t take a ton of evidence to convince me that that is true.
But being an asshole isn’t illegal; in fact, it’s a sacred American right. And the first people affected by attempts to suppress speech are usually total assholes, because who wants to stand up and say “I stand with that human pile of diarrhea”? Persecuting Asshole-Americans1 also makes it possible for normal people to tell themselves that they’re safe, because the asshole made trouble for himself by being just too big of an asshole. They can convince themselves that the anti-speech wave won’t touch people whose assholery takes normal forms, like farting on airplanes and leaving it to your most responsible sibling to arrange a “group” Mothers Day gift.