Let’s get this part out of the way early: I have little respect for Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch’s intelligence. But even he ought to have seen the silliness in his Tuesday morning newsletter.

Mr Bunch began with his very great concern that our “45th and soon-to-be 47th POTUS” would be cracking down on free speech and dissent:

Mother Jones also notes in a new piece that the anti-Gaza-protest playbook will likely inspire a Trump regime in other ways, including following through on his campaign threats to deport campus protesters. Cornell University grad student Momodou Taal — a protester whose student visa was revoked but has dodged deportation, for now — told the magazine that last spring’s crackdown set an awful precedent, saying: “I think what [President Joe] Biden has allowed for is that the clampdown is made easier for Trump now because the groundwork has already been laid.”

Indeed, Cornell’s moves to suspend Taal and other pro-Palestinian students who disrupted a job fair in September is just one part of a campus crusade against dissent and, arguably, free speech that seems to have succeeded in sharply reducing protests against the killing of civilians in Gaza — or against anything else for that matter.

Uhhh, even Mr Bunch (unwittingly?) admitted that Mr Taal “disrupted a job fair,” which means that this was beyond freedom of speech and peaceable assembly, but was infringing upon the freedom of speech and peaceable assembly of other people.

Mr Bunch then advocated the new social media site Bluesky, the anti-Twitter refuge of those who can’t stand actual freedom of speech: Continue reading →