Thread by @seanilling

Here's a comment from a follower defending Trump's "send her back" chant. I suspect it's a popular line of argument, and yet it gives away the whole game:

"If a person came into your home and told you how disgusting it was, would you not tell them to get out?"

(THREAD)

(2/5) The way the question is framed reveals everything you need to know about the assumptions undergirding it. It implies that @IlhanMN is a guest in the American home, an outsider, someone who is allowed to be here and thus being impolite in her criticisms.

(3/5) It means she's not actually a citizen, not a legitimate member of the polis, not someone participating in the American experiment and shaping and defining it in real time. This really does give the whole damn game away.

(4/5) The phrase "come into your home" is so depressingly clarifying. Omar, in the minds of so many Trump supporters, is an invader, and therefore she's not an American asserting her agency but rather some kind of gadfly insulting "our" way of life from without.

(5/5) The real issue here is who counts as an American and who doesn't, who has the right to speak and who doesn't. It's hard to imagine a more clarifying moment.

Trump’s inauguration speech was entirely about what a shithole America has become, and yet none of his supporters considered that anti-American. The point isn’t the criticism but who gets to criticize.