I Bet James Dolan Wishes He Could Put People In Prison For Insulting Him

Enes Kanters, a New York Knicks player last seen tugging on Superman’s cape, has had an arrest warrant out against him since this summer. Kanter is a Turkish national and, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is part of a terrorist organization because he supports a rival leader.

Today, we learned that prosecutors in Turkey are seeking four years in prison for Kanter, for the crime of “insulting the President.”

Now, as an American legal commentator, this is the time in the article where I’m supposed to laud America’s “freedom” and make love to a flag while a bald eagle caws triumphantly in the background. But I’m not here for that life. I’m not inclined to give America the benefit of the doubt. America is trending towards the kind of authoritarian-with-populist-support rule you see in Turkey much more than it’s trending towards freedom and justice.

We’re pretty far away from somebody putting me in jail for insulting the president, but that’s mainly because the president such a pathetic creature that you’d need an army to round up all the people who insult him daily. Trump would absolutely jail me for insulting him if he could. And I imagine most Republicans would go along with it, so long as their donors found some profit in it.

You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel warm and fuzzy just because the current American president is too incompetent of a despot to effectively crush me.

A more likely problem is revealed when you look at what the Kanter arrest-warrant is actually for. Kanter supports a U.S. based cleric named Fethullah Gulen, Erdogan has labeled that guy, and his supporters, “terrorists.” And it’s that form of crushing political dissent that is most likely to happen here. Already, you probably have 35% of white people who think #BlackLivesMatter is a “terrorist” organization. It’s not hard to imagine a political rival to Trump being so-labeled by Trump and the F.B.I. Especially if this mythical rival was actually willing to challenge Trump and his base, as opposed to what the Democrats do which is to merely try co-opt Trump’s base.

Enes Kanter says he’s going to try to become an American citizen. I think that’s a mistake. Canada’s right there. Why trade allegiance to one despot for allegiance to a fledgling one? At some point, Americans need to realize what we’ve become.

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.