They’ve been coming for women, minorities, and immigrants, so you just knew they get around to college professors as enemies of the state. A group called “Turning Point USA” has created the Professor Watch List, which includes a list to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom (doesn’t that sound lovely and vaguely familiar?), and also includes a form to turn in suspected leftists. It’s like a McCarthyite wet dream.

One problem: I’m not on the list. In fact, nobody at Morris is on the list. I fear our problem is that we’re such a little sanctuary of progressive thought that we’ve got a shortage of far right wing rats. I must make my case for being included on the list.

• I know there are acolytes of Turning Point USA on campus because someone around here keeps putting up their stupid pro-capitalism posters

  and their idiotic pamphlets. Did you know college professors want to challenge your beliefs and make you question the existence of God? That sounds exactly like me. Also, I scowl and roll my eyes every time I pass one of their inane BIG GOVERNMENT SUCKS posters. That’s got to be at least a misdemeanor in the TPUSA world.

• I wrote a post saying the Morris North Star, the alt-right rag, ought to be thrown off campus for its disgusting racism: clearly, I’m totally against free speech.

• The Morris North Star has already threatened to sue me. They had the police pick me up and read me my Miranda rights, so we’re already well on our way to their dream police state.

• My perfidy was written up on a Christian news site, and Todd Starnes put me Fox News. See? Their propaganda organs already hate me!

Look at that. I didn’t even have to get into the Cracker Incident.

I hope this omission can be corrected rapidly. If I am listed, I can also rat out virtually all of my colleagues, too, who are all raging liberals (OK, with a few exceptions). I’d like to see my university more prominently acknowledged on a right-wing enemies list.

It’s definitely winter up here in the upper Midwest. The temperature is right around freezing, there’s at least 15cm of snow on the ground, and the roads and sidewalks are slick with hard-packed ice. And they’re using water cannons on protesters at Standing Rock.

This is not just cruel — it’s dangerous. I’m sure residents of the Dakotas are just as conscious of the risks of getting wet outside in frigid weather as we are here in the slightly more urban state of Minnesota. You just don’t do that. You can kill people in this weather.

And of course they’re using rubber bullets and tear gas, and roughing up protesters and throwing them in dog kennels.

She told me that they were arrested at a prayer ceremony lead by camp elders, and that she had been slammed to the ground by uniformed officers with shields and helmets that kept her from distinguishing whether they were law enforcement or national guard.

“It was three against one, that’s their strategy,” she said, “there’s tear gas in the air everywhere. They didn’t fire it directly at me, but it’s everywhere.”

I was told that when they were arrested, they weren’t read their rights until after they spent a day in jail.

Her description of the arrest matched my student’s description. She told me they were bussed to a facility where they were kept in dog cages with urine stains on the floor, pictures of dogs hung on the walls. Women were separated from men with chain link fencing and a tarp.

They said their phones and money were confiscated, the money seized and turned into procurement cards and calling cards, allegedly without consent. The balance was not returned upon release, she said.

The state of the jail uniforms made the women feel vulnerable, she said, and the tarp separating the women from the view of the camp’s men exacerbated that feeling. She went on to tell me they were strip-searched.

“It was just turn your head and cough, just spread your cheeks and cough, but they didn’t tell us what they were going to, so when the woman approached me with rubber gloves on, I braced for a body cavity search. It’s worse not knowing, you know?”

America! This is what we’re like before the orange fascist takes power. What’s it going to be like next year?

You can still donate to the Standing Rock Sioux, and they’re going to need it. It takes courage and dedication to confront this kind of oppression.