If you think about it, the chant was more wretched even than Trump’s own despicable attacks against Omar and her cohorts. At least Trump was merely urging Omar and her colleagues to leave of their own accord. The North Carolina crowd sounded thirsty for them to be thrown onto a trans-Atlantic barge in a sack.

In another way, however, the chants of “Send her back” and those of “Lock her up” are two sides of the same coin. Both are acts of deliberate transgression against what many Trump supporters have come to view as the supposedly stifling ethics of our cultural elites. But while such transgression may have started, in the minds of some, as a way of pushing back for unpopular truths, it is increasingly clear that many on the right these days just enjoy the transgression for the perverse pleasure of it. If “Send her back” is what’s going to send those damn media types into a tizzy, you can bet that’s what they’re going to chant.

The danger here—besides the obvious repulsiveness of the chant itself—is that this accelerating culture of political transgression is like a ratchet that can only turn one way. For a critical mass of conservatives, it is a sign that a given act is actually praiseworthy and brave if it draws condemnation from the despised left-wing media. “Send her back” is a chant that might make some cringe today—but once it’s been digested by the media cycle and the battle lines drawn, and it’s been repeated at rally after rally, it will become, in the minds of Trump’s fans, just another handy weapon for triggering the pearl-clutching libs.