Donald Trump was supposed to be humiliated by his mugshot.

That he wasn’t is bugging the hell out of them.

What idiots. That was my first thought when I read this insanely stupid article in The Atlantic. The obsession with “getting” Trump has driven the Left insane in a way that few things in memory have. They despise Trump–that is something I can easily understand as he represents a rejection of everything they hold dear–but they simply are incapable of understanding him or his appeal to people.

Mug shots are typically exercises in enforced humility. Trump treated his mug shot as our menace, @megangarber writes: https://t.co/f6rKPq6eP8

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) August 28, 2023

The author of this unintentionally humorous article is Megan Garber, a staff writer at The Atlantic. I have a love/hate relationship with the magazine. It features well-researched and well-written articles that often completely miss the point, and occasionally hit it.

This one missed it by a mile.

Last night, the 45th president became inmate number P01135809 of Georgia’s Fulton County Jail. Trump had his mug shot taken. It was shared with the public. We looked, of course. And he was prepared for our gaze: hair, makeup, angle, pose. In the portrait—it is a portrait, in the end—Trump glares directly into the camera. He seethes. He glowers. He turns in a studied performance. Photos like this are typically exercises in enforced humility. Trump’s is a display of ongoing power. He treats his mug shot as our menace.

The public imagined the picture long before we actually saw it, spending months before yesterday discussing and anticipating it. The preemptive attention was fueled by the fact that the first president to be indicted has also been indicted, at this point, four times. Each new legal proceeding has inspired more talk of the image: Would there be a mug shot? What would it look like? What would it feel like, to see it? The Fulton County sheriff promised that his office would do its part to provide the answers. “We’ll have a mug shot ready for you,” he said, like a paparazzo making his assurances to TMZ.

The Left has long wanted this mugshot. They imagined it would become their talisman, an object imbued with magic powers to destroy their nemesis, Donald Trump.

That could never have been the case. Trump wears his persecution by the Left as a badge of honor, and with reason. While I think it is entirely likely that the legal cases against Trump will eventually prove his undoing–the Georgia case, in particular, presents a clear and present danger to his actual freedom–the prosecutions and persecutions themselves imbue him with a superpower for his supporters and indeed most Republicans.

Republicans all feel persecuted by the Establishment because we are. Not to the extent that Trump is, but it is clear that lawfare is being used against every Republican with the courage to stand up and be counted.

Catholic? You are a potential terrorist.

Pro-life? The FBI could show up at your door.

Skeptical of masks? Prepare to be canceled.

Think that porn doesn’t belong in schools. You are a bigot and should be fired.

Trump, for all his flaws, represents all of us in our battle against the swamp. I personally don’t think he is equipped to fight it effectively, nor do I think he is likely to be our best candidate for the presidency.

But I don’t believe his mugshot should have been humiliating. Humiliation is what the Left wants us to feel. We are to become dispirited and accept defeat. The mugshot has the opposite effect. It reminds us that we are in a cultural battle where one side or the other will win, and I for one refuse to give up.

Garber unintentionally reveals her deepest desires in her admission that she thinks of mugshots as exercises in humiliation. In fact, they are intended to allow police to identify arrestees. This is why mugshots were unnecessary for any of these arrests. Trump is the most recognizable human being on Earth. A mugshot is redundant.

Not for Garber. Because for her the mugshot was never about proper processes; it was about vindication of her prejudices.

Even as Trump was held to account, then—even as he was, in theory, brought low—he was elevated. Last night, as so many times before, viewers’ gazes were directed Trump-ward. Medusa’s curse is also the curse of anyone in her path: Whatever the consequences, she compels us to look.

In the process, though, the event that should have been a show of accountability for Trump became an act of concession to him. The typical mug shot, usually taken after the subject’s unexpected arrest, bestows its power on the people on the other end of the camera. The alleged criminal, in it, tends to be disheveled, displaced, small. But Trump, trailed by the news cameras that confer his ubiquity, found a way to turn the moment’s historical meaning—a former president, mug-shotted—into one more opportunity for brand building.

This was true for the entire Left. They need to humiliate Red America, and it infuriates them that we refuse to be embarrassed.

After all, it’s not us who is pushing porn in schools, insisting that men undress in front of women, promoting drag queen story hours, or putting crossdressing luggage thieves in charge of our nuclear waste. A decade or two from now everybody in America will recoil in horror at this moment, although they will likely forgive and forget as they have with mandatory masking.

We have nothing to be embarrassed about compared to Democrats. Which is why Trump’s mugshot has literally become a mug shot.