TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT THE NEW MERCH - UPDATED

Take a good look. You’re going to be seeing this often. On a lot of stuff.

This isn’t a photograph; it’s a Rorschach blot. It’s what the viewer sees, and that depends on the viewer.

He probably spent every spare minute this week in front of the bathroom mirror, practicing that look.

And he did more than he thought he did, because it reveals a lot of truth about him, and not necessarily the truth he wants you to think it does.

Yes, there’s all the malevolence. And the mendacity. And the truculence. The glower of a lifetime career juvenile delinquent.

There’s also the look of the looser who spent his life with his nose pressed against the glass, waiting for his betters to take notice of him and allow him inside. Something that never did happen and never will.

There’s the look of the bully. Just before he gets kicked between the legs so hard he goes down screaming a ball, done in by what he thought was his latest victim.

There’s the look of anger over the humiliation of being forced to submit to this processs. Humiliation has always been the thing he has feared the most, all his life.

That’s because humiliation was the only thing he ever got from his father, who treated him far worse than he has ever treated either of his sons, who grew up knowing every day what humiliation is.

And yes, it is the look of the anti-Christ.

It is the look of the worst person to ever live in this country in all the years since the first colonists of the first colony set foot on the continent.

No other person who has ever occupied the office he besmirched with his presence has ever looked at the world this way.

It’s the look of every lifetime loser, every failure, who has known in his heart that five minutes after he’s gone, people will say “who?” at the mention of their name. Known that truth and been unable to face it.

It’s the look of a paper tiger. A physical coward who would turn and run if you raised your fist to him.

It’s the look of a scared little boy who would turn and run screaming for mommy if he saw you look back at him with the same look.

It’s manufactured. It’s a product. The goal is to make you think he’s the tough guy he thinks that look identifies him as.

It’s the look of a man who has been a failure since he first took breath.

It’s the look that will launch a million email appeals to the morons who think he’s the thing he playacts here at being, to send him their money. The only thing about any of them that has ever mattered to him.

It’s the look of a worthless piece of shit.

UPDATE: This is what Jonathan V. Last says about the shot, and he’s very right:

Trump’s mugshot is excellent. I would guess that he had a duplicate setup to run tests on. His makeup is exactly suited to the light and camera. His hair is teased differently than normal to provide some overhang. The jaw-jut and downward tilt of the head hide his jowls. Combine those affects with his slight turn to the left (notice that his is the only photo in which you cannot clearly see both ears) and it gives his pose a vague sense of motion, as though he is moving forward, towards the camera and into a glorious future filled with retribution, perfect phone calls, and #winning.

He took a low point in American history and turned it into an iconic triumph because he understands media and is biologically incapable of feeling shame.

Those powers make him a host unto himself and this mugshot is a warning to all of us.

We underestimate Trump at our peril.

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