Trump was arrested on several charges in Fulton County, Georgia, where he’ll presumably stand trial on eighteen felony counts, including Georgia’s racketeering act, conspiracy to impersonate a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, false statements and writings and filing false documents, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, and more.
As the fallout of Trump’s mugshot rips through the world like the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb, I can’t help but notice some of the peculiar responses we’ve seen.
First, people have been mocking Trump’s height and weight, as memes have circled the globe showing fit, athletic men of about the same height and weight as Trump. These memes imply that Trump looks bad for his measurements or lies about them.
Comparative images of Trump placed next to thinner people make me wonder why we’re body-shaming a seventy-seven-year-old man.
Sure, it may feel good for some people to get their digs in on the former president in whatever way they can. Still, Trump is just one man, and an army of other men might infer from their glib cracks and public scorn that only fit, muscle-bound bros are socially acceptable and that anything else is fair game for mockery.
Trump’s critics should be criticizing Trump’s words and actions — not his shape.
My fellow liberals were so agog that the popular meme site Occupy Democrats allegedly posted a fake mugshot photo to an eager following of awaiting recipients. The moment is eerie, if joyful.
It’s a moment we seem unthinkingly lost in, as if we were in an abyss of deindividuation, losing ourselves in the teeming masses of the hyped-up crowds, even from afar and over cyberspace.
Fakes have been popping up on social media like a game of whack-a-mole. Take this one from Instagram, for instance: