The Duke boys, James Dean, Jesse James, Josey Wales...Donald J. Trump.
The United States of America is an interesting creature. Despite it being a cultural melting pot, the one thing that's baked into its core is a sense of rebellion. Americans love an outlaw. They're so romanticized in our culture that we make movies and write books about them, and boy do they sell.
Some of the most popular characters in our media are based on the swaggering rebel fighting the good fight against a bad system. Han Solo, Michael Corleone, Tyler Durden, and even lighter characters like Ferris Bueller and Ren MacCormack all play to America's love of the man operating by his own rules, outside the bounds of the system.
So one has to wonder if the left has so completely lost touch with the American people that it didn't think about this very basic cultural standard when putting Trump up against a wall and taking his picture at a jailhouse.
As Bob Hoge wrote on Thursday evening, the Democrats had been salivating for Trump's mugshot, and they finally got it.
But do you know who wanted that mugshot even more than the left? The right, specifically Trump supporters. Because they knew what would happen the moment it was released.
And it did happen.
The photo became more than a photo, it became a rallying cry. People began posting it left and right, with the vast majority of them using it to speak out against an unjust, weaponized system utilized by elites to keep themselves in power.
The left thought the photo would be the closest they could get to having Trump's scalp, but instead, it became a symbol of their corruption and their fear.
And why wouldn't it? Even people out there who don't want to vote for Trump can admit that the witch hunt against him is wildly unfair and based on little more than political and ideological hatred. The abuse of America's justice system is egregious whether you hate Trump or not.
He is outside the system according to the system, and the system shows it by treating him like another. Someone who should be silenced and jailed at all costs.
What about that wouldn't make him appealing to a very large swath of Americans? Especially as the people who control the system, the Democrats, continue to mishandle everything from the economy to the border, and everything in between. With this photo, they pointed at Trump and with the loudest bullhorn they could find said "Here is the outlaw Donald Trump, the greatest threat to our system."
People are already putting this photo on t-shirts. I imagine wanted posters will start popping up soon if they haven't already. You're going to see this picture on stickers posted on light poles, storefront windows, car bumpers, and all over the DNC convention.
They made Trump into a symbol, and symbols are way harder to bring down than a person.
If anything, this proves the left has lost touch with America and fundamentally misunderstands it. Like any authoritarian, they hate rebellion, and maybe that's why they felt good about putting Trump into the "rebel" category. They really thought they were sticking it to him doing it, but instead, they just created a rallying point.
I can't clap slowly enough.