Mutilating Your Face For Big Daddy Dictator

I was working on a BFT piece about a more democracy-friendly ways to interpret the First Amendment – a piece I'll publish Wednesday or Thursday, depending on my children's various spring break activities – when I came across a picture of Wayne Gretzky.

The photo of the hockey legend alongside the Putin-adoring Alex Ovechkin after Ovechkin broke Gretzky's NHL goals record struck me not for Ovechkin appearing to be 70 years old, but for Gretzky, 64, looking a lot like the Joker.

Gretzky, as you may or may not know, is a big Trump guy, and like a lot of Trump guys, he has altered his face to try to look like he did at the start of the second Reagan administration. Gretzky is not alone: Every Hollywood star whose movies you loved as a child now look like an absolute freak, like a perverse version of themselves that might exist in the nightmare of a pop culture-obsessed millennial. I nearly fainted when I saw Tom Cruise's pre-Super Bowl commercial.

Anyway, Gretzky's fucked up face made me think of all the fascists who have fucked up their faces over the past decade. Why would they do this? The answer is straightforward, one you likely already know: To please Donald Trump.

Ridding Ourselves Of The Little Fascist Within

In these times of creeping societal decay we should do what we can to see ourselves in the light of day and ask why we might accidentally align with the values of a fascist movement we vehemently oppose.

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

Mar-a-lago Face is a real thing. Countless Trump sycophants have changed their faces to maybe, just maybe, gain the approval of a man who covers himself in orange paint and commits to the most complex combover in history in order to sorta look like he did in the 80s. The Mar-a-lago look is so harsh and inhuman, matching perfectly with their politics. They hate themselves, they hate the way they look, and they will do anything to gain acceptance and perhaps a facsimile of love from America's first dictator. I'm not going to list all the Trump adorers who have butchered their face in service of the Big Boy. You can look it up. Watch Kristi Noem as she slowly morphs into Trump's female ideal circa 1987. Watch her beg for his attention with every fascist social media post. She wants it. She needs it. You can tell even through her frozen face. Love me, she's crying out. I'll do anything, even rearrange my face, even become a different person.

All of these MAGA freaks are loveless; they are not loved, they have never loved, and they have given up on being human. They have instead folded themselves within the cult of personality driving the end of representative democracy – a wide-ranging initiative that takes the form of one long TV show.

Aesthetics is a big part of fascism. Looking a certain way has always been at the beating heart of fascist movements. It doesn't matter that every high-ranking nazi was the ugliest motherfucker you've ever seen. The ideal of the square-jaw, tall, muscular, blonde German Übermensch was what drove those people, what shaped their ugly view of the world and who belonged in it (and who did not). I wrote in May 2024 about the fascist obsession with aesthetics if you're into that sort of thing.

When you see these surgically altered faces on your timeline or your TV, know that these nightmare alterations were done for one man. And when he's gone and this moment has mercifully passed, their faces will remain fixed for the greatest enemy the nation has ever known.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.