What MAGA Sees When They See Me

The other day, I was strutting through the mall like it was my personal runway, operating under the firm belief that I was a deliciously hot Latino man. 

In my head, I was the love child of Bad Bunny, Pedro Pascal, and Oscar Isaac—too sexy for these clearance-rack threads. I’m talking slow-motion walk, imaginary wind machine, soundtrack playing sensual salsa, the whole production.

And then… tragedy.

I casually turned my head and accidentally locked eyes with a wall-length mirror I hadn’t noticed before. There was no dramatic lighting. No cinematic filter. Just brutal, fluorescent honesty.

Staring back at me was not a spicy triple-threat heartthrob. No, it was a slightly winded, mildly graying, gently doughy Latino abuelo doing what can only be described as a determined waddle past Foot Locker.

In that moment, the fantasy shattered. 

Bad Bunny left the building. Pedro packed up. Oscar clocked out. And there I was—prime long gone, but still somehow strutting.

O ye cursed, treacherous mirror that spotlights reality.

Let’s be honest—seconds before that mirror ambushed me, I fully believed I was gliding through that mall, radiating the heat of a spicy Latino. The problem wasn’t that the mirror showed me reality. 

The problem was that I hadn’t properly storyboarded what I wanted to see first. I did not see what I believed.

What We See

We often say, “Seeing is believing.” But I would argue the reverse: “Believing is seeing.”

You can’t just walk up to a mirror without a narrative. You have to pre-construct the image you expect to see. Build the myth.

Otherwise, the mirror takes creative control—and suddenly you’re not the brooding beefcake.

The shock of the mirror was not simply that it revealed an aging, imperfect body. It was that it interrupted the interpretive framework I had established as truth. The discomfort stemmed less from the physical reality itself and more from the sudden collapse of the self-image I had been actively maintaining.

Seeing is more than just the eye capturing light waves, focusing them through the cornea and lens, and converting the set image into electrical signals via the retina. To see, to gaze, is pregnant with the power to reinforce what one believes, specifically, what one expects to see by constructing those considered as Other.

Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage” offers a useful framework for understanding this tension. Lacan proposed that identity is not simply discovered in reflection but formed through it—constructed through an imagined coherence that the subject projects onto the image. 

Belief does not passively follow perception; it actively organizes it.

How MAGA Sees

One might extend this analysis to collective forms of identity as well. 

Consider, for instance, how what MAGA believes constructs what they see, specifically how they see themselves. While my construct of self might be humorous, MAGA’s construct of themselves threatens the lives of those of us who stand against MAGA because of all we have seen.

The reflection in the mirror—the ideal “I,” which connotes wholeness—is more than simply a reverse image of the actual self. It serves as a window that allows the one gazing to first voyeuristically define their Other so they can then construct themselves as the negation of their Other. In effect, I am what I am not.

MAGA adherents construct themselves in the mirror as the negation of people like me. This leads me to wonder, then, how MAGA constructs me to define themselves. When they see me, they see me:

As an ‘illegal.’

Ignore the fact that no human being created in the image of God can ever be illegal. I must, nonetheless, be constructed as such because, in their eyes, I am brown (even though my skin pigmentation is quite light) and speak with a funny accent. White supremacy means that all whose ideology falls short are either people of color or traitors to their race.

While some with healthy doses of melanin, like Clarence Thomas or Marco Rubio, may have whitened themselves to fit with those oppressing their people, Latine U.S. citizens like me will always be seen as not belonging until proven otherwise because of what we profess. 

And even then, when MAGA looks in the mirror, they do not see an illegal like me. Hence, they construct themselves as legal, as belonging to this country—but I don’t, regardless of all the decades of taxes I’ve paid.

As an ‘Antifa.’

Ignore the fact that no organization or group called “antifa” exists. In the minds of MAGA, belief in its existence is required to serve as a counterpoint to the very real hate organizations that support Trump, such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Patriot Front, Aryan Freedom Network, Nationalist Social Club, VDARE, or ICE. 

And, as much as MAGA wishes a similar hate group would exist on the left, there simply is no recognized hate organization or group that violently combats Trumpism.So one has to be made up: Antifa. 

Rather than shy away from a term that has been demonized, I am proudly antifa, which means I choose to dedicate my life to speaking against and nonviolently combating fascist tendencies. When MAGA looks in the mirror, they do not see an anti-fascist (antifa) like me. Hence, they construct themselves as “real” Americans.

As a ‘domestic terrorist.’

Ignore the fact that for decades I have advocated nonviolence. To verbally oppose state-sponsored terrorism in the form of ICE raids and the assassination of U.S. citizens, or to peacefully protest heavy-handed ICE tactics, is to be labeled a domestic terrorist. 

Such a construct is necessary because it justifies exterminating the threat by any means necessary— even imprisoning preschool children and toddlers. When MAGA looks in the mirror, they do not see a domestic terrorist like me; what they see is a “true patriot.” By first defining me, they can construct themselves in Lacan’s mirror as the negation of me, believing what they see. 

But alas—MAGA’s patriotic swagger, much like my own mall-conquering strut, turns out to be more of a determined waddle in star-spangled compression socks.  If they were to gaze into the wrong mirror, the heroic glide becomes a shuffle. The triumphant stomp becomes a patriotic scoot.

Swagger, it seems, is a matter of belief. Waddle, however, is a matter of reflection.