A year ago this week there were these lofty dreams and ambitions espoused by the MAGA propaganda-industrial complex of a total reordering of so much of so many aspects of American culture – that entertainment would become more conservative-friendly, that more people would go to church but only the ones where you learn how to hate others, that maybe with just a tiny bit more nudging it’d become socially acceptable for white people to use the n-word again, and so on.

Now it’s 2025 and sure, America is certainly far more of a miserable dystopian shithole than it would’ve been had Kamala Harris won the 2024 election, however it’s not like Sound of Freedom II is ruling the box office either. Sound of Freedom II hasn’t even been produced and likely won’t be.

Still, some sectors have been indeed been almost wholly remade in the image of Caligulan corruption and decadence, few more so than crypto and – as Axios reports – plastic surgery, where the “Mar-a-Lago face” is now all the rage. DC-based practitioners tell the bullet-point factory that, in contrast to past eras in which subtlety was the main ingredient, making the work obvious is a big part of the fun, to hell with all pretenses of modesty – and safety for that matter.

Dr Anita Kulkarni tells Axios she’s had to turn down some business from “patients” that wanted to flaunt the work and did not care that there could be some adverse health effects. Other facial sculptor Troy Pittman says he’s “seeing people who want to look like they had something done.”

Could probably go on for quite a while about how goddamn on-brand this is for the MAGA wealthy.