I think Nixon's historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so.
If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hours news story. The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.
J. D. Vance.
Vance is probably correct. Watergate wouldn't have taken down Nixon today.
Watergate was inexcusable. Nixon should not have been pardoned. He should have been tried, convicted, and served jail time. That failure, combined with the failure to push traitorous Southerners after the Civil War, have helped give us Donald Trump.
What Nixon did give us was Jimmy Carter. Ford couldn't survive his association with Nixon and inflation. Carter was not a good President, but he was a decent man. That meant a lot.
And, and James Donald Bowman, James David Hamel, James David Vance, JD Vance should remember this. While Carter as a one term President, the then youthful Democratic Party swept into power in that election and reset the country's middle meter to the left. It remained there for decades. Right now Republicans are pointing towards New York and saying "look, the Democrats are commies!" Well, the swing to the left and the right wing histrionics about it were exactly what occurred in the 1973 time frame, brought about by the corruption of Nixon, the Vietnam War, and economic distress.
A failed war. A failed economy. And corruption.
Sound familiar Republicans?
2. They actually feel Trump is a prophet
There's a reason why Donald Trump is still here. God's will is that his work is not done. By the way, our president knows that.
House majority whip Tom Emmer.
Hitler survived 42 known assassination attempts.
Nobody knows the mind of God. As I earlier noted here, Donald may be our Attila, whom early Medieval Christians regarded as the "Scourge of God", Flagellum Dei. Medieval Christians, whom Protestants latter slandered as being ignorant, were clear eyed enough to attribute Attila with being allowed to proceed in destruction as a punishment for their sins. If Trump's luck with surviving assassination attempts has been due to the divine, given that he's a completely unGodly man, that possibility should be at least considered.
But beyond that, and this is truly scary, the far right Evangelical branch of American Protestantism is actually treading upon what essentially amounts to a new fringe religion, something that is well within the country's historical culture. The 19th Century was full of them, with a collection of religions that proclaimed themselves founded on the teachings of Christ but lead by a new latter day prophet whose message departed from the Christian gospel. In the 20th Century we've seen a few more.
A new book by journalist of the New York Times holds that those in Trump's cabinet believe that he's endowed with nearly an otherworldly foresight and is always right in spite of all the evidence that he's demented and was never very smart. Like Communists in the mid 20th Century, they'll excuse any failure as temporary or a simple misunderstanding. Molotov even excused Stalin's imprisoning his won wife. Hardcore Communist, we might note, have a similar mindset to radical false religious prophets, and their adherents do as well.
Normally the further these movements go, and the longer they last, the more disastrous the fall.
This election has been a reminder about being careful about getting tattoos.
Maine Democratic Senatorial candidate Graham Platner, in addition to other skeletons (no pun intended) in his closet, has, or at least had, a large Death's Head tattoo on one of his breasts. Not one like the one above, but one more or less like this:
Shown here:
Well, I say, had, now its this:
We're informed that's a Celtic knot and a dog.
Well, anyhow, this has caused quite a flap, as the design he had is pretty clearly the same one used by the SS during World War Two.
He says he didn't know that. Frankly, while people are incredulous about that, he may very well not have known that.
Indeed, one of the things that's interesting about this, as an (amateur) historian is that suddenly everyone is an expert on World War Two German insignia. I doubt that many people, anymore, were before the last couple of weeks. Indeed, I can recall Walmart getting in trouble some years ago has had a t-shirt it was selling with some Nazi symbology on it, if I recall correctly SS ruins.
Anyhow, the Totenkopf has an interesting and weird history. It's been around for a very long time, and is famously associated with pirates from the 18th Century, who flew various variants of death's head flags, nicknamed the "Jolly Roger", to warn a ship they were approaching that that's what they were. Death's head on a flag threatened death, and the hope was accordingly that the opponent would give up without a fight. Because of the pirate association, legitimate navies coopted the symbol and you can still find it in use to some degree in navies.
The crew of the HMS Utmost showing off their Jolly Roger in February 1942.
The Prussians started using it as a military symbol under Frederick the Great, when it was introduced to hussars. That use was distinct enough that one US state militia unit, formed as hussars, was still using it with a distinctly Prussian style uniform at the start of the Civil War. It also spread to other units in the various German states prior to German unification, and to some other European nations. One Spanish unit, for example used it.
Field Marshall August von Mackensen in 1914 in his full dress hussars uniform.
Infante Fernando wearing the uniform of Spain's 8th Light Armoured Cavalry Regiment "Lusitania" in 1915
After German unification following the Franco Prussian War the pre unification units that used it continued to, with some German units and even individuals adopting it informally. After the German defeat in the Great War, some Freikorps units used it and it carried on in use in German cavalry units.
After Hitler's rise to power, the SS co-opted it almost immediately at the time of their formation, but that didn't actually cause the German Army or the Luftwaffe from using it as well. German panzer troops wore a black uniform with the Totenkopf early on, with the design aat first being identical to the SS in that regard. The SS later changed its design, which Heer panzer units never did.
German panzer soldier, wearing a 1939 black flat cap, with a feldgrau shirt, black tie and black jacket with Totenkopf lapel badge. The first version of the panzer uniform featured a very large black beret.
This actually created some confusion at the time and still does, although the confusion was more of a problem to German troops during the war. By 1944 the Totenkopf was associated with the SS as was the color black, which actually was not worn by most Waffen SS troops. Tanker POWs were easily mistaken for members of the SS and risked being shot out of hand to some degree. By 44, however, black was being phased out for tankers, both in the Heer and SS, in favor of feldgrau. They retained the Totenkopf, however.
As sort of a rough rule of thumb, every member of the SS wore a uniform with a Totenkopf device, including auxiliary units. Armored units of the Heer wore it also, as did the one oddball Luftwaffe armored unit. One Luftwaffe bomber unit used it as a symbol as well. Black uniforms were worn by tankers of all branches early on, and as regular SS dress uniforms, but not as Waffen SS dress uniforms.
This doesn't get into the concentration camp system uniforms, which I don't know anything about, and which were often staffed by auxiliaries. They all wore the deaths head, however.
One Nazi organization that didn't wear the Totenkopf or a black uniform was the Gestapo. Movies and television shows constantly show them doing that, but they didn't. For example, an SS dress uniform is shown being worn by a Gestapo member in both Where Eagles Dare and Hogan's Heroes. In reality, the Gestapo didn't have any uniform at all. The depiction given in Von Ryan's Express is the correct one. They favored civilian dress clothes and trench coats, often leather ones. They were, after all, secret police and were dressed like civilians.
Marine Corps Raiders' insignia.
One US ground unit used it too, the Marine Corps Raiders, which took it from Naval use.
By the war's end the death's head, except in naval use, was hopelessly associated with the SS, although amazingly some use continues on. The South Korean 3rd Infantry Division, the British Army’s Royal Lancers and Brazilian Military Police use it officially. Some Ukrainian units controversially use it which seems to be an intentional effort to associate themselves with the World War Two era Ukrainian National Army which fought both the USSR and the Germans, but the Germans rather late.
Various navies keep using it, but the Nazis didn't taint the pirate association it had on the seas.
One place it oddly saw use was in civilian groups that wanted to cultivate an edge look after the war. All sort of Nazi paraphernalia became associated with motorcycle gangs. And heavy metal bands affected the look as well.
Ian Fraser Kilmister, "Lemmy" of Motörhead who notoriously sported German military and German SS paraphernalia constantly, and who did know what it meant. He claimed to have no Nazi sympathies. His father had been a chaplain in the RAF.
The interesting thing there, I suppose, is that the predecessor to the SS was the SA. The SA didn't use the Totenkopf, but it was comprised of thugs, so in a way the Nazi paraphernalia returned to a demographic that had first used it.
So, what of Platner?
Darned if I know. He says he didn't know what it meant, and I suspect a lot of Americans under 70 years of age don't know what it means. World War Two is simply too long ago for a uniform detail to have much in the cultural memory. Those younger people who do know what it was used for are likely students of history, members of prison gangs, or white supremacists. History students don't get tattooed with the Totenkopf. The other two groups likely do. That doesn't mean that Platner was a white supremacist, however.
It does require some sort of explanation, however.
While on the topic of the tattoos, let's discuss Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense.
Pete Hegseth is festooned with tattoos.
Pete has a variety of them, which seem to be the following:
Jerusalem Cross, a type4 of Christian cross associated with the Crusades, rightly or wrongly.
"Deus Vult", Latin for "God wills it", a phrase claimed to be associated with the Crusaders.
Kafir, the Arabic for infidel, but also Afrikaans slang for blacks.
Cross & Sword, apparently referencing Matthew 10:34
Yahweh, the Hebrew lettering for the name of God, added near his cross and sword tattoo.
"We the People", The opening phrase of the U.S. Constitution.
American Flag & AR-15.
Roman numerals (1775) & Stars: The year the U.S. Army and the Revolutionary War began.
"Join, or Die" Snake, the Benjamin Franklin cartoon depicting a severed snake, symbolizing colonial unity during the American Revolution.
Infantry Patch.
It's really a bit much. Hegseth is an example of how people become addicted to getting tattoos and won't stop.
So what of it?
Well, the top two tattoos are offensive to some Catholics, myself included. Hegseth is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, he has stated., which is a collection of Evangelical Churches. The Crusades are a Catholic thing, grossly misunderstood, and for which Catholics have taken heat from Protestants for five hundred years. Moreover, the Crusaders would have regarded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches as heretical.
"Kafir" is a flat out weird thing to tattoo on yourself, and for Sub-Saharan Africans its highly offensive, being the Afrikaans equivalent of the n word. I suppose its supposed to be a taunt at Muslims.
Tattooing Yahweh on yourself is just weird, and potentially offensive to Jews, as well as others. Leviticus 19:28 prohibits tattoos themselves, although this is not regarded by most Christians as applicable to Christians and many modern day Jews do not follow that as well.
The point here is this. Tattooing the Totenkopf on your chest is bound to be offensive to the historically aware. Tattooing Crusader phrases on your body is no doubt offensive to Muslims, although I'm not particularly concerned about that, but it's a cultural appropriation that is offensive to some historically aware Catholics. Kafir, as a tattoo, is outright calculated to be offensive to Muslims, and it's highly offensive to Sub Saharan Africans. And the Yahweh tattoo is disturbing.
I suppose the lesson is to be careful about tattoos. Hegseth is so tatted up its frankly absurd, but he comes across as disturbed. Platner comes across as just sort of messed up.
Of course, you don't get to vote for or against Hegseth, no matter where you live. Your view of him has to weigh into your view of the administration. If you live in Maine, you can weigh the tattoo in your opinion on whether to vote for him or the ancient Susan Collins.
Showing the spirit our age, I suppose, Donald Trump called Platner a pig. Pigs have a highly hierarchal pecking order, so I suppose that's the big pig reacting to a younger one in the pen, if you accept the analogy.
And a happy ending, or at least an ending, occurred to this story when the Pentagon redid its classifications to read as follows:
It's actually not a bad reclassification, although a person does hae to wonder why, in order to make a non Christian religion happy, the Christian identification was taken away from actual Christian religions.
One of the major newspapers ran statistics for the various religions in terms of the what percentage of the military is comprised of them. While there are Mormons in the military, the percentage is infanticidally small. As noted earlier, however, there would be units in the military that would be heavily made up of Mormons, principally Guard and Reserve units in Utah. Their spiritual needs would be different than those of Christian religions, however, which would gain importance in a large scale war.
According to exit polls form the last general election, 64% of Mormons voted for Trump in the last election. 20% voted for Harris. 56% of Catholics did, with 41% voting for Harris. Catholics are a much larger demographic than Mormons and Trump has interestingly shown little concern about enormously offending them. 68% of Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant religion in the country, went for Trump. Southern Baptist, I suspect, are probably the largest Christian denomination to be upset by the reclassification, if they are.
I don't know that I have a strong opinion on the list being reworked to address Mormon concerns, but I would note a couple of oddities about it. One is that that the U.S. Government didn't define them as Christian, although they seem happy with the result. The second is that what Trump may say aside, he doesn't love Mormons anymore than he loves anyone else.
The big flap over the Pentagon's new list of religions, mostly focused on the LDS insisting it be recognized as a Christian religions which at least conventional Christianity holds that it is not, is obscuring the fact that frankly the list may not matter all that much.
All the list does is to provide some guidelines on anticipating the patrol needs of troops. T/he prior list was so large there was no way that it was useful. The original list, Protestant, Catholic and Hebrew, was probably too narrow, in the modern world, to be useful.
Arguably the current list is too big. It'd make more sense, actually, to have Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Judaism, Islam and Other. Every one of those categories, it might be noted, has various groups within it. Probably only Catholic expresses a singular religious group, but even there, there are a lot of Catholic rites. The Orthodox are a collection of Orthodox churches and have a major division between Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox.
Anyhow, that's probably more useful.
Of note, listing religions isn't an endorsement of them.
About 70% of all service members are some sort of Protestant. 20% are Catholic. I've given the figures already, but the number of LDS troops is very small, although in National Guard units from Utah the opposite would be true. At least one religion on the list discourages its members from joining the military and last had any presence in the military when there was conscription in place.
So, in our last installment of this, we sort of defended Pete Hegseth's Department of Defense. But we have to ask, is there more to this story?
Probably not. The classification is correct. Mormons are in fact not Christians in the fashion that Christians would define the faith. Mormons of course disagree, which is there right.
Under new military guidance from Pete Hegseth, the LDS Church is officially classified as a non-Christian religion.
My fellow Saints, you can love these Christian nationalists all you want, but they will not love you back.
"Dem Saints" is a really good and irreverent group made up of Mormon Democrats.
Yes, there are Mormon Democrats.
Branding their irreverence is the use of the "Dem Saints" name, which is really borrowing from Louisiana Catholics, whom minstrels' lampooned with the line "Who dat, who dat, who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?" In the second half of the 20th Century it got picked up as a line boosting the New Orleans Saints football club.
That there are Democratic Mormons shouldn't be surprising. In most regions of the country they are actually a little known faith, but where they are strongly represented they are in all walks of life and all stations of education. Most Mormons are fairly conservative of a rule, but in no way shape or form does that mean they're all part of the far right. "Dem Saints" are probably what used to be regarded as middle of the road Republicans in the West. Of those I know fairly well, all are in the GOP but none of them are in the far right.
Dem Saints aren't the only ones taking note of this. Deseret Mike Lee, whose radical right wing political positions are highly informed by his being a devout Mormon is absolutely freaking out, noting:
I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
My church membership is inextricably intertwined with my Christianity, as it is for 17 million other Latter-day Saints
Regardless of what the Pentagon thinks
Lee has absolutely hitched his wagon to Donald Trump. I've written about him here before, but his views are radially different than Dem Saints, and probably for the most part radically different in terms of religious views. We've discussed Mike Lee in that context before, and won't replough that ground, but a good guess is that Lee, like Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth, is highly informed and often extremely motivated by a unique religious view of the United States and its mission, as he conceives of it. He'd fit into a minority group of Mormon's in that sense, just as Hegseth and Johnson do as to Christians. The difference here is that his view, if I'm correct, and I may not be, would be vastly different than the overwhelming majority of Americans, and probably the majority of Mormons.
Hegseth in particular has been the public face of the New Apostolic Reformation and there's no place for Mormons in it. For that matter, there's no place for Catholics or Orthodox in it either.
The question is whether Deseret Mike is too besotted with Trump to realize that. Based on his surprise to this reclassification, which likely isn't motivated by people like Hegseth viewing Mormons as really not counting, it would appear so.
Lee just totally freaked out and posted over 37 time over 24 hours on Twitter. Eventually he got an audience with Trump on the telephone, and reported back.
I just got off the phone with President Trump
We discussed the Pentagon’s “Christian list”
I won’t speak for him, but I’m thrilled about where this is heading
We’re most fortunate that President Trump (1) loves Latter-day Saints, and (2) is our commander in chief
Stay tuned
Based on that, Trump will probably issue some babbling change to the list, but the wake up call should already be there.
Trump isn't a religious man. Trump loves himself and at this point Mormon's don't really matter to him most likely. He shouldn't presume that Trump "loves Latter-day Saints" or members of any other religion. And we're not fortunate that he's the commander in chief. If he's going to order the list changed, it's to gain a little support from a group right now that's likely shocked, and frankly to address a situation in a state, Utah, that has shown a surprising willingness at the grass roots level to rebel.
But now Lee is out there. If his shameless sycophantly doesn't pay off, it's a lesson for people who think that Trump is carrying water for you. He isn't, you are carrying water for him.
And in terms of the back channels in the administration, it's the view of Doug Wilson on what sort of religion the Latter Day Saints is that may matter more than what Trump thinks, who doesn't really have any deep thoughts about religion at all.
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