Trump's simply a very bad person, declining into senility. Who is backing him? More labels

A visit by a candidate.

With the primaries just a month away, I was visited at the front door by a politician for the first time.  A local candidate who has run once before.  He's been to the door before, and didn't recall it.

It's interesting in part because he doesn't remember me, pretty clearly, but I know him. He was in my high school graduating class and was one of those guys who was on the periphery of my circle of friends.  Indeed, he was one of those odd very nice people you know that aren't quite within anyone's circle of friends, but almost are, so they're like satellites, sort of.  Something that I recall about him from back then is that he was in amazingly good shape and was the only male gymnast I knew.  He still appears to be in amazingly good shape.

What I also recall about him is that he was one of the very few far right Evangelical Christians that I knew in those days.  Wyoming is the least religious state in the United States and Evangelicalism, as the time, was very rare.  In my actual circle of friends everyone was either Catholic, Mormon, or Mainline Protestant, but I'd also note that the Mainline Protestants were not very observant, if you will.  Or, more properly, they weren't very church going, with some exceptions, of course.

That was typical for Wyoming at the time.

Anyhow, I've had a belly full of the far right in this state and last time anyone campaign related showed up, young people paid, most likely, to distribute WFC propaganda, I gave one of them such a blistering that I could tell he was scared.

He deserved it, punk.

Anyhow, I was nice this time.  Can't be harsh to an old classmate.

On the change here, at this point my old classmate has more company, really  One of the things about the the last large oil boom is it brought in a flood of people. Usually, in the past, when oil booms ended those people went home, which was often home to Texas and Oklahoma. This time lots of them didn't, for a variety of reasons I suspect.  One is that the landing of the economic crash was softer.  Another was that winters have been much warmer.  Winter used to drive a lot of people flat out away.

Anyhow, many of these people were Bible Belt protestants and they often appear not to realize that they're a tiny minority of the world's Christians.  Indeed, not only are they are minority, but they often hold views that in early eras of Christianity would have been regarded as heretical.  Heretics, we might note, were often extremely aggressive about spreading heresy, and often these folks are pretty aggressive about their views, which of course is their right.

One such example shows up in an editorial by Campbell County legislator John Bear.  Bear is a member of the WFC and a member of a tiny Evangelical denomination.  He's a carpetbagger from Missouri.  He wrote an editorial to the Cowboy State Daily complaining that on the county's 4th of July parade his organization, whatever that was, had been precluded from handing out copies of the Constitution and the Bible.  People from up there, in seeing his post, wrote back that 1) the parade was dedicated to the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution or Christianity, 2) that they in fact did pass out New Testaments and copies of the Constitution.

I don't know what actually happened but I'll admit that if I'd been there and somebody handed me out copies of either, and of course I am an Christian, I'd be uneasy.  Partially I'd be uneasy as this group of people have a low regard for the real Constitution and have a view of Christianity that is minoritarian and aggressive.  Their Bibles, additionally, omit part of the Canon of the Bible, and they tend not to even know that.

I also am cautious here as frankly this group gives Christianity a bad name, in my view.  One of their members, since voted out of office, but trying to get back in, asserted during a legislative session that we are not our brother's keeper.  A pastor associated with the movement was one of the primary opponents of the bill to raise the marriage age to something rational, and you couldn't help but feel really uneasy about that.  There's nothing in Christianity that says it's nifty for girls younger than 16 years of age to get married.

On that, I've recently been amused by some editorials, and I'll be vague on them, by the same protestant pastor heaping praise on somebody he probably doesn't know lost his family due to screwing his secretary and then trying to claim that his children understood in a public setting they were at.

They didn't.

Anyhow, the changing religious landscape here has had an impact on politics, and not in a good way, even if I'm glad that people are attending some church.

One regional politician who I'm sure attends not a church, but a stake center, is Deseret Mike Lee.  Lee is a radical right wing populist.  He posts constantly about the SAVE act and stuff like that, but I really wonder how much people really know about him.

John D. Lee.

Lee is a direct descendant of John D. Lee, one of the key figures of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857.  Mike Lee even bears a pretty close resemblance to his ancestor facially.

John D. Lee was a Mormon zealot in the LDS's early days.  He was also a central figure in the early LDS of that day.  He was not just some LDS immigrant to Utah.  We've discussed Mountain Meadows elsewhere, but it was a flat out murderous slaughter in the name of religion of a type that you very rarely actually see.  People often claim that occurs, but reality, it's phenomenally rare.  Here's an actual example.

Lee was eventually charged with murder in 1874.  He was executed at Mountain Meadows for his crimes in 1877.  The LDS have always maintained that they were not responsible for the murders in an organized way.  I.e., they've always maintained that the church didn't sanction or commend the killings to occur.  They may very well not have, and given the factors of time and distance of the 19th Century, they likely did not.  Still, it took two decades for the cries of the murdered to be addressed and there's always been some lingering suspicion that Lee was a scapegoat.  That's more or less the view taken by the Netflix series American Primeval, which while a historical drama doesn't pretend to be strict history.  Brigham Young is portrayed as a really bad guy in it.

John D. Lee nineteen wives and fifty six children, which is flat out absurd. Eleven of Lee's wives left him during the course of their marriages.

One of those fifty six children was John Doyle Lee, born in 1851, before Mountain Meadows.  His mother was Lovina Lee who had married John D. in 1847.  That same year, John D. married Mary Lee, her sister.  Both Lovina and Mary are buried in a the same plot in Arizona, where the John D. family ultimately located.

John Doyle Lee was one of eleven children by two wives. His first wife died at age 31.  He was an Arizona rancher.  One of those children was Rex Lee, who died in 1934 in a hunting accident, leaving his second wife (his first had died) pregnant.  She would name their son Rex Lee.  She would remarry and have three more children.

Rex Lee, the younger, became a prominent Republican politician, lawyer and BYU academic.  He served as United States Solicitor under Ronald Reagan.  Mike Lee, his son, has sort of followed his path in that he's also an academic, lawyer and Republican politician.

Mike Lee, while it's been nearly 150 years since his great, great grandfather's death, appears to have acquired not only his facial appearance, but a certain type of zealotry.

It's hard to say this without instantly being accused of being bigoted.  The truth is, however, that the LDS are a much more diverse religion than people think they are.  Many Mormon "beliefs" aren't canon at all, and are more in the nature of theological opinions.  It's not really the case, for instance, that all Mormons are polytheists.  Even regular common practices, like abstaining from caffeinated beverages, aren't really church law.As a result, you can have fairly devout Mormons who don't hold those views.  You can also have those who very strictly hold the traditional views.  The deeper you go into the Jello Belt the more common the really traditional views, save for Salt Lake City, ironically, which has a majority non Mormon population.

I don't know Mike Lee personally, but there's every sign that he holds the very traditional views, one of which is that there's a finite number of souls that were created at the bigging of the creation of our world, and that the sooner they all get on the Earth, the second coming will arrive.  

Now, Mike Lee has only three children, so that cuts against this argument somewhat.  But he also is a pro development zealot that is sort of explained by this.  Lee would rape every square inch of the West if allowed to.  Houses, mines, whatever, you name it, he's for it.

And he holds sort of a pan West view of this, which fits into his heritage.  Originally the LDS hoped for their own state, the State of Deseret, which would have included a much greater expanse of the West than Utah.

Lee had a fit recently went the Pentagon didn't include the LDS as a Christian religion, which it isn't, in the list of Christian religions.  It was pretty clear that Lee felt betrayed, which he wasn't.  The Pentagon went back and fibbed for him, the GOP rewarding him for his loyalty, but changing that.

The views Lee holds about public lands and the West aren't really limited to the LDS by any means, we should note.  James Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, believed that the Second Coming was going to come extremely soon so there should be no holding back on using every resource immediately.  No need to conserve anything.

We're still here, of course, and Watt is dead.

Watt received a fair amount of portrayal as a weirdo.  That must have pained other Evangelicals who didn't hold his views and I suspect there's a fair number of LDS who feel the same way about Lee.  Likewise, there's probably a fair number of Christians up in Campbell County who feel that John Bear doesn't speak for them.

Indeed, this raises the interesting point of outliers defining a group to outsiders.  Mitt Romney is probably more representative of the views of most Mormons than Mike Lee, but most Americans don't know anything about the LDS and by 2028 Mike Lee is going to seem like the definition of a Mormon to many people.

I get stuff like this in regard to being a Catholic, often by people who really hate Catholics.  "You must be one of ten children".  Nope, I'm of one.  Just yesterday a colleague I've worked with for nearly 40 years, and who has asked me about grade school before, was in a conversation with another colleague who is moving their children out of the local Catholic school. She and her husband are not Catholic.  My old colleague turned to me and said "you went to St. A's" 

No, I didn't.  Neither did any of my numerous Catholic cousins.  I'm a practicing Catholics and, therefore, I guess it must be the case that I went to Catholic school. 

A minor example.

I'm not going to vote for my old colleague.  He doesn't appear to fit into the WFC, but I can't really tell what he's for.  He's for jobs, which everyone says.  

And I like our serving representative, who is definitely not a WFC member.

The candidate visiting got me to thinking about another person who sort of was in the orbit of my circle of friends back in those days.  She was a quiet and mousy friend of the sister of one of my friends.  I had a crush on the sister.  Later she reappeared in the orbit in law school, as she was the friend of a girl I was dating and just somebody in the class behind me.  I got to know here somewhat better then.  The very definition of a preppy, people in her circle called her "muffy" as sort of derogative nickname.

After law school she came back to Casper and practiced here for awhile. Something happened, I don't  know what, and she not only left the practice of law, but actually took the extraordinary step of contacting the bar and having her name removed from the list of those barred.  I.e., she not only was a practicing lawyer who wanted on the inactive list, she wanted off the list entirely.  She's the only person I've ever know to do that.

After she left, she went back to Kansas where she'd graduated as an undergrad and worked in basically a clerical job.  I lost track of her, but looked her up sometime last year. Too late, she'd died of cancer at age 58.  She'd never married.  Her obituary states she  "will be remembered for her commitment to 4-H and her love of rabbits."  I actually hadn't known she was in 4-H, or that she loved rabbits.

Churches of the West: Christian church vows to fight tribal order to leave Wind River Reservation

Churches of the West: Christian church vows to fight tribal order to lea...: Christian church vows to fight tribal order to leave Wind River Reservation I frankly am a bit distressed by the headline's use of ...

Christian church vows to fight tribal order to leave Wind River Reservation

Christian church vows to fight tribal order to leave Wind River Reservation

I frankly am a bit distressed by the headline's use of "Christian" church.  That's a rather loose use of the term Christian, although it's not incorrect.

According to its website, the "Foundations For Nations is a multi-cultural and multi-generational non-denominational Christian church."   There's absolutely no such thing whatsoever as a "non-denominational" church.  100% of all churches have some theological grounding that puts them in some denomination.  This is some sort of Protestant Church, most likely a sort of do it yourself Evangelical Church, that has a focus on the Wind River Indian Reservation.  The controversy arises due to the pastor taking on the Sun Dance, which is a religious ceremony practiced by a variety of plains tribes. 

Sunday, July 7, 1946. Mother Cabrini canonized.

Italian born Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini was canonized by Pope Pius XII, the first American citizen to receive the same.

She was the founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  She is the Patron Saint of Immigrants.  She  founded 67 orphanages, schools and hospitals throughout the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean region, and in Europe during her lifetime.

The Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church, at that time probably the wealthiest church in the United States and the Church of the wealthy to some extent, announced they would merge, an odd announcement given their real theological differences.  

Not too surprisingly, the merger did not in fact occur.

U.S. Navy Ensign Jimmy Carter married Rosalynn Smith in Plains, Georgia.  They'd be married for 75 years.

Last edition:

Friday, July 5, 1946. Introduction of the bikini.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Clothing, France, France (Paris), It was because of the Cold War, Men, Scandal, Sex, Swimming, The differences between men and women, Women

Tuesday, July 4,1826. The Fiftieth Anniversary of American Independence.

July 4, 1826 was the fiftieth anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, of course.  By that time the country had not only achieved independence, but it had also survived a second war with Britain, one which the United States provoked and which nearly caused New England to succeed from the union.  And it had grown from 13 states, to 24.

The United States in 1825/26.

It's probably best remembered in the United States for being the date on which both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died.  What's even more peculiar about that, however, is that while 90 year old John Adams was living in Quincy, Massachusetts and 83 year old Thomas Jefferson was in Monticello, Virginian, Adams knew when Jefferson died, and commented on it.

The two men were not very much alike temperamentally.  Adams was a lawyer and a farmer who first entered the public's consciousness when he defended British troops in court following the Boston Massacre.  He was truly one of those rare characters who loved the law, something made even better for him as he was a circuit riding lawyer who also loved horses.  Active in farming his entire life, he was more closely matched Jefferson's yeoman ideal than Jefferson.  Somewhat taciturn, he dreamed of being a soldier at the beginning of the Revolution, but his talents lay elsewhere and he never was.

His place in history is secure due to his being the second President of the United States, but by the 20th Century he was one who was very little focused on.  His popularity enjoyed a resurgence, however, due to  David McCullough 2001 book which is somewhat of a hagiography.  

During his lifetime he had a falling out with Jefferson, who served as his Vice President, but they repaired their rift in later years.

If Adams was well known during his lifetime and the somewhat placed on the shelf, Thomas Jefferson has never been out of the public imagination.  At the same time, probably no American President has had his character analyzed and reanalyzed as much.

From a Puritan background, Adams is problematic for modern American far right-wing Evangelist in that his religious views were unconventional.  While a Congregationalist, he tended towards Universalist views and did not regard the Trinity as well founded.  While we have argued here that the United States is a Protestant nation, figures like Adams cut against that argument.  Adams was very much opposed to state established churches, for instance.

Like Adams, Jefferson was also a lawyer by training but what he really was by temperament and occupation was a planter.  An absolute renaissance mind he dabbled in everything, including engineering and agronomy.  One of the most influential figures of the founding generation, he served as the country's third President and was the first American President to engage in an undeclared war.

Regarded as a founding member of the Democratic Party, it was Jefferson's foresight that caused the U.S. to purchase Louisiana, converting the country from an Atlantic maritime power to a continental power.  Arguably, no President is more responsible for what the US became than Jefferson, even though he did not see it becoming what it became.  An Agrarian philosopher, he thought that it would take Americans 1,000 years to spread across the continent and that gave the country a 1,000 year chance at remaining a democracy.

Historians have been tortured by trying to define Jefferson's character ever since he died.  He was clearly a genius but his personal life was often in grave conflict with his stated beliefs.  Once hugely adored, in recent years his relationship with his sister in law and slave, Sally Hemings, has caused a great deal of debate on his personal morality.

North America with territories as claimed by the United States.

That the country had survived fifty years was somewhat amazing.  The War of 1812, not well remembered in the United States, had been a US war of choice that had not been supported by New England and which the United States, in spite of what is commonly claimed, lost.  The central seaboard South, which  had favored the war, proved to retain a sizable population that retained strong sympathies with the United Kingdom.  The US Army was twice very badly defeated by Canadian militias which gained ground in the Midwest, something also rarely noted.  Only the logistical difficulties faced by the British and a high desertion rate of its troops kept the country from returning to British possession.

Last edition:

Thursday, March 24, 1825. State Colonization Law of March 24, 1825.

Labels: 1820s, 1825, emigration, Hypocrisy, Immigration, Mexican State Colonization Law of March 24, Mexico, Slavery, Texas

Two examples of exactly what's wrong with this country.

1.  Standards decayed to the irrelevant level.

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.  

Death's Head

 

Imperial German Totenkopf.

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.  

Donald might look to have a Porky tattoo. . . 

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military. A resolution?

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military.: The Department of Defense scaled back its list of recognized religions.   There were 211, now there are 31.  Here is the full list: Agnostic...

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.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military. Paring the list, much ado about nothing?

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military.: The Department of Defense scaled back its list of recognized religions.   There were 211, now there are 31.  Here is the full list: Agnostic...

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.  

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military. The back currents of religion in the Trump administration and the New Apostolic Reformation.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Religion in the military.: The Department of Defense scaled back its list of recognized religions.   There were 211, now there are 31.  Here is the full list: Agnostic...

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.

And some feel that more is going on.

Dem Saints

@LDS_Dems

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.

6:13 PM · Jun 5, 2026

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"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

Last edited10:01 PM · Jun 6, 2026

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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.

Mike Lee

@BasedMikeLee

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.