The House of Lords passed the Parliament Act of 1911 allowing the House of Commons to limit the House of Lords' power. The vote was 131 to 114 with 300 eligible peers declining to vote. 88 Liberal peers were jointed by 29 Tories and 13 of the 15 Anglican Bishops causing Conservative MP George Wyndham to later remark; "We were beaten by the bishops and the rats."
There are still Lords Spiritual in Parliament although it has received criticism in recent years. The Anglican Church itself had greater adherence in 1911 than it does today, but even by that time the rank and file of the British population were associated with it loosely. Today, the largest group to attend church weekly is the UK are Catholics.
The interim Mexican government cancelled state elections that had been scheduled for August 13.
Cancelling elections, which we have a chance of seeing coming up here, is never a good sign.
The first ascent of Canada's 11,870-foot Mount Assiniboine,"one of the classic mountaineering peaks of the world", occurred. It was accomplished by James Outram, Christian Bohren and Christian Hasler.
By Edna Winti - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ednawinti/7987475098/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95018554
No one living today shall know the joy of such an achievement, and all achievements today, except personal ones in accordance with nature and the Natural Law, shal equate to it. Compared to our own era, the achievements of the rich and powerful, Gates, Musk, etc., are utter worthless dirt. What's more, they know it.
James Outram was a clergyman of the Church of England. While I'm of the view that the high church, in the Church of England, has no excuse for not becoming Catholic, I'll note that some of its members were really remarkable at the time. Christian pastors with the bark on.
The HMS Viper, the first major steam powered Royal Navy ship was wrecked beyond repair during Royal Navy maneuvers near the Channel Island when it struck a reef near the island of Alderney, ripping out the bottom of its hull.
It was a fairly modern ship.
It was, of course, a Saturday.
In this era of labor strife, it's interesting how often working men were depicted as very manly men.
I know that we shouldn't , but I can't help but note that things were perhaps existentially more genuine then.
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, I recall at home my mother was a fan of Israel. Basically, she sort of thought it was a small nation that really stood up to larger neighbors, sort of an underdog things. She also thought that it was a fulfilled promise of the New Testament that it existed, which is something I've heard the very orthodox Catholic theologian Jimmy Akin also express.
My father, however, was not as sympathetic. He didn't express a lot of views on Israel, but basically he thought it came about as a way for Western nations to feel better about the Holocaust but that it foisted a large European population on an Arab populace that had a different religion and didn't want them there, and that wasn't a good idea. He also felt that Israel had a tendency to pick on its neighbors a bit.
When I was quite young, I shared my mother's view, in part because it seemed like every time it got into a spat it really cleaned up on its neighbors. By my teens, however, my view was shifting and ultimately shifted a great deal. I didn't become anti Israel, but I frankly sympathized to a large degree with the Arab Palestinians in regard to what had happened to them. By my 20s, additionally, I was of the view that Israel's ongoing existence as a Jewish state was a demographic impossibility.
Later my views shifted more towards the middle, but I've never really been in the "support Israel at all costs" camp. One of my good friends, of an Evangelical background, holds the view that supporting Israel is mandated by the Bible. I'm reminded, however, that the Old Testament is fully of examples of the People of Israel acting badly, which was frequently a reason that God would send a prophet to them, with the prophets frequently being unwelcome.
I'm a Catholic, of course, and I hold a much more nuanced view of the modern state of Israel. It might be that modern Israel is indeed a fulfillment of the Biblical promise that the state would be restored, but I don't think that means at all that the country gets a free pass at everything.
And I'm much more of my father's view, and frankly probably well to the left of it, that American support of Israel has a lot to do with war guilt from the 1940s.
The 1940s are now a long time ago. Israel is a country and it deserves to exist, although I still feel that its existence is very tenuous given the demographics of the neighborhood. It doesn't deserve to be attacked, but it doesn't have license to wage genocidal level wars on neighboring territory, as the recent war in Gaza became. Long term, if Israel is going to continue to exist, it's going to have to come to some sort of accommodation with its neighbors, and that means the entire region needs to figure out what to do about the plight of the Palestinians, which nobody has demonstrated an inclination to do.
Under Benjamin Netanyahu I suspect the silent Israeli policy, opposed by a large number of Israelis, is to drive the Arabs out of lands that were within British Mandatory Palestine. That has never been openly stated, but if they were driven out, the thought would run, the demographic problem is solved.
The moral one certainly wouldn't be.
Anyhow, the modern GOP is more in love with Israel than any group of Americans has ever been, and that says something. Israel always had the solid support of both parties, but now the GOP is absolutely besotted with Israel. So much so, that we're integrating our militaries to a certain extent.
The irony of this cannot be overstated. Since he came into office Trump has beat the National Conservative drum that the US is to be an isolated entity until itself. He's come as close to taking us out of NATO as he can, and doesn't seem done trying, and he's ignored a major war that actually involves a major Western country, Ukraine. He's all be declared that if Russia attacks Western Europe he doesn't care. He's threatened to outright invade the territory of a NATO member, Denmark, in order to steal land from Greenland, which doesn't want us there.
But with Israel, it's totally different.
We're not only supporting Israel, with which we have no written treaty, we're backing Israel up in one of its wars, the one against Iran, which we can now not get out of and are basically carrying on, and losing on our own. In spite of that, we're about to significantly merge our defense industries to no benefit of our own, but major benefit to Israel. And in doing that, we might note, we're going it for a country that has periods in which its been governed by the extreme Socialist left. It's also been a country which actively spied on the United States.
This is just flat out nuts.
Israel has been in existence for nearly 80 years now and it can defend itself. I see no reason at all to tie the US to regional wars which have a heavy religious element to them. If Israel is going to persevere, it needs to find a way to do so with Arab allies, not the United States. It's come a long ways towards doing that, and facilitating that is in the interest of world peace, even if it really has nothing else to otherwise do with US interests. Fighting Israel's wars for it is flat out wrong, but this makes that more likely, and we're already doing that right now.
Indeed, if the US had a sane leader and a sane policy, we'd be looking for ways to pull out of the Middle East entirely. We don't due to petroleum oil, which provides a good reason, in addition to the environmental one, to do what China is doing, which is to pull away from petroleum as rapidly as possible. The whole world should be doing that, and recent actions by the Saudis, as well as some of the past decade, show that Saudi Arabia expects that to be done.
If we'd started it a decade ago, we'd be largely petroleum free, to everyone's benefit, right now.
So why are we doing otherwise?
It's really for the simple reason that the GOP has been captured by the American Evangelical right and that body has a strong theocracy behind it that views supporting Israel, and an eventually conversion of the Jews to (Protestant) Christianity as a prerequisite for the Second Coming. Israelis know this and make use of it, which is how Netenanyu was able to push Trump along into a major war it could not have pulled off itself.
If this keeps up, this is going to have a bad end.
It likely will not, however, keep up, which is the irony.
In the 2022 election Muslim Americans, enraged over Joe Biden's moderate support of Israel following the attacks on it by Hezbollah, voted for Donald Trump. But at the same time younger American voters were shifting their views towards the Palestinians. Younger Americans have no personal memory of the Holocaust. Their parents weren't swept up by it, and indeed, their grandparents weren't. It's something in the rear view mirror, part of history. Israeli attacks today, however, are not.
Also new is the large numbers of Muslims in the US.
Only 1.3% at most of Americans are Muslim, but only 2.4% are Jewish. There are, therefore, more Jewish voters than Muslim ones, but in both instances their votes are only significant where they are concentrated, and Muslims are very much concentrated in some places. They're making an electoral difference in those places.
The GOP is doing a really good job of angering massive numbers of Americans. By now, it's largely lost Hispanics, who helped pull it through in 2022. It's no doubt completely lost Muslims. Those people who really didn't want the US in foreign wars are now wondering what happened. Economic conservatives are horrified.
I very much doubt this provision will survive in the Senate. It shouldn't. But already, during the Trump Administration, we've seen the rise of outright antisemitism due to the war with Iran. We haven't seen anything like this since 1940. It will grow worse.
And this will be one of the factors that's going to drag the Republicans down in the fall. If passed, it won't survive the next administration. And not only is it going to be a factor in dragging down the GOP in the fall, it'll help drag down far right Evangelicalism in general.
Indeed, I suspect the Israeli far right knew that, which is why it had to strike while the iron was hot, and Donald Trump in office. It doesn't expect this era to last in the US.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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