Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 4. Dr. Hegseth countermands George Washington edition.

 

April 22, 2026

During the Revolutionary War, George Washington ordered his troops inoculated against Small Pox.

This week Pete Hegseth lifted the requirement that troops be inoculated for influenza for "religious" reasons.

The current GOP is heavily anti scientific.

Opposition to vaccinations has been in American history largely a thing of smaller Christian and non Christian sects which are fairly anti scientific, as opposed to the majority of Christians who have no objection to vaccination.  However, when the far right of the country started to turn weird, listening to such medical lights as boob model Jenny McCarthy, that began to change a bit. Covid really made it worse as a significant portion of the country turned anti vax under the leadership of Donald Trump, who got the vaccine, but who recommended some really lethal approaches to the crisis as well.

Troops who don't get inoculated ought to just be given dishonorable or less than honorable discharges.  That's what should have occurred to those who refused the Covid vaccine.

April 24, 2026

The war department stands ready for what comes next. Locked and loaded. May God continue to breast—bless our warriors each and every day and on each and every mission.

Hegseth. 

Breast?

Okay, I get that it's a slip of the tongue, um, well, but it's an odd one.

May 12, 2026

The Aryan Nation, the Nazis, and the KKK are not far-right organizations.  Those are far-left organizations, and they always have been. The KKK was created and started by the Democrats in the United States to prevent blacks from being able to participate in the political arena, if you will. So, I'm going to say they've never been associated with the right, they've always been associated with the left.

Harriet Hageman.

Hageman's no dummy and she knows this is crap, or has drank so much of the Kool Aide she'll spout stuff that's absurd.

Every one of these organizations is from the far right and any claim to the contrary is patently absurd.  The claim about the Nazis, which I've seen before, comes from the party's very early, and frankly pre Hitler, days  and its name, the National Socialist Party.  The absurdity of that claim fails to realize that "socialism" in the context of nationalist parties doesn't necessarily mean Marxism, but "for society".  In the case of the Nazis, way early on their did espouse Socialism but by the time they'd come to power they'd abandoned it in favor of autarky and the early socialist in the party were sidelined or expelled.

And the claim about the KKK being founded by the Democrats and therefore left wing completely ignores that originally the Republican Party was the left wing party, and the Democrats were a right wing party.  The Democrats didn't evolve into the political left until the 20th Century and in the American South remained the conservative party into the 1980s.  Hageman herself is old enough to have voted in Reagan's first run for the Oval Office and therefore should be well aware of that.

This is totally reprehensible.

Cont:

Reporter: What extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal?

Trump: Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans’ financial situation.

May 13, 2026

So it turns out that Trump's advisors uniformly told him not to launch the war against Iran, but he did anyway, and the advisors, not wanting to be blamed for his stupidity, leaked.  He wants them prosecuted for treason, and sycophant Todd Blanche is looking to to it.

The real crime here is Trump's, who launched an illegal war.  With no declaration of war, every single Iranian killed in it has been the victim of some sort of crime, and every American who has died has been the victim of some sort of crime ultimately attributable to Trump as well.

Blanche is pathetic.  When this is over, and it will be, his careers should be flushed down the toilet.

And then there's this:

PabloReports: Ted Cruz called you a parasite and disparaged your work as a bartender.

AOC: I think it’s funny that he’s been taking a government paycheck for 23 years but has the audacity to criticize someone who has come from a family that had to work their way up and earn their place here.

This is really becoming a Republican specialty around here.  We get retired servicemen who come in after sucking on the government tit for 30 years, retire, and then start sucking on the other government tit, and then run for office on the "I hate the government" ticket.

In that sense, the Democrat running against Collins in Maine is really refreshing.  He's given a speech about his combat service and then noted how he can't figure out how that's relevant to being a Senator.  It isn't.  

Recently I saw somebody post something in favor of Brent Bien here in Wyoming, noting that he's served in combat or dangerous conditions all over the world, and how that will make him ready to lead.  Yeah, lead troops, not a state government. 

We have a whole host of candidates from the He Man Government Haters Club running locally.  They have a right to run, but while they're doing it, they shouldn't be draining their mommy.  It's hypocritical.

June 22, 2026

Unqualified for her office Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said her office would prosecute individuals caught vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

That would mean prosecuting Donald Trump, which should be done for a variety of reasons.

June 24, 2026

The ideology of the Mooslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Mooslims. Slightly different. But Venezuela has been great and Iran has been great.

Donald Trump.

Insulting in the extreme.

The ideology of Catholics, of which I am one, is the ideology of Christianity, as Catholicism is the first and original Christian religion  It's more than "slightly different" than Islam.

This provides a good reason for those Catholics who support Trump to really question what they are doing.

Last edition:

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 3. The Quack Edition.

Labels: Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Epstein Scandal, Health, Health and Human Services, Ignorance, Medicine, Playboy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Oprah Effect, Yeoman's Twentieth Law of Behavior

Saturday, June 19, 1926. Cadaverum cremationis.

Pope Pius XI promulgated the papal instruction Cadaverum cremationis, affirming the Catholic ban on cremation.  The prohibition would be relaxed by Pope Paul VI on June 5, 1964, but at least with some Catholics, myself included, the practice is looked down upon. Subsequent popes have also written on the practice.

DeFord Bailey became the first African-American to be listed in newspaper radio schedules as a performer on the WSM Barn Dance (The Grand Ole Opry).  He had performed on the show previously.

from the studio of the Nashville radio station WSM. As authors note in a biography of Bailey, "he had probably begun regular appearances before then.

It was a Saturday.

Last edition:

Friday, June 18, 1926. Egyptian troops at Mecca.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, 69th Congress, Egyptian Army, Food, Greece, Hobby and Interest Organizations, Islam, Localism, Mecca, Monarchy, Philately, Russia, trends

Monday, June 14, 1926. The Calles Law.

Mexico_Flag_(Cristeros).png: User:Immaculatederivative work: Jorge Compassio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Mexico enacted the Calles Law attacking the Catholic Church.  Clergymen were to be punished for various crimes including wearing clerics and criticizing the government.  In a little over a month the Cristero War would break out as a result.

Catholicism was, and is, strong in Mexico, although the Mexican Revolution, which saw the rise of various anti Catholic figures within it, while others remained very loyal to the Church, weakened it. Most historians do not regard the Cristero War as part of the Mexican Revolution, but I'm not most historians and I do.  By the same token, the extent to which the Mexican Revolution was part of a worldwide rise of left wing insurrections is not often appreciated.

Anti Catholic elements in Mexico had existed since at least the mid 19th Century, and interestingly reflected similar movements in Europe, which itself shows the extent to which those revolutions in the country in the mid 19th Century reflected how close Mexico was to Europe in comparison to the United States.  For all his faults, Porfirio Díaz, who came from a devout Catholic family and who had originally intended to be a Priest, seemingly put those stresses behind the country, but they revived during the Mexican Revolution.  Madero was not a practicing Catholic, which in some ways made him an odd leader for the Revolution.  Zapata, while he certainly strayed in regard to sexual morality (he had a least fifteen children, but only two by his wife Josefa "La Generala" Espejo Merino, was Catholic.  Other figures were most definitely not practicing Catholics and some were anti Catholic within Madero's ranks.  In Baja California, American and foreign Wobblies tried to estaliblish an Anarch Socialist state.

Had Madero, who was not a practicing Catholic, but who was egalitarian in nature, survived, Mexico would not have taken the giant left word lurch it did.

Brazil announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations.

Last edition:

Friday, June 11, 1926. First flight of the Ford Tri Motor.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, African National Parks, Aircraft, Blog Mirror, Ford Motor Company, South Africa

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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1.5M

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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.