Future DoD requirements will include giving it a fierce name
He does it by being petty and vindictive, which will no doubt curry favor with the pig running the government.
The U.S. Navy plans to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named after the slain gay rights leader and Navy veteran, and is considering renaming multiple naval ships named after civil rights leaders and prominent American voices, CBS News has learned.
…
The documents obtained by CBS News also show other vessels named after prominent leaders are also on the Navy’s renaming “recommended list.”Among them are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez and USNS Medgar Evers.
I have mixed feelings about the principle of naming warships after civil rights leaders, but I don’t think this is about morality. It’s all about spite.
Following his confirmation in January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a directive instructing the Pentagon and U.S. military services to cease hosting events tied to heritage or awareness months, citing concerns that such programs could undermine unity within the ranks. The “Identity Months Dead at DoD” guidance banned official manpower and resources from being used on such events — among them, Pride Month, Black History Month and Women’s History Month.
It might undermine unity to pander to Nazis, too.
And this is just stupid.
The memo said the renaming of naval ships was to realign the U.S. military with Trump administration priorities of
reestablishing the warrior culture.
Warrior culture.
I don’t want to live in a warrior culture
, especially since that seems to be a synonym for “insecure bullying lickspittle culture”.
Anyone with a cursory knowledge of history would know that Harriet Tubman had more “warrior ethos” in her pinky toe than many modern military dorks have in their entire body.
That said, I’d be weirded out by naming combatant warships after civil rights leaders, but naming resupply vessels after them seems reasonable — any ship designated “USNS” is unarmed support.
What’s even sillier about this renaming is that the type/class of ship that USNS Harvey Milk belongs to is itself named after a civil rights icon — the entire run of tankers is called the “John Lewis”-class
When did the US military lose their “warrior culture”?
Everyone missed that event except Hegseth.
Did we lose a war someone that no one saw or remembers except him?
In RealityLand the US military is the same old lethal group of people it always was.
Can you be gay or female and be a warrior?
In history and today, both groups of people can and were…warriors.
About all I got out of reading what Hegseth said is that he is cosmically stupid.
I bet the USS John S. McCain is on the renaming list, or will be once L’il Orange thinks of it.
There is so much wrong with what Hegseth says, does, and thinks that it is hard to even know where to start.
It’s all just very stupid ideas that some guy who is dumb came up with after a fifth of whiskey.
.1. Hegseth seems to think we are still in the 12th century where warfare is large men with bows and arrows, swords, lances, and battle axes beating each other up from two feet.
These days, modern warfare is highly mechanized and computerized.
The example of the Ukraine and Ukrainians is the future of modern warfare.
.2. The average Ukrainian warrior is a kid (young adult) with a FPV drone, First Person View Drone with an exploding warhead.
You need to be good at video games for that and being intelligent with good reflexes is necessary. You don’t need to be good at swinging a heavy sword.
It’s the same with anti-aircraft and anti-flying drone defense.
The skills required include intelligence, education, and training, which aren’t just something cis het white males can do.
.3. It’s all a con anyway.
What the GOP and Hegseth will do is reorient the US military away from national defense to national attack.
They want to use the military against the American people as police to keep them subjugated and under control in a dictatorship.
It’s what every other Second and Third world dictatorship does.
.4. And/or they have said they will invade Canada, Greenland, and Panama to annex them as part of recreating the 19th century.
How much of a military do you need for that?
Not much.
Greenland has 56,000 people, Canada 40 million, and Panama 4.5 million.
The last time we invaded Panama under Reagan, the whole invasion took a few weeks.
“December 20, 1989 – January 31, 1990 (1 month, 1 week and 4 days)”
We lost 26 people.
Guy is an idiot who is incapable of leading the US military.
IIRC, isn’t considered to be VERY BAD LUCK to rename a ship, without the appropriate rituals to appease the Sea Gods?
Tossing a drunk Hegseth overboard, far from shore, might do the trick. Worth a try.
Re Snarki
It is definitely considered bad luck to change the name of a ship. The belief is that if Poseidon doesn’t see the name in his register of ships then he won’t know of it and won’t protect it from disaster.
I wouldn’t toss Hegseth overboard. Look what happened when they did it to Jonah.
@garydargan #7
I’d just feel sorry for the whale that would swallow Hegseth
To go along with the shift in mores of this rogues gallery administration maybe USS Houston Chamberlain and USS Alfred Rosenberg would be more apt names for naval vessels.
drksky @8
I dunno. Kegseth might be a tasty treat with a liqueur infused core for a marine mammal. The liver might resemble foie gras. I would be concerned with the whale’s ability to navigate the sea for a few hours after and it might start stalking ships for more of the same, chasing the dragon so to speak.
Hemidactylus@9: I was going to suggest USS Bismarck and USS Tirpitz, should be a good example for the type of “warrior culture” Herr Dumpf and his Speichelecker would like to see.
Yamato would also be a good namesake, but Trump would probably think that’s Chinese.
Why not name them after US comedians? USNS Grouch Marx?
You can rename a ship if you’ve captured it or it’s been sold on as per Lend Lease.
Related topic: Why is the MSM largely ignoring the murder of indigenous, LGBTQ actor Jonathan Joss? The leftist sources, of course, give the full story, but the only mainstream sources claim he was just shot during an “argument with a neighbor.”
Also, why are the cops claiming the murder of an unarmed gay man by a guy shouting slurs is not a hate crime?
Is this a trick question?
Because it is Texas and Texas cops.
Aye, my gut reaction was “…. because ACAB?”
When I think of “Warrior Culture,” I think of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. (And I certainly expect China’s keeping that book around and updating its insights for the modern world.) I think of the old war games people played where attention to detail, terrain, weather,, logistics, and morale can make or break an army.
I suspect Hegseth’s vision of warrior culture is a bunch of manchildren banging plastic army soldiers together, breaking them, and whining to Mom.
Maybe the real problem is that Hegseth and His Merry Band don’t know enough US military history. Like what the US forces looked like during the decade-to-decade-and-a-half after the “withdrawal with honor” from a relatively small nation in southeast Asia…
…and the every-day struggle to deal with distrust and disrespect from the ones actually carrying the loaded firearms because there wasn’t any coherent awareness of, let alone policy for, what the idjits are now mislabelling “DEI” and back then was known as “racism, especially in the awards process.” Every officer or senior NCO involved in the “awards process” — for both medals and other awards — was at least aware of two or three instances in which an award was downgraded or actually refused on the basis of race (let alone any other “inclusivity characteristic”), and even those of my colleagues who were ardently against “affirmative action” at least acknowledged it as a problem.
Oh, wait, we’ve all (or almost all, below the 4-star level, as mandated by 1974 changes to military personnel management statutes) aged out of active duty. That explains a lot right there: No old farts around to tell war stories about how to prepare to be warfighters when everybody hates you. It’s not so much that those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the errors as that history laughs at anyone who tries.
PZ op:
This is an insult to pigs, who are actually smart animals. I refer to him as the Orange Turd, which is an insult to turds, but at least they are not living and have no feelings.
Raven @ # 4 – a nit to pick: the United States’s glorious victory over the evil Panamanians was a triumph of the magnificent warlord George H. W. Bush (and surely thrilled the patriotic 9-year-old Pete H)!
@ 5, 8, 10
Jello shots are for kids.
@5 NOOOOO, the protocol is to swing the sacrificial/christening object against the bow of the ship hard enough so it breaks.
Maybe try that.
@10 Kind of like how orcas are now ramming yachts? Operant conditioning?
@14
For the same reason that male to female rape isn’t considered a hate crime? [Usually white] male privilege? Male to male rape is far more likely to be prosecuted both as rape and as a hate crime. Rape is inexplicably classified as a sex crime instead of a hate crime, which is what it really is, in most cases.
Also, whether or not the couple in question were ideal neighbors or not, it in no way justifies murder. I’m also giving a lot of side-eye to the “loudness” of the victim. Why exactly are the targets of racial/sexual/gender slurs not supposed to answer back in kind? Funny how “loudness” is the privilege of the perpetrator and never the target.
@5 To clarify, the traditional method of naming a ship usually involves smashing a bottle of booze against the ship’s prow so it breaks and spatters the ship in question with the booze. Hegseth clearly has large quantities of booze sloshing around in him at any given time, so why not use him the same as any other bottle of booze?
I just feel sick to my bones. Think I need to abstain from the news for a while.
Ah well.
Executive orders can be rescinded or superseded by a succeeding administration, and so can directives issued by Secretaries likewise.
So there’s that.
Just more of the same from the racist administration. Remember that, during the Biden administration, military bases that were named after traitors were renamed. And then, the Orange Turd’s admin came in and wanted to restore the racist names. But they had to cover their tracks. So, for example, Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty during the Biden admin. So the Orange Turd’s admins looked high and low to find another soldier named Bragg that they could claim to be using to change the name back to Fort Bragg. Blatantly obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells.
Can’t say I feel broken up about the most dangerous terrorist organization on the planet and the single largest polluter on the planet deciding to backpedal on giving death machines friendly-sounding, inspiring names.
They should name their big toys after notorious civilian massacres and modern holocausts, that seems to be about all the U.S. military is good at doing.
What you call death machines other call war machines, beholder.
Yes, war is death, and war machines are death machines, but you know… a rose by any other name.
(The symbolism and the semiotics are opaque to you, no?)
It’s truth in advertising.
The (U.S.S. Burned To Death In My Hospital Bed ; U.S.S. Lure First Responders Into A Death Trap With The Sounds Of Crying Babies ; U.S.S. Had My Body Blown Apart At A Wedding Ceremony ; U.S.S. Stuff Us Inside A Large Barrel And Light The Whole Thing On Fire ; U.S.S. Starve To Death ; U.S.S. Was Tricked Into Eating Food In A Death Trap) would potentially involve more paint and ink expended for the name, but it gives the troops a more honest idea of what they’ll be doing to others.
(sigh)
An oblique approach may work better, so I will use a babble machine to respond to you, beholder.
Also, saves me typing.
Me: “The symbolism and the semiotics in relation to this story I have read: The U.S. Navy plans to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named after the slain gay rights leader and Navy veteran, and is considering renaming multiple naval ships named after civil rights leaders and prominent American voices, CBS News has learned.”
Bubbly AI: “Warship names are potent symbols. They are not just labels; they serve as signifiers loaded with cultural, historical, and ideological meaning. In many cases, a ship’s name is chosen to evoke strength, valor, and a sense of national identity—a reflection of the warrior ethos and military tradition. However, when a ship bears a name like Harvey Milk, it introduces a layered semiotic message. Such a name signifies a tribute to a civil rights pioneer and highlights values of diversity, progress, and social justice.
The controversy over renaming these ships shows how deeply intertwined symbolism and politics can be in warship nomenclature. By renaming, the Navy isn’t just changing a label—it is reshaping the narrative the vessel is meant to embody. In semiotic terms, the original names are signifiers that evoke a specific set of cultural memories and values, which the renaming seeks to alter to align with a different vision of military tradition and identity.”
@ JohnGPT
Aw, you’ve found a machine that communicates nothing in a verbose mode just like you do. That’s cute.
It’s good that you’re saving your fingers the trouble of typing it, and I’m saving my eyeballs the trouble of reading it.
[sorry, PZ]
Forgot to add that “the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler” is not designed for fighting, it’s designed to survive in a war best as it can concomitant with its mission. Defs not an attack vessel.
(I reckon naming an oiler might not be the best for its crew’s morale :)
“Aw, you’ve found a machine that communicates nothing in a verbose mode just like you do. That’s cute.”
That’s the inverse of GIGO, beholder.
Your copium is deliciously savoury.
I always thought the English were better at naming warships than anyone. Yanks tend to go for places, us aussies place names. Although in my case I served on HMAS ANZAC and HMAS TOOWOOMBA, the former being the rare exception naming wise. But the English, HMS’s VICTORY, VENDETTA, TERROR, INVINCIBLE, INDOMITABLE, et many many cetera’s. I get that many people can easily make the argument for USS BURNED TO DEATH IN MY HOSPITAL BED et al as a way more accurate name. Not to defend the existence of warships at all, but if you are going to have warships then the name should, IMO, lean into it. And the Royal Navy has been nailing it for centuries.
*Yanks tend to go for peoples names.
[riff]
indianajones, the Scots are not that bad at it, either…
cf. https://concord.fandom.com/wiki/Iain_M._Banks_Culture_Universe_Spaceship_Names
USS hold my beer
@PZ, silverhalide, others
Regarding the Joss murder: while I don’t have much trust for cops in general – hate crimes are about the motives of the criminal who did the crime. If the criminal had a pre-existing animus towards the victim because they were neighbors who didn’t get along (for reasons other than the protected class membership), that might make a hate-crime difficult to prove or even to charge.
Did the asshole shooter use the slurs because he hated gay people, or did he use the slurs because he hated those particular gay people for other reasons. Not that I would expect nuanced understanding from texan cops, but there could be legitimate reasons why a hate-crime enchancement (if such a thing even exists in texas) wasn’t pursued.
Hell, in the modern political climate down there, I’m a little surprised the right wing mediasphere hasn’t started making a Rittenhouse or Zimmerman out of the shooter. Maybe that’ll start when the trial comes up.
Re: Naming US warships. I do wish they’d go with something a little more truthful. Naming things after people is just gauche, and can be confusing. In Richard Morgan’s book Altered Carbon there’s a few scenes set around the beached ruin of the “USS Free Trade Enforcer”. I think the Navy should look to their task and purpose in choosing new names, the “USS Capitalism”, “USS Oligarchy Enhancer”, “USS If we don’t spend it all, they might reduce the budget next year.” etc.
Hegseth, muskrat, tRUMP (and his pocket-nazi S. Miller) etc. Their only claim to fame is that they are a bunch of Murderous Fascist chicken Hawks.
Raven @4: “When did the US military lose their “warrior culture”?”
Trick question: the US military never had a “warrior culture,” and we don’t want it to. Warrior culture is all about individual honor and loot: it’s the Klingons, or the Spartans in 300 (not the real Spartans) or Viking raiders. What the US military had (and still has) a soldier culture, which is about working together with your soldiers and putting the goals of the unit above the individual. This is a much better method of fighting a modern war.
Notice how in Star Trek, the warrior culture of the Klingons usually ends up harming the Klingon Empire on a regular basis.
Fuck off Morales, yr a disgrace to yourself and a stain on this community.
How so, indianajones?
Do tell.
You asked for it, you got it. One time you get this, one time.
Following the killing of a health insurance exec in the US, I advocated that were I to see the perpetrator, I would do nothing were I to spot him. I’d probably warn the guy he’d been spotted, but non-action is what I advocated for. You equated this to me being a fan of Kyle Rittenhouse. Fuck you forever for that.
I advocate that the new Pope do everything he can to improve the church so as to not be an evil swine. You then choose to spend 10 or so posts defending the minutiae of probably the most remarkably inane doctrinal rules of not only the RCC, but of anywhere at all. Sucking all of the oxygen out of what could have been a productive convo, with oh just about anyone else here really, about how the pope could improve the RCC, Which action of yours could only ever benefit the most evil parts of the RCC as an organisation. Fuck you forever for that. Also, you never did get that I was also mocking the remarkably stupid idea that a person has infallibility, limited (wtflol) or otherwise.
I offered to take a discussion that might have been going somewhere, with you, awhile back to a dead thread, so that neither of us looked like performative arseholes. Guess which you chose, you performative arsehole you.
You have defended, to me, your tactics, profligacy, and pedantry here on the grounds that ‘But people say stuff to me, I HAVE to reply WAAHH’ I’ve taught my primary school age and younger nieces and nephews better than that, you pre-childish buffoon.
I’ve seen you pooh pooh a story of heart breaking loss on the basis of grammar. Which, when I called you on it, you called at the time a commitment to truth, you pious, disingenuous (insert epithet here) you.
And that’s just a sampling, not a complete list, of your behaviour towards me. You have accused others here in this community of sympathising or even being worse than most of the worst people from either current events or history. Personally, and this aint my circus so I don’t get to choose which monkeys I tolerate, but if you accused me of stochastic terrorism, I’d ban you with a hearty fuck you forever. But that might be just me.
Citations not provided, because anyone who has been here for any reasonable amount of time will not be surprised by any of this and are probably familiar with several if not all of the examples given.
Fuck off Morales, yr a disgrace to yourself and a stain on this community.
None of that warrants your claim, indianajones. Tsk.
@ rvaen : .1. Hegseth seems to think we are still in the 12th century where warfare is large men with bows and arrows, swords, lances, and battle axes beating each other up from two feet.
Even back in those ancient times we had bisexual – queer – King David who the Israelis happily celebrate and his lover Prince Jonathan – and we know of many female warriors from many differnet cultures incl the ancient Celts, Scythians,. Amazons- both mythical eg Hippolyta* and, apparently real, sighted by first European to journey down the eponymous river and name it for them. There’s fampously Queen Boudicca / Boadiccea, oh and, of course, Alexander the Great and his lover Hephaestion. Even all the way back to the Odyssey where there was Achilles and Patroclus…
I wodner if Kegsbreath will try to rename the respective asteroids named for them?
.* Reckon Kegsbreath has heard of the Maeneads or Euripides play The Bacchae?
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bacchae
FWIW there’s several naval vessels named after Achilles already including a British submarine under construction :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Achilles_(S125)
An armoured frigate :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Achilles_(1863)
Plus a Kiwi World War II light cruiser (another name Kegsbreath probly wants to change..) that had what we’d now call a drone but was then called a Queen Bee :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMNZS_Achilles
Source :
@StevoR, 47.
I mean we’re up to 5 HMAS Sydney’s.
And Beagle 2 went to Mars, even if the she wasn’t actually a Royal Navy ship so…
Among others :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Achilles
Plus with the, um, singular (?!) variant of Achille too. Plus there’s a vessel named after Patroclus which was an armed merchant cruiser – at least breifly before she went down. See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Patroclus_(1923)
Therre’s also ships named Amazon and for the Maenads too although with the former its hard to say whether after the river or eponymous warriors and Alexander (incl the Great), of course, is the common name that a few battleships including the one of the Russian pre-dreadnaughts that had literally one of the worst trips ever before being sunk by the Japanese at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 – albiet that one was named after a pre-Putin Tsar.(Highly recoomend Drachinfel’s YT channel’s The Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron – Voyage of the Damned clips on that..)
Then there’s David’s Sling – an Israeli missile with the also rather suggestive name of Magic Wand, I kid you not :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling
Clearly their sexuality ain’t an issue for naming military things~wise after them atleats for rational people unlike the obvs insecure, too easily offended, chickenhawk-y, bigoted and generally weird AF Kegsbreath & co..
@ 27 & 29. Trump enabler & voter beholder : I presume you – incorrectly of course – are referring to the USA’s military as “..the most dangerous terrorist organization on the planet”* and yet YOU helped make them far worse, better funded and less restrained and helped inflict Far Worse Genocide Don upon us all for a second term despite being clearly warned. You helped put Pete Keg’sbreath in charge here by attacking and undermining her thus helping him last year.
You then use incidents of war crimes Israel has recently committed as if those were carried out by the USA which is simply false. The USA’s military has responsibility for its actions, Israel’s military has responsibility for its action and those are separate things. You seem wilfully incapable of seeing that they are different things and, typically of you, you blame the wrong people and make things worse by your lack of thought and ethics
You do realise that under Kamala Harris there’s zero chance Kegsbreath would be Secretary of Defence. That with her not him in power, he’d still just be a particularly obnoxious drunken Faux news talking head. Oh and Trump would be going to jail where he belongs and thousands of innocents Gazans that you once falsely claimed to care about would still be alive not killed by Netanyahu’s preferred POTUS, Trump.
I’m sure everyone knows who I think should be banned from this blog and it ain’t John Morales. It’s beholder, for reasons summed up here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/02/whos-that-peeping-out-of-the-aporia-web-page/comment-page-1/#comment-2267134
.* National Militaries are not classified as “terrorist organisations” and nor should they be. They are necessary, accountable to (generally) legitimate leaders have oversight and responsibilities and ethical rules they abide by. They do NOT generally seek to kill civilians as actual terrorists do.. They perform a variety of other roles including disaster relief. Are you saying that PZ Myers’ son – who serves in the military – is a “terrorist?” That my serving or formerly having served family and friends in the (Australian) military are somehow “terrorists?” What a laughable obscenity of a position to take.
@32. John Morales : “I reckon naming an oiler U.S.S. Burned To Death In My Hospital Bed might not be the best for its crew’s morale.”
Also that and most of the other suggestions in this thread are just a tad on the overly long side. Definitely a disadvantage when communicating in battle situations alto’ certain they be acronymn-ised or otherwise shortened in practice.
indianajones @ #45
As well as HMS’ Violent Vicious and Vindictive, one should remember HMS’ Pansy, Petunia and Penstemon.
Speaking of ship names, Pedro Molina tops them all:
https://featureassets.gocomics.com/assets/62c275e023c6013ea368005056a9545d?optimizer=image&width=992&quality=85
@52 Can’t argue with that, tis true.