In his embarrassing ramble in front of hundreds of generals and admirals at DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth’s personal testosterone fest Tuesday, Donald Trump glancingly endorsed Hegseth’s celebration of the Seventh Cavalry butchers of the Wounded Knee Massacre:
Together, we’re reawakening the warrior spirit, and this is a spirit that won and built this nation. And from the cavalry that tamed the Great Plains to the ferocious and yielding power of Patton Bradley and the great General Douglas MacArthur, these are all great men [Donald Trump, remarks in front of military leaders at Quantico, 2025.09.30, transcribed by Rev].
Our brothers in resistance at the World Socialist Web Site recognize the danger in our dictator’s celebration of past war crimes:
Hegseth’s announcement must be taken as a warning: An administration that is willing to proclaim as heroes the perpetrators of one of the most ghastly war crimes in American history is prepared to repeat such crimes, and worse, in the present.
…Hegseth’s declaration is akin to the Trump administration’s rehabilitation of the military “heroes” of the Confederate States of America who waged a bitter counterrevolutionary war to preserve slavery in the 1860s, including General Robert E. Lee. Hegseth wishes to proclaim the most heinous and shameful acts of oppression heroic by administrative fiat.
The Trump administration’s unapologetic glorification of the Wounded Knee perpetrators arrives amid calls from Hegseth for a revival of the American “warrior ethos.” Hegseth’s meeting with the nation’s generals and admirals, charged with imparting the lessons of this “ethos” to the officer corps, is a chilling effort to recast the slaughter of civilians and the trampling of democratic rights as honored military traditions. Today, as the administration deploys federal forces to American cities and authorizes “full force” against protesters, the Army is being explicitly taught to look back upon acts like Wounded Knee not as crimes, but as examples.
Hegseth’s celebration of the Wounded Knee medals serves as a warning to the working class and oppressed everywhere. The American military leadership is being instructed not to shrink from the “necessity” of mass repression, but to embrace it—at home as well as in distant lands. The lessons of Wounded Knee are not consigned to the past, but must be urgently recalled as a present danger [Tom Mackaman, “Trump Administration Celebrates the Perpetrators of the Wounded Knee Massacre,” World Socialist Web Site, 2025.09.29].
The past is prologue. Trump’s celebration of the Wounded Knee Massacre is a preview of massacres to come.
I really hope these clown show speeches were a publicly broadcasted stunt to throw off the enemies and that there were actually constructive secret meetings that took place too.
But I live in a fantasy world where America is led by leaders with integrity and true desire to spread good throughout the world and uplift the lives of all people. Knock some sense into me.
Thomas Matthew Crooks could have learned a little something from Tyler Robinson, innit?