I’m back after another weekend in the garden, this time a wet one because I’m racing against time to get all my veg planted outside, and the weather was not kind to me last week at all. Oh, the challenges of gardening in the UK weather. On the good news front, I made good progress despite getting wet. I was reminded that AI is never far away, even when you escape to the garden. I was kept company by my neighbour’s new robot lawnmower that was clearly having some difficulty mapping his lawn. It did, however, provide some light entertainment on a damp weekend in Yorkshire.
Alas, my return to the chaos was met by the vile utterings of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s abhorrent rhetoric in Normandy, as he disrespected those who made the ultimate sacrifice, who were no doubt turning in their meticulously maintained graves in Europe. It is difficult for me to articulate just how deeply disturbing and thoughtless Hegseth's words were; for reference, I have included them below.
It’s difficult to know where to start unpicking the utterly disrespectful, false narrative he was attempting to sell at an event meant to pay respects to those who gave their lives to protect the world from the very type of regime he was representing, on what should have been an opportunity to honour their sacrifice.
Perhaps before I continue, we should read together the words of Laurence Binyon, published in The London Times in 1914? While not created in response to D-Day, they have long represented the anthem that pays respect to the fallen and the sacrifice they made so that we may enjoy freedom from tyranny.
For the Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Hegseth’s words will go down in history as a moment when even those who fell in the service of our freedoms became just another prop to advance the nationalist imperial ambitions of a corrupt regime intent on waging a holy war on a religion that makes up 25.6% of the global faith map. Make no mistake, the invaders he speaks of in his white audience are Muslims. The Trump administration’s alliance and proposed integration with the Israeli military is a very deliberate holy alliance on a crusade to impose Judeo-Christian nationalism on the world.
We are watching in real time as this cancer is being exported to Europe. There is no better example than in Britain, with Reform UK and their deliberate adoption of bastardised ‘Christian values’ to oppose abortion, their promotion of cryptocurrency, the fossil fuel and private health insurance industry, and, of course, their policies to stop immigration and promote mass deportation. It is an unashamed attempt to import Trumpism to Britain, the nation that Hitler never conquered.
The sickening words by Hegseth echoed around the carefully tended graves of fallen heroes who fought side by side, black, white, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jew and non-believers, in one common goal, to defeat fascism. World War II was not a holy war; it was a fight for the survival of democracy against tyranny. Men, women, gay, and straight had one common goal: to create a world where the will of the people prevailed and not the will of a dictator. Hegseth’s words were the very antithesis of that noble goal:
“ .. today, different European Beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not and I believe not.
The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe. That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters, or what they fought for was merely temporary.”
His words were chosen very carefully; this was not an off-script moment; it was a deliberate assertion of the tried and tested ‘men of fighting age’ narrative that accompanies this divisive rhetoric. It plays alongside the baseless immigrant crime rhetoric, together with the immigrant sexual predator narrative. It harks back to the image of black men in the days of segregation and the justification for lynching. It’s an age-old, tested playbook that plays into the fear of ‘the other’.
Men and women of all political and faith persuasions fought fascism with one common goal. To halt the march of fascism. His words, aside from being beyond abhorrent, reflect the fact that he has worked tirelessly to erase the achievements of black and other ethnic groups, along with women, who put on the uniform to fight the same enemy that has now occupied America from within.
In 2015, the world bore witness to the tragedy of so-called illegal immigration with the image above of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body face down on a Turkish beach. The waves animated his lifeless body like litter on the beach of a world where humanity had left the building. Eleven other Syrians had died on the same boat journey - including Alan's four-year-old brother Ghalib and their mother Rehanna. Alan, his brother and his mother were not men of fighting age, criminals, or rapists; they were victims of Western nations’ obsession with war and power. For just 24 hours, the world woke up to the tragedy of what Hegseth deliberately describes as an invasion in line with the Trump assertion of European civilisational erasure. Then life went on despite the image being repeated again and again. After a while, nobody notices the litter in the street; it’s just accepted as normal.
The only thing Alan’s tragic death demonstrated is that his life had no value because he committed the crime of being born in a country torn apart by civil war. According to the Trump regime, the endless sanctions and armed interventions by the US and its allies are no excuse for fleeing to try and find a better life elsewhere. You simply have to ask yourself: What would I do to secure a better future for my family in times of war?
Who among us would not flee danger? Indeed, in the Luftwaffe’s relentless attacks on Britain in World War II, children were evacuated from big cities, while persecuted Jews were provided refuge from Nazi persecution around the world. Indeed, even today, Americans are fleeing America in record numbers. In a report by the UK Independent by Josh Marcus on May 13th 2026, he notes:
Americans appear to be leaving the U.S. at once-in-a-century levels, fleeing divisive politics and a cost-of-living crisis.
In 2025, the flow of Americans ditching the 50 states for good caused the first estimated net outward migration of the U.S. population in decades, something that likely hasn’t happened since the 1929 Great Depression.
If you want to take a more detailed look at the outflow, you might want to read the article by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on February 26th, 2026, to which I have provided a non-paywalled link here. They note:
The new American dream, for some of its citizens, is to no longer live there.
Is anyone pointing the finger at these immigrants? I think not. The only difference is that they are fleeing the world's largest economy and have the means to do so. Unlike Alan Kurdi and his family, who were fleeing civil war in Syria.
The Journal report goes on:
More than 100,000 young students are enrolled abroad for a more affordable university degree. In nursing homes mushrooming across the Mexican border, elderly Americans are turning up for low-cost care.
What a difference opportunity provides in a world where their own country’s foreign policy is FORCING people to seek a better life. Trump talks about two-tier this and two-tier that, while he constantly plays the victim card. Yet he claims America is the victim of immigrants often fleeing the wars the US has decided to start or, at the very least, intervene in.
It really is time for Americans to stop taking the Trump narcotics he sends Vance and Hegseth to sell to Europe at every available opportunity. It’s not enough that the vulnerable are forced to flee conflict and persecution; he then suggests they are persecuted further by the countries in which they arrive, deeming them ‘the worst of the worst’, criminals and rapists. There is no suggestion whatsoever that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than the wider population. It’s just one in another list of components that the right uses to construct its relentless racist narrative. These include, of course, stealing jobs and free-riding on state benefits.
To be clear, I am NOT advocating for open borders; these help nobody, including those who are fleeing persecution. This assertion of open borders has long been a right-wing electioneering imperative for the far right. It’s a vote winner, and as a result, there has historically been little interest in comprehensive immigration reform, which is what is required. There is a good reason Trump is using executive action to act as a shadow immigration legislative agenda. The expectation is that Democrats will rescind his immigration agenda, thus fueling the next election campaign.
Until there is meaningful immigration reform, we will just see a rinse-and-repeat cycle, and the longstanding political culture wars will be perpetuated. The truth of the matter is that the US is a nation of immigrants who have played a major role in the country's success. Given that the current birth rate is below the number to sustain the US economy without immigration, all the anti abortion laws in the world will have little impact downstream when it comes to supporting seniors.
It’s already been established that mass deportation is a catastrophic self-inflicted economic wound; one can only assume that the regime believes that AI will fill the gap. If that’s the assumption, it’s a huge miscalculation. Until the West as a whole takes responsibility for its contribution to mass displacement, there will be no solution found, just more predictable exploitation and abuse.
Kegsbreath is a dangerous embarrassment
PH strives for strength and time and time again displays his ignorance. We rise up to fight such ignorance.