TBH I did not know he was a Blackwater mercenary. News keeps calling him a Marine, which I don't think is the same thing.

That would have been a dealbreaker for me, but then I'm not a Mainer and did not do much diligent research about him.

ETA Ten years ago, I wrote a blogpiece discussing the Are We The Baddies skit by Mitchell & Webb, observing Skulls in military symbolism are actually not particularly odd, as indicators of toughness and ferocity... Skulls were a tradition of mobile units, first cavalry and later mechanized and air units as a symbol of their ferocity.

So when Platner allegedly had buyers remorse regarding a tat that he got in the service when he was a front-line rifleman, I could sympathize. I am lucky that the stupid things I did as a youth left no permanent record. (The internet never forgets, and I have plenty of bad takes still buried out there from my adult years.)