Two professional sports teams in Washington, D.C., have intolerable names: the Redskins and the Nationals.
The Redskins name is disgusting racism that recalls the nation’s original genocidal sin, a crime that carries over to today’s naming of weapons and operations after various Native Americans and treating other groups of people as valueless.
But I for one find it easier to imagine a crowd of Redskins fans as ignorant and oblivious — which is really the best you can hope to imagine a crowd to be. They aren’t consciously advocating genocide. Most of them have never stopped to think how they would respond as a white minority to a team called The Fighting Whities, but they also aren’t thinking about racial superiority. They’re thinking “I want OUR team to beat the other team,” and having identified themselves with the team, they just accept its name like they accept their own names regardless of how evil King David or whomever they’re named for was.
The Nationals, on the other hand, are part of the promotion of the worst crimes our society is currently engaged in. A National’s game is packed, inning after inning, with songs and cheers and announcements promoting war. Fans are told that the U.S. Navy is “keeping the world’s oceans safe and free” — and they stand and cheer for that, even as the U.S. Navy and Army and Air Force and Marines and assorted special forces and mercenaries and CIA kill, and kill, and kill, building hostility around the world.
“I’m proud to be an American because at least I know I’m free,” they hear and sing. How do they know they’re free? How does an ocean know it’s free? What in the world are they talking about? This nation lacks civil liberties and human rights found elsewhere, and we lose more rights with every war. Where’s our Fourth Amendment? Our First Amendment? Where are Roosevelt’s freedoms from fear and want? Polluting the world’s oceans with death machines that launch missiles into people’s houses doesn’t make us or the fish or the people murdered “free.”
Can we imagine Nationals’ fans as oblivious? Do they not know that the world doesn’t appreciate being kept “free”? Do they suppose that wars really benefit people? Do they not know what was done to Iraq? Maybe, but I for one find it a greater strain to imagine. The uniformed killers are right there, being honored, singing songs. And the team is named for the concept that 5% of humanity should be identified with over the other 95%. There’s not an enlightened way to do that, and as long as we imagine there to be we’ll remain as ignorant and destructive as jackasses who paint their faces red and stick feathers on their heads to go to football games. In fact, we might be worse.