Let’s review: “redskins” is a pejorative for “Native Americans,” right? I’ve always understood it to be disrespectful, at least. About the only time I ever heard it used was in films, where the White People had all the dialogue and the “redskins” were extras who were very skilled at falling gracefully out of trees or off their galloping horses whenever the White People shot rifles in their direction. In context, “redskins” never seemed complimentary.

There are some who disagree, saying it is just slang. But most pejoratives were “just slang” until the group who felt disparaged by the slang spoke up about it.

Some guy at the Washington Post writes that it’s just as bad for the military to name helicopters after Native American ethnic groups — Apache, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota, Cheyenne — or even people, Black Hawk. “Why do we name our battles and weapons after people we have vanquished?” he asks.

To which I ask, who’s “we”? Are “we” not all Americans? I don’t keep up with these things, but I know they used to name tanks after generals — Pershing, Sherman, Sheridan. Thinking of Sherman’s march to the sea makes “Sherman” an especially appropriate tank name. They used to name battleships after states. Aircraft carriers are named for Presidents. I know enough about the military to know that the military guys don’t name their “stuff” after people they think are losers. Names are supposed to evoke something that’s, you know, fierce and warrior-ish. I thought it was supposed to be an honor to have some military thingie named after one.

For that matter, Sherman himself was William Tecumseh Sherman. He originally was just Tecumseh Sherman, but his stepfather added the William when Crazy Bill was eight or nine, as I recall.

OK, so if we’re going to assume that any use of an ethnic or tribal name is supposed to be a slur, let’s talk about the Minnesota Vikings or the Boston Celtics. Josh Marshall brought this up a few days ago; I regret I don’t have a link to that. I suppose Vikings aren’t around to object. As a Celtic-American I have no issue with “Celtic” as a team name, however. It could have been worse — the Boston Paddies?

But I could do without the leprechaun mascot. Leprechauns irritate me. Lucky Charms commercials make me cringe. There are all kinds of fierce and warrior-ish characters in Irish history and myth. Why is it always leprechauns?

Anyway — seems to me the name “redskins” is intrinsically belittling. It began as a slur and it’s always been a slur. Just because some people weren’t sensitive to their own racism doesn’t mean it wasn’t a slur. So what about the Kansas City Chiefs? Sometimes “chief” is used as a kind of put-down. But the word also carries a connotation of authority and dominance.

Anyway, the Washington Post guy speaks of the Native American groups/tribes/nations in the past tense, and says, “If the native tribes did not stand a chance, this does not imply lack of resistance or of courage; regardless, it doesn’t much matter in this context. Whatever courage they had, the U.S. military is not heir to it.” Perhaps not, but members of “native tribes” (I’m not sure “tribes” is the right word) are still here and have served in the U.S. military for some time. Do we not need to get past the idea that all institutions belong by default to White People unless stated otherwise?

I may be getting myself in trouble here. This guy quotes Noam Chomsky, “We might react differently if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes ‘Jew’ and ‘Gypsy.’ ” But they wouldn’t have, because the military guys don’t name their stuff after people they hold in contempt. They just don’t.

For that matter, not even the Irish want to go into a terrible battle in something called The Cute Little Leprechaun. They want to be in something called The Cú Chulainn or The Fionn mac Cumhaill. Fierce. Warrior-ish. Proud.

Update: The CC Patrol (CC=Conservative Correctness”) are responding to the op-ed as if the author of the Washington Post piece speaks for all liberals. No, dears, it’s one guy, and I don’t know that he speaks for ANY liberals. He doesn’t speak for this one, and I’m not sure how “liberal” the author is himself. In a lot of ways he still seems caught up in the white privilege trap of assuming whiteness as the default norm.

You absolutely must put your coffee/soft drink aside and take a bathroom break before reading this. Otherwise I am not responsible for the consequences.

1. Nixon kept the Vietnam War going for his own political ends. OK, I already knew this, but now there is stronger evidence he de-railed peace talks in 1968 so that the war wouldn’t end before the elections.

2. Joe Nocera reports that the wingnuts are making dissolution of the Export-Import Bank their next “pinata.” The Export-Import bank costs the taxpayers no money and protects jobs by promoting exports, but it’s still too much like socialism, or something, to appease the baggers.

3. There is astonishing silence (well, with some exceptions) on the Right about Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas. However, there is some pushback against Paul Waldmans’ carefully reasoned argument that right-wing rhetoric incited the shooting. See Digby and Steve M for pushback on the pushback.

4. This is a terribly sad story about two people who fell in love and got married — in Pakistan.

5. The rightie hate swarm goons have been attacking Bowe Bergdahl’s home town with a vengeance. John Cole writes,

And where do these warpigs think they are going to find their next warm bodies to run through a meat grinder? Small towns like Hailey, Bethany, and every other town like us in the country. You can be damned sure people are going to be thinking twice after watching this reaction to bringing one of ours home. Who the fuck is going to sign up to get blown up in some meatgrinder when you know the Republicans sending you there under a lie aren’t going to fund the medical care you need and will then shit all over you, your family, and your town if it helps their political agenda?

I used to think that if I had kids, I would want all of them to go into the military. Do a stint in the Air Force or Navy, see the world. Fuck that noise. I’m not having any kids, but I would tell any kid from 17-21 to stay as far away from the military as is humanly possible. If me from 1989 was thinking about the military and watched what has happened the last decade, my attitude would be “Fuck that shit. My shit’s fucked up but I want all my limbs and don’t want my parents being called traitors.” Not to mention, we used to believe in not leaving people behind, even if Sean Hannity didn’t like their dad’s beard. The only possible outcome to military service is negative, these days, unless you are higher level brass.

BONUS: Two Things I Already Knew

George Will and Tucker Carlson are assholes.

There’s a famous quote by Upton Sinclair, It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. I’m adding corollaries: It’s difficult to get someone to perceive bigotry when his own bigotry depends on not perceiving it. And, it’s difficult to get someone to perceive reality when his ideologies depend on reality not being real.

Along those lines, wingnuts for the past few years have been babbling about the great things Chris Christie has done for New Jersey and Scott Walker has done for Wisconsin. But it’s all air. Elias Isquith:

In part because the New Jersey economy has performed so poorly during Christie’s tenure (it’s ranked 48th in the country in private-sector job creation, tied with the economic powerhouse known as Mississippi), the state’s finances, which Christie used to brag about fixing, are in utter disarray. Its debt, for example, has been downgraded by Wall Street rating agencies six times under his leadership — three times in 2014 alone. Christie now faces a budget gap for this and the coming fiscal year that is nearly $3 billion; and because the state constitution mandates that the government balance the budget by June 30, Christie has now been forced to find the money by reneging on a key part of his landmark pension reform agreement, taking funds that were supposed to go toward public workers’ pensions and using them to fill the budget gaps instead.

Remember, he began his tenure by halting a tunnel project that had already begun and for which the state had received millions of federal dollars the feds then wanted back. He’s been killing one job after another and screwing state finances since he took office.

Trying to tie down factual job growth data appears to be like trying to catch lightning in a bottle, particularly since so many media outlets reporting it clearly are spinning for somebody, and looking at raw numbers from any one particular month can be deceptive. Still, if a politican (say, a governor) gets elected by claiming that he would bring 250,000 jobs to his state (say, Wisconsin), and as his first term draws to an end it appears fewer than half of those jobs actually materialized, and the governor (say, Scott Walker) tries to fudge by claiming that 17,000 new businesses that are hiring people were begun during his tenure, and it turns out he’s getting the 17,000 number by counting Scout Troops and condo associations, then I’d say he failed. One could argue that governors really can’t do much to create jobs, but then all that nonsense about busting public employee unions and laying off teachers was justified by promises that, somehow, this would grow jobs. Eventually. Magically. Maybe it would at least appease the Fiscal Austerity Fairy.

Elsewhere, the meme has thoroughly taken hold in Wingnut World that the Isla Vista shootings can’t be blamed on misogyny because the shooter was mentally ill. I’ve already explained why this is a bogus argument, but it’s an argument fervently embraced largely by men who appear to share some of Rodger’s social pathologies. No amount of logic or factual argument will get them so see otherwise, and anyone who so much as mentions misogyny is immediately accused of misandry. Misandry is the misogynists’ new favorite word this week. It is their new security blanket.

Brad DeLong is publishing The Daily Picketty, linking to people debunking Chris Giles’s “debunking” of Thomas Picketty. “I still do not understand what Chris Giles of the Financial Times thinks he is doing here…” Brad DeLong says. But Paul Krugman says it’s just standard inequality denial. Truly, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Eh, Chris Giles?

On a different note — I’m so pleased My Book got its first customer review! Was that you, Swami? I hope that if anyone else has managed to slog through the thing and can say something nice about it, please put this on Amazon. If you didn’t like it, though, please keep it to yourself. 🙂

I’m in my usual end-of-the-month crunch mode, so here are some links to tide you over:

First, by Charles Pierce, “The Passion of Big Chicken: The Pensioning.” The latest sleaze on Chris Christie.

Then, see Digby, “Scott Walker is falling apart: The little corruption problem he just can’t shake.” Juicy.

I’d like to write commentary on Roger Cohen’s “Captalism Eatng Its Children” but there’s no time, so I’ll link to it and maybe get back to it later.

This is a new game I’m proposing — Where Are Their Heads? This is an easy game, along the lines of the great game for the drunk or stoned, Find Your Feet. That one’s fun for babies, too.

First round — The Taxi and Limousine Commission has suspended the license of a New York cab driver because he was wearing a Nazi arm band on the job. The guy says he is a true blue National Socialist and has a right to wear the arm band, and I suppose he does, but that doesn’t mean the Taxi and Limousine Commission didn’t have authority to suspend his ass for offending the customers.

Here’s the thing — we’re not talking about a skinhead white supremacist. The suspended cabbie, Gabriel Diaz, is African American.

Where is his head?

Second round — Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) is facing a primary challenge from a teabagger named Chris McDaniel. Sen. Cochran’s wife has long been debilitated by dementia and has been in a nursing home since 2000. McDaniel has accused Cochran of having an affair, possibly with a staffer.

(Cochran is 76 and his wife has been hospitalized for 14 years and is said to be in an advanced vegetative state, and frankly if he were in a discrete relationship with another lady it’s nobody’s damn business. Have some humanity, people. But whether he is or not hasn’t been proved.)

Some whackjob teabagger blogger named Clayton Thomas Kelly is a supporter of McDaniel, and to “help” his candidate he broke into the nursing home, made a video of Mrs. Cochran, and posted it on his blog. He has been arrested and the blog post deleted. But even if what he did weren’t illegal, how was that supposed to help McDaniel? I understand this was supposed to support the affair theory, but WTF?

Where is his head?

Bonus points — McDaniel and his campaign manager have been telling different stories about when McDaniel knew about the incident. This is the big league, guys; the first rule is to keep your stories straight. Where are their heads?

I’m just not up for Tales of the Stupid today. Please feel free to comment on whatever though.

FYI, you can watch the first episode of John Oliver’s HBO show on YouTube.

I just finished a first draft of the last chapter, which means I have a complete first draft of The Book. I may actually be done with it someday. And it’s just over 61,000 words. I started out to write 20,000. Sigh.

One of our own has passed. See more.

This was something I needed to see this morning, and I thought some of you might need to see it, too.