By Sidney Secular
May 17, 2022
The sagging saga of “the Washington Football Team” – now renamed “The Commanders” but still fondly called by many fans “the Redskins” – is one of long-term decline in on-field performance aggravated and exacerbated by the team ownership succumbing to political correctness and silly sensibilities! The former “Redskins” are a prime example of the type of thing that is ruining our traditions, our history and our culture.
Redskins team owner and billionaire Dan Snyder proclaimed in 2013, “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple!NEVER! You can use caps!” said “Dan The Man” when pressure was starting to be applied upon him by the usual suspects to change the name of his football team because, supposedly,it was derogatory to “Native Americans.” All sports teams around that time that had names and/or mottoes associated with American Indians were feeling the same pressure and sooner or later, they all succumbed to that pressure as the Left eventually gets its way in such matters. Why does the Left wage such campaigns? Because its adherents believe they are morally superior to all who hold other beliefs and as a result, their modus operandi is to push, and continue to push, taking two or three steps forward for everyhalf-step back when opposed. This inevitably results in a victory for the Left and losses for their conservative opponents!Even those opponents who are not political but who disagree with the Left’s agenda are never sufficiently persistent to prevail but eventually give in, thus making the next contest a sure-fire win for the enemies of civilization!
Of course, it is possible that conservatives doubted their positions in these matters in the first place as the controlling zeitgeist keeps whittling away at all the enemies of the left, making them feel unsure and insecure in their steadfastness of their own beliefs. Or maybe such idiocy simply wears out the intelligent and rational! For instance, many years ago, there was a test that placed professional football players into a room with preschoolers. The players were instructed to physically do what the babies did as often and for as long a time as they did it.Within a very few hours, the athletes were exhausted while the kids were just getting started! There is something about continually doing stupid things for long periods of time that can wear out the bravest and the best. Opposing liberals is just such a scenario.
Of course, Snyder reneged on his promise during what seemed like America’s death throes during the summer of 2020 when the Redskins venerable and beloved name was dragged through the mud with ceaseless sassing from the politically correct creeps crowding the DC landscape and the handful of “Native American” malcontents who would oppose anything the average American would consider sacrosanct and, by the way, done in honor of those same “Native Americans” as was the case with the name “Redskins.” The now suddenly appalling appellation of which the iconic team had been proud since 1933 was replaced by the place holder designation, “The Washington Football Team” an enfeebled name inspiring neither motivation nor passion.
An embarrassingly awkward botched roll-out of the name in February resulted in the team now being called “The Commanders.” This, in turn, has united the fans in lowering their esteem of the franchise and leaving them wondering just what is being commanded and by whom. With the old fight song and motto gone, the starch, too, has been taken out of the previous staunch and zealous fan support. Even more odd, the new mascot, “General Custer” is a study in stupidity as the choice celebrates a man who was doing his best to kill off the Indians! Perhaps Custer was chosen because the Indians (Native Americans) who are now ostensibly being feted, turned the tables with this particular soldier and defeated him! Furthermore, the fact that Custer botched his final assignment as a “commander” seems to presage a rather dark vision of the team so named regarding their future performances.
Adding an unpleasant impetus to the perception that the Commanders are off to less than a commanding start, allegations of financial improprieties are being leveled by the Attorney General of Virginia against the team that trains in the Old Dominion. Allegations of sexual improprieties by Snyder himself are also now being made by the team cheerleaders. And in yet another senseless innovation made (apparently) without considering the “optics” involved, the team now sports atrocious-looking black alternate jerseys for no apparent reason though it is not without possibility that the choice may have been made in order to grovel to the Black Adoration Movement! Parenthetically,the jerseys could (should) have retained if only as trimming, an attractive combination of burgundy and gold, the team’s traditional colors.
The team seems likely to extend its fall with another disgraceful sub-par under-11-win season. At present they have an unbelievable ongoing streak of 29 such seasons to their “credit.” Yet, they are graced in having a stadium for which The FedEx Company continues to pay in exchange for naming rights and they can also be “thankful” that the sports symbol of political correctness, Nike, will continue to sell Washington football gear. If you’re not from the DC area or not a football fan, it is difficult to appreciate the ardor and fanaticism local fans funnel into their team worship. But you can feel it even though you are divorced from it. Indeed, at least half the TVs in the area are tuned into a Washington game whenever the team plays, especially if it’s on a Sunday.
The “Skins” – as they are still politically incorrectly called – attract nearly all the locals who act as if they had skin in the game. The beloved Washington “Whatevers” bring one and all whatever their backgrounds and persuasions, together into a sort of harmony even though otherwise and at other times all the local perversity of diversity and political game-playing causes people to be contrary and at loggerheads. To have this civic institution gutted by the gods of political correctness and the cowardice and greed of the team’s corporate partners is a true tragedy for the region and the snide Snyder should have realized this and taken it into account before he was stampeded into infamy.
To the less than commanding owner of the team and all of the nation’s elite, there’s almost no tradition or symbol that can’t be jettisoned or society despoiled if there’s money or prestige or even personal convenience at stake. The recent changes made by the Washington football team were essentially meaningless and were made merely to align with the current cultural fashions. The references to “racism” and Indian names being derogatory to the culture of the “Native American” have no basis at all in fact, but they were a convenient creation used to illustrate and reinforce the chimera of “white privilege.” We know this to be the case because Native Americans themselves have testified that to see a team carry the image and name of their people can hardly be seen as an “insult!”
But with the Washington team, the logo has an even more amazing history. Washington’s logo has been an Indian chief since 1971. It was designed by Native American Walter “Blackie” Wetzel to depict a member of the Blackfoot tribe. Wetzel grew up on a Blackfoot reservation in Montana and was elected President of the National Congress of American Indians in Washington, DC. He was instrumental in the Redskins franchise logo change from the capital letter “R” to the depiction of an Indian. According to Wetzel’s son, Lance, the logo is not offensive but evokes a sense of pride. In speaking about the change, Wetzel said: “Everyone is pretty upset . . .Once they weren’t going to use the logo, it was hard. It takes away from the Native Americans. When I see that logo, I take pride in it. You look at the depiction of the Redskins’ logo and it’s of a true Native American. I always felt it was representing my people.” As an interesting aside in this matter, the Redskins’ logo is a portrait of John “Two Guns” White Calf, a Blackfoot Chief who also appears on the buffalo nickel. Will they now recall the nickel?
But the changes not only affected the supposedly “offended” Native Americans. They certainly did not sit well with the ordinary fans either. Where formerly and for many decades every seat in the stadium sold out for every single game assuring that businesses bought out batches of seats for years at a time, now the franchise’s attendance is second-to-last in the NFL with nothing to suggest that situation is going to improve anytime soon. But then, one has to wonder what was expected by choosing a name that is a by-word for failure as is the case with the DC “Commanders!” You might have something like the Johnstown Regatta, celebrating that city’s great floods or the Titanic Cruise Line, but most business folks would demur from such poor choices. Obviously, Mr. Snyder needs better advice in such matters than he has received to date.
With all that has transpired, there now is serious talk of moving the franchise back to DC or, in the alternative, that locus and focus of political correctness, Loudon County, Virginia and, in doing so, having the taxpayers pick up the tab for building a new stadium as if the Washington name was sufficient to garner greenbacks from the already tax-sacked taxpayers! Football teams everywhere seem to think their violent sport excites enough interest and, as a result,has the ability to interest local guvmints to support them with taxpayer money. Even also-rans like the hapless Buffalo Bills are running with this idea and they could be right. The violent video games people play instead of learning how to be good citizens may be sufficiently ingrained in the sheeple’s psyches to favor an exchange of their money in return for satisfying their craving for violence,albeit indirectly by increasing their taxes.
Getting back to our local DC team – whatever they are called– I have always felt that the “Deadskins” lacked the innovation and drive to become truly great. They would trade for a veteran player who was on his way out to help them win a single championship instead of cultivating younger talent for long term success as a winning dynasty. They had the money to follow the former strategy and so they did, which is akin to the strategies followed by most American companies; that is, they sacrifice long term success to achieve a short term goal, usually a financial killing. That is why the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese are surpassing us economically. The latter nations’ corporation concentrate on long term success.
Another faulty strategy of Washington is to give inordinate attention to their defensive squads to the detriment of their offensive squads. Both are necessary, of course, but it is a defeatist strategy because it demands that the opposing team fails to muster the offensive wherewithal to beat you. Thus, rather than winning, the team strategy is to, if possible, prevent losing! This way of thinking was especially noteworthy during the long tenure of coach George Allen who took it to extremes. Watching the Redskins those days induced extreme nail-biting as the fan could do nothing more than hope and pray the opposition would “screw up!” In other words, the team played “not to lose” rather than playing “to win,” the philosophy of iconic coach Vince Lombardi who simply proclaimed that winning was everything, no matter how achieved. This mindset, once a moral foundation is removed, eventually devolves into the idea that money or political correctness is everything because, bad as it is, it produces “victory.”
Now I am going to present a novel idea that hasn’t been developed elsewhere and could explain some things that hitherto are puzzling:the Washington “Deadskins” (a term employed when we just knew they would lose a particular game) and the Dallas Cowboys, being in the same division in the NFL, have had a long-standing and intense rivalry – more like a feud bordering on extreme animosity – and their games (that often determined the fate of their seasons) are notorious all over the country for their intensity. The Cowboys acquired the nickname, “America’s Team” over the years and their “image” has been used to represent middle America, also known as flyover country, “deplorable” country and, in a nutshell, the American spirit. On the other hand, the Redskins, being the team from the Federal den, Washington, DC, has taken on the mantle of the establishment, the Beltway crowd, the ruling “fatcats,” and, lately, the “Deep State.” This political dichotomy – now enshrined in the “red” vs. “blue” divergence – when tacked onto the acknowledged sports dichotomy makes for a potent drama complete with an undertone of a military clash not seen in other sports rivalries even in the most obvious of such whether it is the New York Yankees vs. the Boston Red Sox in baseball or Michigan vs. Ohio State in college football.
A further cultural phenomenon also to be noted is that the new team moniker, “The Commanders” can be claimed to represent the dominance and control of the Pentagon and the Military-Industrial complex anchored in the DC area over the national psyche, that is, those “represented” by Dallas – at least in the minds of many fans. The name “Commanders” can be seen as representing an addiction to power, gigantic budgets and now political correctness, regardless of the ability to win wars or maintain popularity – much like the Washington football team; that is, the team is as addicted to these same politically correct ideas and ideals quite apart from any help they might provide or damage they might do with regard to winning games or attracting fans.
The real question is this: is the new name for the Redskins – the Commanders – a political and cultural Freudian slip that acknowledges the triumph of political and military power over Native Americans? Or is it just another liberal bad choice! What do you think?
© 2022 Sidney Secular – All Rights Reserved
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