Dispatches from the Culture Wars - Seeing Red edition

Redskins Name Soon to be Retired; First Native America Woman Nominated to Federal Bench; Young Intellectuals Rescue Marx; Government Shut Down Because Civil War Never Ended; Tom Clancy's World-View

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The Redskins are Going to Change their Name Someday, So Deal With It,Photo: USA Today Sports

The Redskins are Going to Change their Name Someday, So Deal With It

By Chris Chase
October 8, 2013
USA Today

For years, the name-change debate failed to gain momentum despite repeated attempts - most notably from The Washington Post -- to move it forward. That's changed in the past 10 months thanks to a combination of the team's 2012 resurgence under Robert Griffin III, respected media members refusing to use "Redskins," increased attention in the non-sporting press and President Obama's recent equivocal statement about the name.

Whether you think the name is an outrage or that the debate is a contrived controversy is irrelevant. The name isn't going to last and likely will be changed soon.  The Redskins name will change sooner than you think - two or three years, tops. The franchise and the NFL have to realize they've lost control of the story and aren't getting it back. That opportunity has long passed.

President Obama Just Nominated the Very First Native American Woman For Federal Judge

By Maribel Hermosilla
October 1, 2013
PolicyMic

Diane J. Humetewa, a member of the Hopi tribe and former U.S. attorney in Arizona, has been nominated to serve on the U.S. District Court for the district of Arizona as a federal judge. If confirmed, she would be the first active member of a Native American reservation, and first Native American woman to serve as a federal judge. Not only would this bring more diversity to the federal bench, but Arizona's prominent Native community will finally be represented in a state that is infamous for ignoring Native issues.

Native American governing bodies notwithstanding, only 23 Native Americans have served in an elected office in the history of the United States. Yet, there are 5.2 million Native Americans living in the United States. Humetewa would only be the third Native American represented on the federal bench in the history of the United States if she is confirmed.

A Generation of Intellectuals Shaped by 2008 Crash Rescues Marx From History's Dustbin

By Michelle Goldberg
October 14, 2013
Tablet

It's too simple to say that Marxism is back, because it never truly went away. In the United States after the fall of the Berlin Wall, though, it was largely confined to university English departments, becoming the stuff of abstruse, inward-looking and jargon-choked cultural critique. Then came the economic crash, Occupy Wall Street, and the ongoing disaster of austerity in Europe. "Around the time of Occupy in particular, a lot of different kinds of lefties, working at mainstream or literary publications, sort of found each other, started talking to each other, and found out who was most interested in class politics," says Sarah Leonard, the 25-year-old associate editor of Dissent, the social-democratic journal founded almost 60 years ago by Irving Howe. "We have essentially found an old politics that makes sense now."

In the United States, of course, Marxism remains an intellectual current rather than a mass movement. Certainly, millennials are famously progressive; a much-discussed 2011 Pew poll found that 49 percent of people between 18 and 29 had a favorable view of socialism, while only 46 percent felt positively about capitalism. It's hard to say exactly what this means-it's not as if young people are sending Das Kapital racing up the best-seller lists or reconstituting communist cells. Still, it's been decades since so many young thinkers have been so engaged in imagining a social order not governed by the imperatives of the market.


Shutdown Shows the Civil War Never Ended

By Stephan Richter
October 7, 2013
Salon

One of the biggest hoaxes of American history is that the Civil War ended back in 1865. Unfortunately, it has not ended yet. What was achieved back then was an armistice, similar to the situation between the two Koreas. As the current logjam in the U.S. Congress makes plain, the Civil War is still very present in today's America - and with virulence that most other civilized nations find as breathtaking as it is irresponsible.

The reason why the Civil War was declared finished, according to the history books, is the military defeat of the South and its secessionist forces. But can anyone seriously doubt that the same anti-Union spirit is still to be heard loud and clear in the halls of the U.S. Congress today?

The fight against Obamacare is cast by Republicans as fighting the authoritarian - and, in the words of some conservative commentators, "fascist" - views of the Obama Administration and what they label as the American left. But what is really going on in Washington today is a replay of the Kulturkampf, a period of German history that occurred in the 1870s. We are largely dealing with a battle over redistributing shares of economic power, covered up in the clothing of cultural values. That is why it is so bitterly fought.  The proper way to understand the slavery issue as well as the health care law, therefore, is to see them as symbols of much deeper conflicts. To either side, the entire future of the country is at stake.


Tom Clancy Is Dead, But His Frightening Political Worldview Is Alive and Well

By Isaac Chotiner
October 2, 2013
New Republic

The easiest point to make about Tom Clancy, who died on Tuesday at the age of 66, is that he was a mediocre writer who penned books with noxious political messages. But he was more interesting than that, even if only as a totemic cultural figure. Clancy will be best remembered for the series of books he wrote about Jack Ryan, the C.I.A. agent from his creator's hometown of Baltimore who eventually becomes president of the United States. (Don't ask.)

Clancy's politics can best be described as Rambo-esque: The blame for American military defeat can best be laid at the feet of pointy-headed intellectuals and the media; America would be a better and stronger country if we would just let our tough guys take care of business; America is a great place, but government bureaucrats hold us back. The key difference was that Rambo was somewhat of a counter-cultural figure, with his long hair and alternative lifestyle. Clancy's heroes are basically boring, straight, all-Americans. (Jack Ryan is jokingly referred to as a "boy-scout".)  The popularity of Clancy and his books show that this sort of thinking is disturbingly widespread.