Some People Are Fools

To The Reader’s Forum:

If you want evidence that people are fools, the Jamestown sports nickname controversy is your perfect example. Raids are not nice things whether conducted by Senecas, Vikings, or people of any skin color. But no one is the least upset about the “raider” part of the name.

Emotionally aroused sports fans aren’t strong on philosophy or complex reasoning and sports aren’t about social justice, everybody achieving the same outcome. Sports are about winning and losing, defeat and victory, us and them. They are a toy world of make believe war. In real war you hate your enemy. In sports you pretend to hate your opponent and many jerks among us actually do.

People adopt team names because they represent power and courage. Indian tribes with extremely small populations and economies and enormous technological and organizational disadvantages achieved astonishing results through courage and toughness, which is why they became popular in sports symbolism. Today Indian leaders, not necessarily the majority of their populations, whimper about real and imagined insults and cartoon drawings. Maybe that is reason enough to think they are no longer desirable examples to admire.

Norman P. Carlson

Busti