Oh for fuck’s sake.
Not to keep beating this horse, but it’s always about language. And that’s because language controls thought and thought, when driven to consent, either affirmatively or through tacit surrender, secures power, from which all else derives.
Nobody pretending to outrage over this gives a tinker’s damn about Native American dignity. They care about controlling language and by doing so, controlling thought and collecting power. There’s nothing noble in their stance, and we needn’t pretend their is.
Or to put it another way, Bob Costas can suck a bag of dicks, and the WaPo writers — and those like them — can help themselves to a few licks, too.
The Boston Review’s Simon Waxman, writing in WaPo:
In the United States today, the names Apache, Comanche, Chinook, Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa apply not only to Indian tribes but also to military helicopters. Add in the Black Hawk, named for a leader of the Sauk tribe. Then there is the Tomahawk, a low-altitude missile, and a drone named for an Indian chief, Gray Eagle. Operation Geronimo was the end of Osama bin Laden.
Why do we name our battles and weapons after people we have vanquished? For the same reason the Washington team is the Redskins and my hometown Red Sox go to Cleveland to play the Indians and to Atlanta to play the Braves: because the myth of the worthy native adversary is more palatable than the reality — the conquered tribes of this land were not rivals but victims, cheated and impossibly outgunned.
The destruction of the Indians was asymmetric war, compounded by deviousness in the name of imperialist manifest destiny. White America shot, imprisoned, lied, swindled, preached, bought, built and voted its way to domination. Identifying our powerful weapons and victorious campaigns with those we subjugated serves to lighten the burden of our guilt. It confuses violation with a fair fight.
It is worse than denial; it is propaganda. The message carried by the word Apache emblazoned on one of history’s great fighting machines is that the Americans overcame an opponent so powerful and true that we are proud to adopt its name. They tested our mettle, and we proved stronger, so don’t mess with us. In whatever measure it is tribute to the dead, it is in greater measure a boost to our national sense of superiority. And this message of superiority is shared not just with U.S. citizens but with those of the 14 nations whose governments buy the Apache helicopters we sell. It is shared, too, with those who hear the whir of an Apache overhead or find its guns trained on them. Noam Chomsky has clarified the moral stakes in provocative, instructive terms: “We might react differently if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes ‘Jew’ and ‘Gypsy.’ ”
Noam Chomsky, bless him, is never “instructive.” Only destructive. Once again, were we to name our battles and weapons after a people “we have vanquished” (and I don’t think there are many of us around today who fought in the Indian wars, so whether or not it was “we” who vanquished them is not a settled point) as a gesture to celebrate their having been vanquished — which is what Chomsky tries to conflate with his Luftwaffe ‘Jew’ and ‘Gypsy’ examples — he might have a point, depending on intent.
But the only real linguistic point here is that he and those like him can drum up phony outrage by presuming to speak to others’ intent, and by presuming to endure others’ outrage for them, whether they — or those whose outrage they claim to endure — are outraged in reality or not.
So many of these white liberal language barons, you’ll notice, reject as inauthentic any minority who doesn’t feel disparaged by what they’re told by these same white liberals is disparaging. That is, the usurpers of our language, in their attempt to chill speech and control power, are quite okay with marginalizing those they claim to be fighting for, should those they claim to be fighting for reject the phony championing of these presumptuous white liberals.
Meaning, it is white liberals like Waxman here who are presuming to determine who gets to count as an aggrieved minority, and who is, in essence, a race-traitor, or suffering from false consciousness, or an Uncle Tom, etc. They will determine your authenticity and true racial, ethnic, or gender identity. You are but their linguistic play things.
Which, how convenient! And all done in the name of compassion!
So predictable. But, until we learn to fight back against the linguistic underpinnings — leftist ones at that, designed primarily to destroy the individual and to create group narrative for political expediency, replacing individual will with collectivism — we will continue to fall prey to these kinds of ludicrous attacks.
But hey. That’s just me riding my hobby horse again.
Sorry. It’s what I do.
(h/t Geoff B, via Weasel Zippers)
I thought the Red Sox were the Red Sox because they wore red socks.
Don’t get me started on submarines, dude.
Seems like we can fix the confusion readily enough. Just add “Dusted” to “Apache”, or “Kneecapped” to “Kiowa”, “Crushed” to “Comanche”, etc., and presto-changeo, denigration complete.
Forts Bragg, Rucker, Hood, Gordon, and Polk beg to differ.
maybe we can name stuff after famous trannies
like
you know that one
um
I think Clint Eastwood made a movie or something…
well whatever Chuck Hagel will know
Good idea hf, like 5-speed Manual, or Hydra-Matic, and Lineartronic and such.
I don’t think he will get it, sdferr – probably will think the first is some kind of Mexican.
Oh I dunno Eingang, I suspect he may recollect my mentioning my wife once worked for Mr. Paul the Tall.
Better trannies than tyrannies.
Do Italians get upset by the noise helicopters make?
wop, wop, wop. . .
bgbear,
My water sprinkler does not approve of your comment.
tsk, tsk, tsk, …
Only attack helicopters – wop, wop, wop, guineaguineaguinea, wop, wop, wop
Oh, is that the way dey go?
Damned Engines.
So, when did we defeat the Viking?
You know what Luddites say about good engines.
Good idea hf, like 5-speed Manual, or Hydra-Matic, and Lineartronic and such.
You forgot three-on-the-tree.
Last week a caller to RedEye radio network claimed to be a Native American woman who is offended by “Redskins” but who insisted that Apache and Blackhawk helicopters was totally cool.
She couldn’t explain the difference, because there isn’t one in the minds of the Star-Bellied Sneeches.
Fine.
Let’s have Caucasian helicopters and Ashkenazy missiles.
Happy?
(no, not you, ‘feets)
You know what Luddites say about good engines.
Something akin to Gen. Sheridan’s remark about what excellent anchors they make?
The M4 Sherman Tank was named for General William Tecumseh Sherman who got his middle name from an Indian chief. Sherman fought Indians before he fought pesky Rebels. How messed up is that?
You know what Luddites say about good engines.
They cost a lot of . . . bucks?
The navigation system on board many US military helicopters is named after the Hekawi tribe made famous in the TV series “F Troop”.
When lost, the helicopter pilot often is heard saying “Where the Hekawi?”
Chomsky’s theory or helicopter nomenclature makes perfect sense, especially when you look at the Navy. After all, remember when we conquered the Cobra tribe and their even nastier brother tribe the so called “super cobras”? Or their descendents “the Vipers ” who we vanquished again by not letting them bring heavy industry to their reservation in North Aridakota the 54th state back in 1965? And who could forget our defeat of the Sea Knights, their masters the Sea Kings, the Ospreys, or theSuper Stallions?
I am sorry about the puns and know they are not something to Crow about and I Hopi some PC fool does not threaten to Sioux. I’ll do my best to Apache things up.
Hmm. Hubs flew Chinooks. I was under the impression they were named after the balmy breeze hailing the end of winter. But perhaps not.
All the other Indian names are homages, aren’t they? This could be troublesome since most of the country has Indian placenames in its states. What now?
bgbear, quit yer squawking.
palaeo, Chomsky’s theory holds no water with the Cobra, as it is really the Huey Cobra, and the Huey is really the Iroquois, and the Cobra an offshoot (pardon the pun) of the Iroquois Warrior program. The Iroquois became the Huey because the original designation for utility helicopters was HU (not UH as now), so it was the HU-1.
Anyway, I digress, because even if it was named just “Cobra”, where are real cobras found – yep, they are Indian snakes.
Chinook Indians, however the proper terminology is Shithook.
“where are real cobras found”
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/09/gitn_1091_NGS-Cobras1.png
“where are real cobras found”
Tell that to Mowgli and Thuu…
Remember folks, Afro Samurai is NOT an example of cultural appropriation. Japanese people annoyed by it need to just suck it up and check their privilege. And the bomb was Whitey McCracker’s idea anyway.
http://repeatingislands.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/afrosamurai.jpg
Well, no, as Afros and Japanese are both people of color (but not colored people). However, if the Japanese are lumped in with all “Asians”, then, yes, they must check their privilege. The bomb was a diabolical plot between Whitey McCracker and all the Joooo scientists, which makes it even more racisss.
When Bud Grant retired.
That’s Yitzhak Tecumseh McCracker to you.
My racist lawn sprinkler goes spic, spic, spic, spic, spic, Chink, nigga, nigga, nigga.
however the proper terminology is Shithook.
Heh. I was going to refrain from mentioning that.
So, I guess ” Two palm trees humping a dumpster” is right out, then ?
So the F-16 Falcon, F-15 Eagle and the C-22 Osprey must be part of the ongoing slur of birds of prey?
And the Vikings and Celtics, are slurs of Europeans?
My bad, I guess it not outrageous unless Simon says it is.
U.S. of A. sure has built some pretty flying machines over the years, ain’t it? Don’t think it’s a mere coincidence, that.
Ah, Eingang. You pilots make my heart glad.
The F-14 was a Tom Cat, and the F-18 Hornet and Super Hornet. The A-10 was a Warthog. So maybe this is a roatry wing only microaggression.
The SH-2 Sea Sprite has the anti-carbonated beverage angle covered.
Alas, no, going back to the 1950s or so all Army aircraft have been named for Indian tribes (or in the case of the Blackhawk, an individual) with only a few exceptions, but they were named before they became Army aircraft (e.g., the C-7 Caribou). Among the fixed wing there is the OV-1A-D Mohawk ( and the short lived JOV-1), the U-8 Seminole, U-21 (and RU-21) Ute, and so on. Among the exceptions are some oddball aircraft like the C-31, the Fokker Fairchild F-27 that the Golden Knights use, and other civilian jets.
Back when the Air Force belonged to the Army as God intended, there was the A-36 Apache which was actually a P-51 fitted out for dive bombing, and the Brits called the P-40C a Tomahawk, so they are raciss too.
However, in the attempt to be multicultural microaggressors, there was the C-23 Sherpa, and the F-8 Crusader.
All in all, it is macroaggression…
Let’s just hope the PC crowd don’t pick up on the epithets the various tribes had for naming one another. They were necessarily the friendliest bunch of apes where it came to thinking of their rivals in butchery.
weren’t
– Welcome to Obama’s Great technocolor Black Utopia.
Actually the A-10 was the Thunderbolt II –clearly an insult to sky worshippers everywhere. It was nicknamed the warthog because it was pig ugly.
The people insulted by that particular nickname know who they are.
The Thunderbolt was known as the Jug, but not because it resembled a mono-tit on some woman’s chest.
And for the Avian Apologists, the F-16 Falcon. Or, as the F-15 Eagle drivers affectionately call them when their single engine fails, “Lawn Darts.”