John Lewis Was a Mighty American Soul by Charles P. Pierce

I’m sure there are other obituaries and remembrances that sagely, somberly convey the greatness of John Lewis. But today, I want the piece that laces the reverence with commensurate with a moment that finds the federal government using Gestapo tactics against citizens protesting in the streets of Portland and an entire political party stepping forward to spit and fulminate about calls against oppression. John Lewis stood for a better nation than this. He labored for it and he literally bled for it. Naturally, it’s Charles P. Pierce who wrote the elegy I need. This article was published by Esquire.

Seeing Native Americans Nowhere, and Everywhere by Jennifer Schuessler

As the National Football League franchise that claims Washington, D.C. as its home finally relents to the obviously necessary choice of abandoning a team name that is also a horrible racial slur, Jennifer Schluessler offers a reminder that the incorporation of Native American imagery is pervasive in U.S. culture. The article is largely an interview with Paul Chaat Smith, a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. He helped curate an exhibition that collects a sizable number of these artifacts of appropriation, and he speaks with admirable care and insight about the complexities of the situation, with the evil of exploitation and the value of representation snaking through the same pipeline.