It seems obvious that the Washington Redskins will change their name sometime in the near future. The name of the team is a disgrace. It's not just relevant to their fans, but should take into account the feelings of everyone who has to listen to sports reports that include this eyesore of a name, every week during the football season.

It's a vestige of previous generations. It's impossible for me to understand how they could choose such a name. Basically, we invade a country, kill off most of the people, move the rest to the worst land on the continent, and that's not enough of a humiliation. We have to name sports teams after them, with disrespectful names.

Imagine they named a team the Phoenix Jew Boys. Or the Seattle Greasers. The Atlanta Honkies. With the appropriate imagery. Even that wouldn't capture the humiliation, because we more or less leave Jews, Italians and other Americans of European descent alone to live in peace. We're not occupying their homeland, after all.

The name is going to change. To think otherwise would be to think that Obamacare is going to disappear, or gay marriage will become illegal once again, or that in a few years marijuana won't be legal everywhere. It's going to change so why not change it now, and avoid the prolonged misery of it?

I propose changing the name to the Washington Americans. It's a good choice for a variety of reasons. The rhythm of the name fits into conversation the same way the old name did. Washington is the nation's capital. The name isn't used for any other major league sports franchise, not that that would be a deal-stopper if it was (the Cardinals, Giants are prior art). Even better, it could be said to be a continuity, after all the Native Americans who the team was named after were before any others, Americans. They are the original Americans. In one move we, all of us, could turn decades of insult into "we get it."

Canadians or Mexicans could conceivably disagree, as they are also Americans. We could ask them not to object, for the sake of undoing an ugly period in United States sports culture.