Tallying football’s human cost

An ambulance leaves the field with Buffalo Bills’ Damar Hamlin, who collapsed during the first half of a game between the Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday. (Joshua A. Bickel/Associated Press)

Americans consider themselves innocents. Pure, noble, removed from the degraded world outside our borders, both physical and mental.

True, that pose takes considerable effort to maintain: our own brutal history must be whitewashed, ignored or suppressed. Teachers squelched, books banned, libraries purged. Faith-fueled prudes, at least when it comes to the conduct of others, we simply banish entire realms of human behavior, and if those outside of our beloved norms are not guilty of crimes, then crimes are imagined for them.