Trumpism is hardly dead yet in this country, and is being kept on life-support by far-right extremists in other countries who find its "principles" useful.

 

I find it difficult to understand how anyone with a sense of proportion or morality can find at all acceptable the flagrant abuses to simple human decency posed by Trumpism, whether we define it as fascism or some other form of reactionary extremism. Those on the political right who willingly line-up behind this seem to believe that their beliefs are the only ones that have any validity and no one has the “right” to believe anything else.  We can see the results of such beliefs at their worst in North Korea, where recently two teenagers were publicly executed for being in possession of, and watching, South Korean television shows. 

We see this kind of intolerance to basic human rights happening all over the world, with unhinged dictatorial movements emerging even in allegedly solidly democratic states. German police have just completed a massive raid throughout the country, arresting members of a far-right extremist group called the Reichsbuerger—“Citizens of the Reich,” with the intention, according the English-language German news outlet DW,

…to storm the parliament in Berlin (the Reichstag) and to attack the country's power supply, and to depose the federal government in order to then take power. There were even plans for certain individuals to take over important ministerial posts for the moment of the "takeover." According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, there were plans to form a transitional government that would negotiate the new state order in Germany with the Allied victorious powers of World War II — first and foremost with the Russian Federation.

Over the years, the Reichsbuerger, which it is believed to have over 20,000 members, engaged in acts of violence (including killing police), mass protests of government policies, and the illegal stockpiling of arms. Among the arrested was Heinrich XIII, the hereditary pretender of a former principality that was absorbed into the German Empire, and who reportedly was to be the head of the new “reich”: 

 

The Russian embassy in Germany claimed ignorance about the activities of the group's terrorist activities, but one of the arrested was a Russian woman who was reported to be the group’s contact with Russian government entities; we of course are familiar with Russia's proclivities in undermining democratic processes during the 2016 election in this country, so why would Germany be an exception?

Meanwhile, there are those speculating about the intentions of Italy's new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, accused by most to have fascist inclinations, and her support is particularly strong from people like this:

 

Foreign Policy notes that her governing cabinet is far from filled with the "moderates" she promised, and that

Meloni has bought in a group of flagrant, truly terrifying right-wing hard-liners, surfaced from the very bottom of the political barrel. Alongside a smattering of Berlusconi-era figures, mired in financial scandals and conflicts of interest, the new administration includes those nostalgic for the fascist years and weaned in far-right youth camps; the children of former Mussolini lieutenants; and militants who engaged in violent campaigns against the left for two decades during the bloody Years of Lead.

For those of a “religious” bent, the Taliban has apparently not learned any lessons about “moderation” or made any effort to assuage concerns about its behavior. Sharia law is now in full force in Afghanistan, with “eye for an eye” justice and punishment for any “crime” against their “interpretation” of what the Koran says. Women are again banned from schools, workplaces and even amusement parks. We can probably expect that in time there will be tribal units banding together to oppose Taliban rule, and of course we will arm them, and this thing will start all over again.

There are those who will blame Joe Biden for this, but we should put the blame where it belongs: Donald Trump, who probably “empathized” with the Taliban’s dictatorial impulses (just like he does that of Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban), and allowed the Taliban to quietly overrun Afghanistan in "secret" and unhindered by U.S. military countermeasures so long as the Taliban agreed not to attack U.S. forces.

We shouldn’t be all that surprised by any of this. I mean, why be hypocrites? Trump recently posted on his “Truth Social” website

Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great Founders did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

What the hell is this supposed to mean? After some blowback even from a few Republicans who nonetheless insisted they would still support him if he was the 2024 presidential nominee, Trump is now claiming that he didn’t actually “mean” the overthrow of constitutional government, but we know what he means, don’t we? Even some of his supporters pretend that they don’t really understand what he means, but whatever it is it sounds like a “good” idea to them, then it must be. 

Today, being “patriotic” means devolving the country into a white nationalist dictatorship rather than safeguarding the principles its founders actually stood for. There seems to be no realization of the consequences of giving in to the whims of a sociopathic narcissist like Trump, nor an understanding the meaning of living under a quasi-authoritarian state, such as the loss of even of the right to own their precious guns if it threatens the existence of the "state."

Of course that won’t ever happen in this country, right? Election conspiracies, Republican election officials refusing to certify election results, January 6-type insurrections—just let the blowhards blow and let the courts uphold the rule of law, right? Well, just let’s not be too sanguine about that: the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case in which it is being demanded that the courts should be stripped of the power of ruling on election issues, and state legislators (meaning Republican) will have the sole right to determine the validity of election results they do not like.

What could possibly go wrong with that? We see what could happen in Brazil today. No, Jair Bolsonaro has not only not conceded his election defeat, but has not called upon his supporters to refrain from political violence throughout the country in the belief that the election was “stolen.” Bolsonaro has a “plan” to overturn the election results that will give him “victory” without even bothering with a recount: his advisers have told him that if the counts from certain voting machines are invalidated, then he will get the majority of votes from the machines still “approved."

What is this about? Apparently some older voting machines were “belatedly” discovered to have a “bug” that prevented the input of a machine’s own identification number, but this issues have been declared a non-starter because the machines still identified the location and voting district they were used in. Meanwhile,  Bolsonaro has rescinded his claim that he will “respect the constitution” and redoubled on claims of election fraud. 

Interestingly, Bolsonaro and his supporters have been unresponsive to queries about why the voting results in the first round of elections that gave his party a majority in the national legislature have not similarly been questioned given that the same voting machines were used. Again, for fascists drunk on power, election results are only "valid" if they "win."

The French English-language news outlet RFI is reporting today that Trumpian tactics designed to undermine democracy is happening all over the world. While Elon Musk is being accused of allowing far-right hate speech to proliferate on Twitter after accusing Twitter of having previously been used to facilitate the election of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over Bolsonaro, RFI notes that

A tsunami of falsehoods flooded Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube -- from "deep fake" videos to doctored photos seeking to manipulate voters -- with pro-democracy activists accusing the platforms of doing too little to combat the menace.

Those who have used these and other methods to promote election fraud conspiracies—only to suddenly claim there was no “problem” when they won--include elections in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu (he’s still around?) engaged in a “stop the steal” campaign, and in Hungary where Orban retained power in April after a campaign rife with disinformation; Orban is close to Putin as well as Trump (who invited him to speak at a CPAC meeting), and is making threats to oppose NATO expansion as the EU is struggling to find a way to “persuade” Orban to accept the principles of a democratic state that all member countries are supposed to abide by. Orban even accuses his opponents of supporting military aid to Ukraine—which begs the question of why Hungary is even a part of NATO at all, save for its “strategic” location.

Other countries where democracy is under threat by Trumpian tactics is the Philippines, Kenya and Nigeria. In the recent election in the Philippines, which saw the return to power of the House of Marcos in the form of Ferdinand Marcos’ son Bongbong (yeah, you read that right) Marcos, The New Yorker noted that

As Jonathan Corpus Ong, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has studied disinformation networks in the Philippines, wrote “For too long, progressives have taken for granted that facts in themselves are sufficient. In the case of the Philippines, the liberal weapons of historical accuracy and fact-checking are simply no match for Marcos’ creative folklore, turbocharged by social media fan culture and relatable influencers.”

That is the challenge that democracy around the world faces today. The crimes and corruption committed by the Marcos family past and present were irrelevant to most voters, only 27 percent  of whom voted for his challenger for the presidency. In the U.S., even those Republicans who claim they do not support Trump’s conspiracies, nonetheless many would still allow him to undermine democracy if it means maintaining power, no matter the method. 

The truth must be suppressed or “re-interpreted”—because an ignorant and uninformed electorate is easily manipulated when they live in a world where “reality” is whatever they wish it to be, not what the facts say it is.  Whatever the result of their blindness, everyone will pay the consequences, including the willfully ignorant.

Why is the so-called "border crisis" such a matter of "hysteria" for some people In a country where rule-breaking and lawlessness is an accepted part of everyday life?

 

This country is all about the “rule of law,” huh? Every time I get on the bus I pay my fare like any law-abiding citizen, in accordance with the threat of “fines or imprisonment” as stated on a placard for non-fare payers. So I watch maybe two-thirds of the people who get on the bus just walk past the driver without paying fare. Most drivers ignore them, while some insist that the non-fare payer at least be nice enough to inform the driver that they don’t have money, and give him a chance to  “forgive” the non-payment.

Today the driver was trying to calm down some mental case when he notice the woman sitting behind him, and told her she didn't pay her fare either; she showed him a transfer, and he apologized to her. I noted that at least he correctly remembered that she in fact didn’t pay fare—but I had to remind him that he gave her the transfer so she wouldn’t have any “trouble” with the next driver--thus a "reward" for breaking the "law."

Of course that is the “black and white” world we live in. The mental case was a white male who claimed he couldn’t pay fare because he was “homeless”—probably because of his “condition”—and the woman was black. Later when I was picking up some packages, there was trouble in the store with a black male apparently with mental issues who just came in and started gibberishing and refused to leave. He was eventually escorted out by a roving security guard, a white male, who I heard tell the man that the employees in the store were “stupid.”

I went back inside the store and told them what the security guard had called them; another customer retorted that the security guard was being “smart.” Is that right? He was snooping on the Mexican-looking guy who might be a “car-prowler” and followed him into the store, and didn’t leave until he left. The security guard wouldn't have even known there was a real problem in the store until he went snooping on me who was actually in the store for a legitimate reason, as I have been for the past 20 or so years.

We can probably multiply those little incidences of rule-breaking and lawlessness millions of times or more a day (and for some people, multiple times a day) and it is forget and move on, knowing that it is a fact of life in this country—some people think they are “entitled” to ignore the "rules" because of whatever "society" has "done" to them.

So in this country we are a bit hypocritical, with an ex-president calling for the suspension of the Constitution being more evidence that he is delusional and believes that he can run the country like he does his “business”—like a dictator with no limits to his power.

But there are worse things we need to be concerned about, like the “crisis” down at the border, largely the creation of misguided  nativist American immigration policy and idiotic temporary work visa restrictions.  So I was sitting in the laundromat on Friday watching a cable news program when a segment on the “border crisis” was breathlessly discussed, with the hysterical (both in terms of hilarity and paranoia) claim that border crossings had risen 256 percent since last year, which is obviously meant to excite hysteria.

First off, 256 percent sounds a lot more fearsome than, say, 2.5 times, even though they mean the same thing. It also doesn’t mean that twice as many migrant are crossing the border as last year; it is just a number taken out of thin air by anti-immigrant groups with their own agenda. The media follows suit by deliberately using terms that make the story more "newsworthy." 

But the U.S. is hardly “bursting at seams” with illegal immigrants, in fact the only people who take notice of anyone who looks like they could be “illegal” are nativist fanatics with "aliens" on the brain, like Stephen Miller. In fact the numbers even at their “worst” have to be taken in context; this graphic shows that the supposed number of illegal immigrants in the country went down measurably during the Obama administration…

 

…and presumably further decreased during the Trump administration, with the principle increase in illegal immigration at all being people from outside of Latin America (principally Asia) overstaying their work visas. The fact that illegal immigration increased at all since 1990 is due to the 1986 immigration law that dramatically curtailed the usual cross-border traffic by making it more difficult to apply for legal temporary work visas.

The “remain in Mexico” and Title 42 policies during the Trump administration kept the numbers of those attempting to cross the border lower than usual, so that scary “256 percent” number says little of significance relative to past experience. In fact, I have searched high and low for the source of that “percentage,” and the closest I came to it was a story last week about the current state of asylum decisions from the website Trac Immigration, which have more than doubled from 2021 to 2022. According to the website

Total decisions more than doubled from 24,810 in FY 2021, to 51,607 during FY 2022. And the number of individuals granted asylum by Immigration Judges increased from 8,945 to 23,686. This was the largest number of individuals granted asylum in any year in the Immigration Court's history.

That certainly must really be “exciting” to anti-immigrant nativists, who we may suspect are “reinterpreting” what those numbers signify and passing them on to media outlets not doing their homework. But this graphic shows a greatly disturbing “trend”: asylum seekers from Europe, Asia and Africa have asylum approval rates of 80 percent or higher, while those from Latin America have an average of 25 percent approval…

 

…which generally would indicate that people who insist on crossing over don't have many legal options. Is China more “oppressive” than, say, any Central American country where the U.S. has deported its home-grown violent gangs to where previously the only violent “gangs” were U.S.-backed right-wing murder regimes?

Immigration "reform" is of course something to avoid. Some far-right website called City Journal claimed that is the “wrong time” for amnesty. I wrote this comment…

It's always the "wrong time" for "amnesty" for nativists. After millions of Europeans entered the country illegally after the 1924 immigration law, the U.S. passed an "amnesty" law for them that lasted almost 20 years. The only "amnesty" law since then was the 1986 law, after the Reagan administration exacerbated the cross-border situation by making temporary work visas much more difficult to get.

…which was almost immediately deleted by the “moderator.” I sent another comment wondering if the these people were afraid of the truth, and that was immediately deleted as well.

Oh, it’s horrible. Illegal immigrants, we are told by researchers who have actually studied the "problem," contribute to economic growth, pay more in taxes (including Social Security) than they receive from public services, and reduce businesses' motivation to offshore jobs, manufacturing inexpensive products and services right here instead of importing them. And let’s not forget about food production either. Oh, the horror!

This week, Amber Heard’s fake accounts, appeal brief, trouble for Stanford and Michele Dauber, and the trouble with Title IX and why it should be abolished

 

The week that was in the Depp-Heard soap opera had one particularly interesting revelation, as a tech company specializing in detecting inauthentic on-line traffic called Cyabra reported that 11 percent of 2,300 Twitter accounts focused on the Depp-Heard issue were fake—and most of those fake accounts were pro-Heard. This isn’t a “minor” revelation either, since the vast majority of Twitter accounts on the case are pro-Depp. This means that a very significant percentage of pro-Heard content on Twitter is from fake accounts. Funny how only Fox News (which I generally don’t care for) among mainstream media outlets found the time to pick-up on this story. I put together this image from the “comments” section of a pro-Heard video a few months back that shows what “inauthentic” looks like:      

 

There was more commentary about Amber Heard’s appeal brief. The general consensus is that while there are some “interesting” arguments in the brief, there is nothing really there to overturn the verdict. A YouTuber going by the handle “Lawyer You Know” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4U_DHvBhRg  points out that Heard’s attorneys made a conscience choice between what they believed would help her in a trial over what would help her in an appeal. Instead of bringing in the therapist to drone on and repeat what was on those notes about what Heard had told her (otherwise they would be “hearsay”), subject to cross examination, they chose to allow Heard to testify to fantastical stories that no one save her diehard supporters in the mainstream media and other lunatics like Eve Barlow and Michele Dauber believed. Her testimony thus rendered those alleged therapist notes meaningless for the purposes of an appeal.

What made those stories worse (besides the lack physical and documented evidence), was that they were contradicted by the audio evidence; I find it interesting that more has not been made of Heard’s admission that she couldn’t “promise” that she wouldn’t be physical “again.” Heard’s testimony—unlike Depp’s—came off as completely self-serving and lacking of any admission of her own guilt. If she had just kept her stories “believable,” was honest about her own behavior, and had that therapist “corroborate” what she testified to, maybe Heard would have had a better chance—although I doubt it, since the therapist would still have to explain what people heard on those audio tapes.

Heard’s claim that she “believed” she was abused and thus was not guilty of “actual malice” is for many worthy of an eye-roll, given her personality disorders. We remember that excruciating audio when she apparently is off her medication (we hear Depp advising her to take her medicine), claiming that she feels as if Depp is “killing” her and throwing her against a wall in metaphorical terms; Heard clearly views anything that isn’t going her way in terms of the physical. She apparently literally feels “pain” in a way she imagines is “physical.” If she fully knew that the way she was “exaggerating” the alleged abuse was damaging Depp (and the more the “better”), then yeah, we can say “actual malice” was behind it.

The jurors in the Virginia trial were forced like the rest of us to consider what was real and what wasn’t given Heard’s propensity to tell the most absurd lies; she was never wrong or at fault for anything. Given the audio evidence, this was impossible to believe, and it was too obvious that Heard repeatedly lied to conceal her culpability. This propensity for lying was obviously lost on the UK trial judge; he gave considerable weight to Heard’s lie that she paid the $7 million to charity in determining her “credibility.” He was made a complete fool of like all the rest of Heard’s supporters.

Now to go off in a slightly different direction but including someone “close” to Heard. Stanford University is currently being sued by the parents of a Stanford soccer player named Katie Meyer, who recently committed suicide. It is not entirely clear what this case involves, but we know is that this started when a male football player was alleged to have kissed a teammate of Meyer, who was 17-years-old at the time, thus “underage”—but wouldn’t college students be assumed to be at least 18?—and apparently that individual was convinced to file charges. The charges were eventually dropped, but in the meantime we are told that Meyer, for whatever reasons, encountered the football player sometime later while bicycling and “spilled” coffee on him.

What happened next is that the Stanford administrators dealing in these matters, apparently at the behest of Michele Dauber, attempted to persuade Meyer to make some sort of statement or accusation herself on the case (they apparently had a difficult time persuading her to do this), perhaps to reopen the case or whatever; there seems to be a deliberate effort to keep things “unclear.” That led to Meyer being sent threatening messages from school administrators, including withholding her diploma.

But something else must have happened to cause her to commit suicide; did she have conversations with Dauber that caused additional mental distress? I am just “speculating” here, but the fact that Dauber for some reason chose—or was forced—to delete her Twitter account suggests that someone was afraid that the frequent hate content of her tweets contributed to an atmosphere around the school that made female students feel much more “unsafe” than in fact was the reality. There can be little doubt that for female students “on the edge” psychologically, Dauber was just the kind of paranoid fanatic who could push them over the edge.

This then brings us to Title IX, which this particular case is under the jurisdiction of. We are learning that a group of U.S. Senators wants to “reform” Title IX by expanding the definition of what constitutes sexual “violence” against female students as anything that a male student does or says that “upsets” or makes them feel “devalued.” Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, in one of the few things she did right, was to make the definition of what constitutes sexual “crimes” more explicit rather than subject to “interpretation,” and to provide the accused even a modicum of due process rights. Why was this necessary? Consider what this student gender activist stated in The Hill recently:

“Violence is violence,” Zoey Brewer, a senior at the University of Tennessee and youth organizer with Know Your IX, a survivor-led group empowering students to end sexual and dating violence in their schools, told The Hill. “It’s unacceptable regardless of how bad you think it is or how bad your school thinks it is.”

One problem with this statement is that there is no question that sexual assault and rape is violent and a crime. The other problem is that these people want to expand what constitutes as “violent”—you know, Amber Heard’s definition of “violence” that was mostly a fiction of her own feverish mind. Just what constitutes “bad”? I mean, we are talking about a school (I know about it, because UTK was where I got my degree of whatever) that was, and still is, a predominately white school. Minorities were tolerated as long as they kept their mouths shut, but apparently there are plenty of white female students eager to fill in the “victim void.” I sure remember back then seeing all those notices pasted on the walls of the student union about the “epidemic” of campus rape, wondering WTF are they talking about.

I was once persuaded to expand my horizons and listen to a speech by a visiting professor named Catherine MacKinnon; I knew something was wrong when the only other male present was a reporter for the local city newspaper. I felt like Robin Williams’ character sitting in that radical feminist meeting in The World According to Garp; I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to let people like this dump fecal matter on me as a male again and I just had to take it.

So here we are back to square one, treating women like they're psychologically and emotionally “weak,” when we know that all they have to do is breath a word and your life could be toast. This is not about sexual assault or rape, since these do not fall under the “reasonable person” statute; this is about anything that makes a female feel “uncomfortable,” “unsafe,” or more likely, feel “devalued”—which could be anything an unreasonable person could make sound “reasonable” to her personally;  in most cases, the accusers’ “reason” is the only one that matters.

The prior Obama administration policy that those senators want to return to extending what qualifies as sexual harassment and reducing the rights of the accused (an obvious ploy for the white female vote) that was, according to a 2020 New York Times story, so “contentious” that schools felt undue pressure “to ramp up investigations of misconduct and warned that their failure to do so could bring serious consequences. Critics said schools felt pressured to side with accusers without extending sufficient rights to the accused. And dozens of students have won court cases against their colleges for violating their rights under the Obama-era rules.”

Stanford, we are informed, left the Obama rules in place instead of abiding by the new guidance, and thus we can now understand part of what went wrong in the Meyer’s case. Dauber and her group likely put pressure on the school to up its case load, and the school "complied" to her demands and put pressure on Meyer to "comply."

The DeVos regulations are anathema to radicals because they specifically define sexual harassment per the Supreme Court as  “‘unwelcome conduct that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive,’ and they require colleges to hold live hearings during which accusers and accused can be cross-examined to challenge their credibility.” Before, schools were not permitted to cross-examine accusers or question their claims at all; it was the accused who had to “prove” they were innocent. Under the DeVos rules, schools were required to follow the innocent-until-proven-guilty rule, rather than the workplace rule where the accused could be simply fired on the basis of an unproven accusation.

The proposed changes by the senators are simply a return to Obama administration rules, in which according to the Times “defined sexual harassment broadly and held schools liable for episodes they knew about or ‘reasonably should’ have known about. They asked schools to adopt a ‘preponderance of evidence’ standard in adjudicating cases and discouraged cross-examination and mediation between accusers and accused.” What this means in simple terms is that what “she says” is all the “evidence” you need to find the accused “guilty.”

Of course that’s not the only problem with Title IX and the way it’s been abused. We are told that 57 percent of college students are female; if this was the other way around, male students in this majority, this would be regarded as a “crisis” and in need of immediate “correction.” Instead, no one is asking why male applicants are being discriminated against by largely female administrators making admissions decisions. Furthermore Title IX’s mission “statement” includes this, which apparently equates “female” and “sex” as meaning the same thing, which of course is one of the grand hypocrisies of our society:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Now, this statement and Title IX generally has been most equated with the sports participation, and the problem with that is the assumption that as many females as males go to college with participation in a sport the reason why they are attending a certain school. Whether this is true or not is a matter of opinion; the fact is that many schools have been forced to either fabricate a sports program for female students, or add non-participating “athletes” to existing programs to meet the quota, or to reduce the number of male programs to comply with Title IX requirements.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision banned racial “quotas” in college admissions or representation in particular programs, and using any kind of “race-based” considerations for under-represented minorities is currently under threat by the current court. Title IX doesn’t mention the word “quota,” yet radical female activists have essentially made quotas an “essential” element of the law that is illegal for minorities, and thus is indicative of the power of (white) woman to gaslight society in maintaining their own quota system benefiting themselves.

Just like how white women who were the principle beneficiaries of affirmative action now no longer see the “need” for it once it is viewed as a “threat" to them—white women were the “face” in many recent anti-affirmative action lawsuits—it is now hypocritically asserted that despite the fact that “affirmative action” for female students remains part of the unspoken culture on college campuses, over-represented (white) female students still face more discrimination than under-represented minority students.

This is about “power.” In this society, if white men are “1A,” then white women are “1B,” and all other demographics fall in behind them. Title IX needs to be abolished because of its abuses in giving preferential treatment to female students in admissions, in denying male students due process rights and destroying their lives by the simple accusation by female students, and unfairly force-feeding quotas to benefit female students when they have been deemed illegal for under-represented minorities. There should never have a been a separate policy for female students, but one that simply was part of a universal policy that covered all students; by having one focused on women, Title IX succumbed to the radicalism of those with an agenda, and the oppressiveness that follows it.

With the hypocritical effort now being pushed in Congress to re-expand what constitutes “sexual crimes” and deny due process rights for the accused, I think it is about time that someone brings the abuses of Title IX before the Supreme Court, and because of the nature of those abuses this is (unfortunately) the just the court to do it. 

Aaron Rodgers still owns the Bears thanks to Justin Fields' mistakes and a non-existent pass rush, which means the future is left in a muddle for now

  

So the big question entering the game against the Bears was whether the Packers would cave-in to Aaron Rodgers’ insistence that he was going to play with two injuries whether the team liked in or not—or whether the Packers would humor Rodgers for a half, and then replace him with Jordan Love. The general feeling among football commentators was that nobody should be kidding themselves about the Packers’ chances of making the playoffs, and just see what you got in Love.

It’s a lost season regardless of what Rodgers does the rest of the season if he stays in, but I think most Packer fans are “curious”—rather than have any great expectations—about what Love can do, and finding out what that is would make it not such a “lost” season. What we saw against the Eagles last week may have just been the Eagles’ defense relaxing, and fool’s gold. But what the hell? You can be “entertained” in a lot of ways, just like you can by an awful B-movie; at least it’s good for laughs.

It seemed that starting Rodgers in the first half against the Bears to see what happens was the plan, and if the Packers quickly tanked in would come Love. This was likely the scenario when the Packers fell behind 16-3 with 17 seconds left in the first half, facing a fourth-and-4 on the Bears 14-yard-line; but who would have thunk-it: Rodgers actually managed to complete a short pass to Christian Watson, who scored a touchdown for a fourth consecutive game to make it 16-10 at halftime. Well, now we have to give Rodgers a chance to redeem himself after losing 7 out of 8 games.

After opening the second half with two three-and-outs and falling behind 19-10 heading into the fourth quarter, a 38-yard pass interference call and a 21-yard run by A.J. Dillon miraculously put the Packers back to within striking distance, 19-17. The Bears then failed to take advantage of a 49-yard pass from Justin Fields to N’Keal Harry deep into Packer territory, with the defense holding and forcing a blocked field goal attempt. What followed was Rodgers managing to game manage the Packers to a Mason Crosby field goal to take the lead.

That was followed by Fields’ throwing an interception, and in a throw-away play, Watson went end-around to run 46-yards to show-off his speed again and fly like Superman into the end zone:

 

A two-point conversion put the game away at 28-19 with a minute to go. Fields threw another pick, which only showed that under pressure he is mistake-prone, a lot of them. Take away those interceptions, he had much better passing numbers than Rodgers, who seems to have a tough time these days throwing for 200-yards in a game; Rodgers complaining about one missed catch shouldn't excuse all the bad passes he's thrown. The Packers’ defense wasn’t “stellar,” but three turnovers, including a fumble recovery, and the blocked field goal gave the Packers a win and feeling better going into the bye.

So what does this win mean against a team that the Packers have “owned” for the past 30 years? Well, for one thing it means that life for Rodgers has been extended for at least another game. It certainly helped that the Bears defensive front managed exactly zero sacks and zero quarterback hits in this game, so Rodgers has at least emerged from the game without worsening his injuries, and he has two weeks to recover now. That is certainly a good thing for him; whether or not it is a “good” thing for the team in attempting to determine an uncertain future is another thing.

Website story provides "reasons" for "avoiding" the Pacific Northwest, but for me the "problem" is that there is just no place to go anymore

  

On the Google newsfeed on my phone there was a story from a website called Drivin’ & Vibin’ entitled “5 Reasons to Avoid the Pacific Northwest” https://drivinvibin.com/2022/11/29/avoid-pacific-northwest/. After first exalting its scenic vistas and whatnot for the drivin’ and vibin’ outsiders, it gets into the usual stereotypes (some more true than others) about the weather, being an expensive place to live, being overcrowded, traffic issues, people are self-righteous superstars-in-their–own-minds (well, not everyone), and there are (supposedly) 12,000 homeless people in Seattle.

You could probably find five reasons to live in the Pacific Northwest too; Seattle has a $15-an-hour minimum wage law, so that is one reason, and if you can find a working roommate, you can get by alright. But I will say this: things have changed dramatically in Seattle since I moved to this area 30 years ago. When I was stationed briefly in Fort Lewis I visited Seattle almost every Saturday (only 50 cents to take a bus back then), and it just seemed like a “cool” place to live. 

It took another decade for that plan to come to fruition, and fortunately nothing had changed much in the interim. Downtown Seattle had lots of movie theaters, book shops, video, music and computer software stores. There were affordable places to live in or in the vicinity of downtown even if you were only making $5-an-hour; of course you had to make allowances for the condition of such places, but anything out of weather was better than nothing.

But things did gradually change; I’m not sure exactly when the change started, but I knew something very bad was happening  when the last Tower Record store closed in 2006, along with all the other book, video and music stores, with maybe a few “mom and pop” stores left selling used product. When Fry’s Electronics “one-stop shop for electronics enthusiasts” closed shop in Renton in 2021, I knew it was all over, with Best Buy hanging on a thread even as it doesn’t stock the product you want and hangs on to the product you don’t want, as was the case the last time I went to the Tukwila store looking for a new laptop. A 2013 article in Seattle Magazine stated the obvious:

No matter what one thinks of Amazon, it has been wildly effective at wiping out the competition—thanks to its demographic reach and massive used book inventory (via legions of private sellers). With Borders having declared bankruptcy and Barnes & Noble surviving by selling practically everything but books, Amazon is poised for total market domination. And that’s not including the used books of the future, i.e., e-book downloads.

And it wasn’t just books new or used, but just about everything else that you probably wouldn’t find in a store. I mean, why bother go to a store if the likelihood was that you wouldn’t find it? Of course for those who were not used to online retailing, going to a store to get your hands on something right then and there was preferable to paying for shipping and not knowing exactly when the item would arrive, but now you don’t have any choice in the matter—either buy something online or not at all.

The closure of “art,” foreign and second-run movie theaters was also a real bummer. I mean, there was no place to go anymore. The Seattle Science Center used to host big-name traveling exhibits; not anymore. The Seattle Art Museum is kind of a joke, What was the Experience Music Project was birthed out of a love of classic rock music; now it’s called the “Museum of Pop Culture,” and if you don’t think there is anything impressive about current pop culture, then it isn’t worth the price of admission. 

Anything on the pier is only for tourists, and there is not a lot worth visiting more than once (the aquarium, the “Space” Needle); although I am a little curious about revisiting the zoo, that’s way up there by Green Lake and my memories of the one time I was there it wasn’t much to see, since you couldn't even spot some of the exhibits in their "realistic habitats."

The demographics of Seattle have also changed rather dramatically, especially from South Asia. The city isn't really all that "cosmopolitan" anymore, just quite a few full-of-shit people. Once you could always tell where what  demographics lived by what side of the street they waited for the bus on; for buses heading north, you saw mostly white and Asian people, and buses heading south, mostly non-Asian minorities. Now, it is harder to tell about the people heading south. 

The Central District used to be 80 percent black; today it is less than 15 percent and going down.  This page https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/WA/Seattle/Central-Area-Demographics.html doesn’t even bother to do a race or ethnicity breakdown, and it is clear that this is now a predominately “white collar” neighborhood with above the median income, where most of the older homes have been condemned and demolished in favor new places for the yuppie class to live after they pushed out the original inhabitants, with the number of new (and more expensive)  housing units skyrocketing in just the past decade.

Even Bellevue—where once right-wingers working in Seattle sought refuge from all those “socialists”—has boggled the mind with its changes. With the help of investment from China, downtown Bellevue looks more like a business version of the International District. Just 20 years ago, the “main street,” Bellevue Way, has grown from a suburban drive-through with the Bellevue Mall the only commercial retail business of note…

 

…to a gaggle of new office towers:

 

 

Of course some things stay the same, like the weather. The “endless summer” we had this year lasted from July until October 20, and “fall” lasted approximately two weeks before winter-like weather set in. Just because it snows a wee-bit doesn’t mean we’ve only just now seen a taste of winter here, because snow is actually rare in Western Washington, which is actually a reason for people to want to live here this high on the latitude scale. 

What is also “rare” is mostly clear, freezing weather in the middle of November, as we have just experienced. Having grown up in Wisconsin, that is the kind of weather I wanted to escape. As for the rain, while it is just so damn “gray” around here most of the year, the reality is that as far as actual precipitation, Seattle has no more rainy days than “sunny” Miami, and 50 percent less of it.

But as mentioned, if for you are not into the club and bar scene, the changes in Seattle and the area in general are not conducive to expanding one’s horizons unless you get tired of being cooped-up and just need to get out and walk around out of sheer boredom. Myself, my time is spent doing two jobs—my “real” job to pay the bills, and doing this here, which does take up a lot of my spare time—and then find whatever time I have left to mine through all these Blu-rays and DVDs I still haven’t watched. 

Would things be different if I was living in a place not the Pacific Northwest? Probably not; you just "adapt" and get by the best you can.