Returning to "normal" life after the pandemic doesn't necessarily mean a return to "normal" life politically or socially

 

After sixteen months of various degrees of lockdown due the coronavirus pandemic, we are allegedly nearing “normal” life. The governor is pronouncing June 30 as the “reopen” date for the state, depending on vaccination rates. I’m not exactly sure what that means for myself personally, since being one of those “essential” workers means that this hasn’t exactly been a long paid vacation; I’ve had to take the same long bus ride every work day with the same rude people who think they don’t have to follow the rules of behavior (who want to make you “fearful” of being called a “racist” if you` point out the rules about wearing headphones and respecting the people sitting around you), and once in town, there is nowhere to go but the office building because there is no place to sit, just places to stand for a few minutes or to just walk about to waste time. `

Since I have to use my legs for most of my transportation needs, what the weather is like is always a concern to me, and the local weather report—which generally is only reliable within 12 hours whenever there is a “chance” or “probability” of precipitation—is probably the most important “news” of the day for me. I have always been fascinated by numbers; I recall in a college classroom one day we had a guest speaker who seemed to be impressed by the fact that I was writing down every word she said—until she observed that the guy sitting next to me couldn’t stop chuckling, because he could see that I was just doodling rotisserie league “fantasy” baseball statistics.

But anyways, I’m interested in precipitation figures, so that I can “assure” myself that once we reached the “normal” amount, why might expect some “relief.” At the end of April the amount of precipitation recorded at Sea-Tac Airport was an inch above normal, but at the end of May, even though it should still have been .16 above normal, the NOAA numbers showed that it was actually well over an inch below normal. There certainly must be a mistake. But no; it appears that the new “normal” is the average amount of precipitation over the previous decade, which has gone up from 37.49 to 39.34 inches. I prefer the old “normal” to the new one, but so it goes with global warming and climate charge: “normal” never stays the same.

So when things do get back to “normal,” will it really be so? We may get through the pandemic, but there are many things that are “abnormal” in politics and society today, and there is no reason to believe that “normality” will overcome what has become “abnormal” any time soon. It is quite possible that what sane people regard as abnormal may become the new “normal”—we won’t really know one way or the other until the 2022 mid-term elections, or beyond.

Abnormal behavior, it seems, is the “norm” at the present time for much of this country. Just a few days after there were multiple mass shootings across the country over a six-hour period, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a  law that makes it illegal for local and state law enforcement to enforce federal gun laws, which one suspects is itself is unlawful and certainly must be decided in court. No doubt supporters of the law are counting on the U.S. Supreme Court backing it; with a 6-3 right-wing majority, it seems “safe’ to pass such an insane law now. “Violations” of a “citizens” right to own any weapon they choose without restriction is punishable by a fine of $50,000; “normal” people are pointing out that this amounts to “defunding” the police if they choose to obey federal law.

You rarely hear of gun violence in Europe, save that committed by neo-fascist groups; gun violence is not “normal.” But in this country, gun violence is “normal.” In 2020, there were over 600 mass shooting events, and over 19,000 victims by gun violence—both numbers the highest in memory. According to the Washington Examiner, one of the law’s supporters, Mike Brown,  claims that unrestricted gun rights is “critical to the preservation of our Republic”—meaning the white nationalist version of it. Brown runs a “Frontier Justice” shooting range, which of course implies lawless “wild west” vigilantism. Brown also claims that such laws are “necessary” because “some people may not spend a lot of time thinking about the Second Amendment.” Of course if they did, some of those “people” might wonder why all these guns around are not actually doing much “protection” for people being killed by guns.  

Meanwhile, my old “pal” Thom Hartmann, who I discussed in my very first post and who is the reason why I started this blog, recently had one of his operatives send me one of his posts to my inbox entitled “Rightwingers are Surfing on Trump’s Bullying & Getting Away With It.”  Quite true; Trump is a bully who has made bullying and every kind of self-obsession “normal” behavior in which only those who also share his traits belong in his new world order. This requires a dearth of empathy or compassion for anyone outside Trump’s own skin—and that “skin” is as thin and flimsy as tissue paper. Trump delight in causing “fear” and “pain” apparently has no limits because there are no lines he cannot cross for his most fanatical supporters, who seem greater than their actual numbers because they are louder and more threatening than those who just want to get on with “normal” life.

It is this “fear” of Trump’s abnormal supporters that drives most Republicans to at least publically support him; but on the other hand, there are Republicans who were already “bullies” who simply kept their proclivities under wraps until it was released not necessarily by Trump himself, but by Republican voters—most of the them nursing racial, nativist grievances and ugly stereotypes—who not only approved of Trump’s tendency to violent words and actions, but “finally” felt free to act out on their own impulses, as we have seen with the increase in ”Karen” incidents in this country. This is the “new” version of the “old” normal, when white racial grievance festered during the civil rights era, not just in the South, but in other major cities where “integration”—particularly in public schools—caused a great deal of anguish among white parents. Just in case anyone needs a refresher, the school busing issue was the reason for this famous frame that occurred in Boston, where some local “rednecks” gave a black lawyer the “business end” of what their idea of America was.

 

The new “normal” includes the invading the Capital building to attempt to overthrow an election, calling insurrections “peaceful patriots” just out for stroll in the park, to hold sham recounts six months after an election to give credence to an abnormal man’s belief that he will be “reinstated” in the White House come August. The new “normal” hopes to carry on in the future with neo-fascist governors like Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem, and making it “normal” to pass laws that allow Republicans not only to rig elections, but protest their own rigged elections if they lose them on the federal level, and to invalidate election results they don’t like and declare themselves the “winner”—or at least that is what the language in many of these new “normal” election laws seem to allow them to do.

Is this the “republic” that people with fascist tendencies want to be the “normal” way of running a country, “protected” by the firepower of extremist militias? They keep talking about “freedom,” yet what they want is to be their own personal “dictator” oppressing anyone they hate. They apparently want to be fascist black shirts who uphold other dictatorships who have “republics” in their official country names, like Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Botswana, Chad, China, The Congo, Cuba, North Korea, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Uganda, Vietnam, Yemen and Zambia. None of these countries can be said to be ruled by “the people,” but by authoritarians who feed into the hatreds of certain elements of the population who are willing to carry out violence against the opposition. This is what Trumpists want to do with this country—and what they don’t realize is that they will lose their own “freedom” as well.

Who knows where the new “normal” will take us. Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports tells us that Packer management’s “petty ways” is “hard to watch.” Yeah; I checked out his twitter page, and while this “concerned citizen” says the “right” things about BLM and other so-called “liberal” interest groups, of course he has his anti-Latino blind spot just like the rest these fakers; one of his “favorites” that he wants people to check out is the anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, whose founder, John Tanton, has expressed his intention to maintain a white supremacist country. These are the kind of supporters Aaron Rodgers attracts; this probably explains why he only gets upset when white teammates are cut. Oh, you think no one has “noticed” that?

Preventing the destruction of the planet would seem to be "simple," yet for humans it is just too "hard"

 

In testimony before Congress in 1981, the Reagan administration’s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, said “I do not know how many future generations we on count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.” Many wondered what exactly Watt meant by that, and he “clarified” his views a few months later in the Washington Post: “My responsibility is to follow Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns.”

I’m not sure what Jesus’ views on the environment actually were, but I’m sure they didn’t include the following: “If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.” Watt was finally forced to resign when he “joked” about the composition of a federal commission on coal leasing: “We have every mixture you can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” And there are those who have the gall to wonder why fewer and fewer people in this country call themselves “Christians.”

So we know that “conservatives” have no respect for the environment, see the land as being in existence only to be plundered and exploited, and regard climate change as a ”hoax.” What isn’t a “hoax” is that as discussed by the environmental group Footprint Foundation, there are five massive “patches” of plastic garbage floating about in the oceans today, one the size of Texas. With a garbage truck’s load of plastics dumped into the ocean every minute, it is estimated that 12 billion metric tons will be polluting the world’s oceans by 2050. Every year, this waste has been killing as much as 1 million sea birds, 100,000 sea mammals and turtles, and “countless” fish, according to the foundation.

But as they say, out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps many of us were fascinated by animals in our youth, especially if you lived in rural areas surrounded by creeks, meadows and forested areas. But we put away “childish” things, yet as “adults” we seem to become less “mature” about these things. The 2020 World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Report tells us that “The global Living Planet Index continues to decline. It shows an average 68 percent decrease in the population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes between 1970 and 2016. A 94 percent decline for the tropical subregions of the Americas is the largest fall observed in any part of the world.”

The WWF asks us why does this “matter”? It matters “because biodiversity is fundamental to human life on Earth, and the evidence is unequivocal—it is being destroyed by us at a rate unprecedented in history. Since the industrial revolution, human activities have increasingly destroyed and degraded forests, grasslands, wetlands and other important ecosystems, threatening human well-being…most of the oceans are polluted, and more than 85 percent of the area of wetlands has been lost.”

Of course, some people may be “concerned” about this on a surface level, but again, since most of this is “out of sight,” it is mainly “out of mind.” Few people actually “see” how this affects them, so it is not a “big deal” for the moment. But the report tells us that “Species population trends are important because they are a measure of overall ecosystem health.” It notes the explosive changes in the past 50 years in global trade and population growth, especially in urban areas. Until 1970, the planet’s regeneration processes were able to keep up with the human footprint, but no longer: “To feed and fuel our 21st century lifestyles, we are overusing the Earth’s biocapacity by at least 56 percent."

The report notes that the threat to biodiversity does have severe consequences on human life. We may look at just one of the variables that effects sea food; besides the destruction of habitat by pollution, the warming of sea water that potentially kills off phytoplankton that absorbs carbon dioxide, produces 50 percent of the Earth's oxygen, feeds anything from the next level of plankton to young fry to whales just starts getting the “ball” rolling. There has been some disagreement about how global warming effects phytoplankton, but the “bad” scenario is that warm water forces it to migrate to colder water in northern and southernmost regions, leading not just to the slow death of fisheries in temperate and tropical regions, but decreasing oxygen content in the oceans while increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the decrease of phytoplankton in those parts of the ocean to absorb it. 

On land, the apparent significant decline in insect populations which serve as sustenance for many “higher” species of life is also a matter of concern, as is the population of pollinating insects (bees). Because insect populations are effected by the weather, populations often see "boom and bust" cycles. But ecologist David Wagner has called the apparent decrease in insect populations and the near extinction of many species "a death by a thousand cuts," mainly from human activity that effects habitat and the use of pesticides that kill more than their intended targets.

Furthermore, the world’s “natural capital”—i.e. natural resources—has “declined by nearly 40 percent since the early 1990s, while produced capital has doubled and human capital has increased by 13 percent. This basically means that whatever has been taken from the earth is simply not being replaced. What are we doing to reverse the trend? We talk big about “recycling,” but it is more wishful thinking than fact. The report notes that policy makers do not seem to know how to “interpret” all of the information—or worse, “they choose not to tune in at all. A key problem is the mismatch between the artificial ‘economic grammar’ which drives public and private policy and ‘nature’s syntax’ which determines how the real world operates. Together this evidence shows that biodiversity conservation is more than an ethical commitment for humanity: it is a non-negotiable and strategic investment to preserve our health wealth and security.”

Of course it all sounds “simple” to deal with, but naturally it isn’t because it means that human beings have to change their habits. For example, how many people actually reuse those “reusable” bags that some retail stores occasionally provide? Hardly anyone does, right? Me personally, I do keep all such bags, but usually for purposes other than “reusing” them on shopping trips. In any case, the answer to the question of reversing current trends does, as usual, require “urgent and unprecedented conservation action, and make transformational changes in the way we produce and consume.” Unfortunately, “decades of words and warnings have not changed modern human society’s business-as-usual trajectory.”

The reports goes on, and on, about the usual warnings: 1 million plant and animal species threatened with extinction in the coming decades, the continuing destruction of terrestrial habitat for human use, reducing human impacts on climate change and pollution, reducing the overexploitation of sea life and endangered land animals, stopping the importation of invasive species that destroy native species—you know the drill. Even the deepest parts of the ocean are affected by human waste; in fact, today only 13 percent of the world’s oceans is regarded as “pristine.”

The current pandemic can also be blamed in part on the human destruction of habitat, if in fact it is true that the coronavirus originated in bats. Humans should not be interacting with bats at all unless they have either invaded their habitat, and destroyed their habitat and forced them to “introduce” themselves to human habitat.

The report concludes with the question of “What kind of future world do we want?” It can’t just be one where “we” thrive—but where “nature also survives and thrives.” It is all so “simple”—yet so hard.

DOD "Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon" report suggests that we can expect no help from "out there" to get off this planet we are killing

 

We live in a country where truth is increasingly stranger than fiction, mainly because fiction in Trumpworld is so often taken as literal “fact.” The latest is a poll that indicates that nearly one-third of Republican voters believe that Donald Trump will be “reinstated” as president by Labor Day, apparently based on the belief going around QAnon circles that the fraudulent Arizona recount will discover  such egregious “fraud” that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the election and just hand it over to Trump. There are people who actually believe this will happen, and you can’t stop them because some people are more susceptible to cult derangement than others. Even a few Democrats are susceptible; take for instance Sen. Joe Manchin, who insisted to an incredulous Chris Wallace on Fox News (of all places) that there were Republican senators that he could “work” with—that is, of course, if it was for the advancement of the Trumpist agenda.

Thus when it comes to discussing topics that are in fact “otherworldly,” it is almost like returning to the world of reality. Take for instance the revelation that an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) task force had been initiated in last year. The rationalization for this task force was to investigate what was formerly referred to as “UFOs” as potential “national security threats” rather than as evidence of extraterrestrial life; interestingly, this was part of the “pandemic relief” bill signed by Trump. The task force reviewed 120 reported sightings, of which it was decided that most probably did not involve U.S. technology. Apparently all of the incidents investigated were first reported by military personnel, with those incidents reported by civilians ignored.

The Department of Defense has since released videos of objects that “outperform” known technology and appear to leave no exhaust trails—objects that military pilots operating off the Atlantic coast claim to have seen “every day” for the past few years. Few actually believe these to be evidence of extraterrestrial life; some think they are currently unidentified technology by foreign actors like Russia and China, while most scientists seem more skeptical than expected, viewing these sightings as “mirages,” “space junk” or lighting from natural or manmade objects mischaracterized by the type of camera used, especially infrared cameras which show a “shape” based on areas of greatest heat release. Of course, without absolute “proof” that these objects are not extraterrestrial craft, what exactly these objects are is left to the “interpretation” of the individual:

 

Of course in this day and age when people are consumed with Earth-bound gadgets like “smart” phones, it is difficult to explain how “naïve” people back in the day were for being so fascinated by the “probability” of the existence of UFOs, alien life (not border crossers), Bigfoot, ESP and other strange phenomenon like the Nazca Lines in Peru, which could only be seen from high in the sky by somebody "up there":

 

But some “fantasies” seemed real enough; people believed that after landing on the moon, going to Mars and the outer planets was just the next easy technological step away. But unless you were spent nights listening to Art Bell’s radio show, it was eventually time to leave the world of imagination, and return to the “normality” of real life.

But what happened to those dreams of a world “out there”? The website Flashbak recalled that the 1970s were not just the “Have a Nice Day” decade full of great music that is still used in films and television commercials, but was also a time of “crisis and collective panics.” There was the Oil Crisis, where the OPEC initiated an embargo that quadrupled oil prices overnight, with gas rationing and gas stations shutting down. What followed was the “fiscal crisis” with American-made gas-guzzling cars going out of style, Native American beads “Made in Japan,”  and interest rates and inflation skyrocketing, The Vietnam War still going on, then Watergate, plane hijackings and serial killers galore. For some people, the end times were “near.” What to do? According to Mad magazine: 

 

  

Of course, if you really wanted to get away from it all, you could, if you could afford it (like Howard Hughes), lock yourself in the top floor of a penthouse, or be a “hermit” like Ted Kaczinski and plot vengeance on the world, or just kill yourself. Or you could seek solace in the “teachings” of far-out cults like the Rosicrucians (like my mother), or pack up and get away from the city to the country to grow your own vegetables, raise chickens and live off the land just in case the rest of the world went to pot. Or you could just escape into the fantasy world of the world “out there.”

To be certain, most people just took the punches the world gave them and got off the ground and carried on. But considering what we see today, some of these outlets for frustration with the “real” world were relatively harmless. On the other hand, surely we have to consider the fact that we are destroying this planet, and we have to figure out a way short of complete annihilation of the species to get people off this planet for long-term survival. So just what kind of progress have we made to accomplish that? I mean, the Stanley Kubrick film 2001 A Space Odyssey suggested we’d be exploring Jupiter—20 years ago.

What happened was Richard Nixon, who cut NASA funding, and cancelled the last two scheduled Apollo moon missions, with what funding was left reverting to the Space Shuttle and Space Lab programs. NASA had in fact laid out a plan for a manned mission to Mars in 1969, which they hoped to accomplish sometime in the 1980s. In a report prepared by the Space Task Force, NASA’s most ambition proposal was to double the size of its current budget by 1980 to do the following: “enable a human Mars mission in the 1980s, establishment of a lunar orbiting space station, a 50-person Earth orbiting space station, and a lunar base.” A reusable transportation vehicle to support the space stations, presumably meaning what would become the Space Shuttle, was also in the mix.

Nixon eventually ignored the report, seeing  “no compelling reason” to continue manned space flight outside of Earth orbit, and downgraded NASA to just another domestic program competing for funding. In his book After Apollo: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program, John Logsdon wrote that as a result, “What has happened is the least desirable outcome—for more than 40 years there has been a mismatch between space ambitions and the resources provided to achieve them.” Nixon apparently hoped that NASA would operate as an “advanced technology” agency, but without a clear “mission” to go above and beyond, this never materialized. And there has been indication that as time has passed, the public just doesn’t care one way or the other about a return to the moon and beyond—outside a few dreamers, space exploration no longer captures the “fancy” of imagination.

In the 1960s, NASA’s budget was as high as 4 perfect of the federal budget; today it is one-tenth of that. The current “hope” is that the Artemis program utilizing the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion crew capsule, will send a mission to the moon by 2024, but that program has been so fraught with delays and funding issues that it might not happen for awhile, if ever. Whisperings about taking shortcuts because of budget constraints calls to mind those that were at least partially responsible for two Shuttle disasters. Private companies have jumped into the fray making their own claims about moon shots, but that is mostly powered from the exhaust coming out the mouth of people like Elon Musk. You can’t fault NASA for thinking “big,” though. This is what the agency envisions as their “base camp” for a potential Mars mission:

 

So as bad as things seem to be headed under the cult of Trump, we don’t have much choice but to wait out the insanity, because this country is unwilling to spend the money necessary to “expand” its horizons much beyond its own gravitational pull, and no advanced life form is going to arrive to supply us with the know-how to get our act together.

 

Aaron Rodgers a no-show not a "shock" to this long-time Packer fan who has been "divided" about this faker since 2008

 

I am writing this on Monday, fully expecting Aaron Rodgers to skip the Packers mandatory minicamp, and not having to change a word. It probably shouldn’t come as a “surprise” to anyone that Rodgers is AWOL, and not just because of his tendency to be a “drama” queen; is it another one of those “coincidences” that a day before minicamp, we are learning from Elle magazine that Rodgers and his fiancé, Shailene Woodley, have been engaged and living together for longer than previously known, and consumed with domestic bliss? We also learn that Woodley apparently doesn’t know a whole lot about football, unlike Tom Brady’s Brazilian wife, Gisele; Woodley claims that her dog convinced her to go out with a guy who “throws balls” for a living—but she was “really impressed” by the way Rodgers could throw “fast balls, slow balls, high balls, low balls.”  

As I’ve mentioned before, I think that Woodley’s “take” on all of this has a lot more to do with Rodgers’ attitude about returning to Green Bay. Consider: after his infamous postgame interview after the loss the Buccaneers in the NFC title game, in which Rodgers dodged all questions in analyzing the loss, and whined about how he might not be on the team next year, a few days later he “clarified” his views, insisting that he expected to return to the Packers this season. Remember that, blind, deaf and dumb Rodgers apologists? So what “changed” between then and April 29? The “input” of someone who probably didn’t even know what state Green Bay was in before she met Rodgers? If the media is too “coy” to ask Woodley directly, maybe they could get some “inside” information from those who know her about her views on the matter; I mean, look what Prince Harry gave up to make Meghan “happy.”

But even if people don’t want to go there, there are plenty of other reasons to doubt Rodgers’ sincerity or motives. Does he even want to play football again, or even care about winning another Super Bowl? He has a better chance with the Packers with going to a Super Bowl than any of the teams being named as potential landing spots (and yet we are told he has no "weapons," which insults the other players on the team who still will demean themselves by claiming to have this selfish player's "back"). Is the “location” what we are really talking about here, and team management is being made the scapegoat here, by a so-called “elite” quarterback who needs them to explain his failure to deliver? Brett Favre never spent his off-seasons making excuses or bitching about management.

Meanwhile, there is a story about Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians “schooling” the Packers on how you are supposed to treat a diva quarterback, such as by discussing potential draft picks with him. First off, I doubt that Brady watches much college football during the season to properly evaluate talent, so such draft “discussions” are likely superficial and about already agreed upon “needs.” Furthermore, Brady is certainly more “cerebral” than Rodgers, who’d rather have a good time in the fun and sun in Hawaii than evaluate college players, which is the job of team scouts.

What are we talking about here, anyways? It is the same story every off-season with this guy: Rodgers moans about this and that; maybe—just maybe—team management sees him as a natural-born complainer for whom they can’t do anything to please, so why even bother? Again, this guy is consumed by personal grudges, and you can’t expect intelligent, sound decisions from such people. While Rodgers was in Hawaii, what was Russell Wilson doing? He was spending his time working out before eventually reporting to the Seahawks OTAs; it was almost like he was making a point in telling the world “I am not Aaron Rodgers. I am a leader, and I will lead.”

It is useful to remember the criticisms of Rodgers well before this off-season, because they inform us of the hypocrisies we hear today. Three years ago after a 31-17 loss to the Patriots, Colin Cowherd observed that the headlines were saying the team let “him” down again. He   begged to differ; Cowherd saw Rodgers’ receivers make great catches on poor passes, such as Marquez Valdes-Scantling leaping over a building to snare a badly overthrown ball. Brady didn’t have Gronk in the game, nor his lead running back. The game was tied entering the fourth quarter, and Brady showed his “clutch”: 6 of 6 passing, 104 yards, a TD and a 158.3 passer rating. Was Rodgers “clutch”? 2 of 7, 15 yards and a 39.6 passer rating.

Cowherd pointed out that since 2011, the Packers had a losing road record during what were Rodgers’ prime years. Apparently he was the only player on the bus or on the plane to play in road games. In those years, he had 7 Pro Bowl linemen, while Brady had just 2. In those years Rodgers had four Pro Bowl receivers; Brady had just one. And yet the Patriots played in three Super Bowls, and the Packers zero. Cowherd noted that he had always said that Rodgers is no Brady; he’s wasn’t even sure if he was a Drew Brees. Brees inherited a team that was a mess; Rodgers inherited a team that was another hair-pulling Favre interception from the Super Bowl. Rodgers was 6-10 his first season as a starter; the one team he did lead to a Super Bowl had a top-five defense.

And then Cowherd noted Rodgers’ body language that was becoming a “tired act.” Of all the “elite” quarterbacks in the league, only one of them every year takes passive/aggressive shots at his team’s organization—Rodgers. Cowherd noted the leadership shown by Wilson: no finger-pointing, no exasperation, no drama, no passive/aggressive. Rodgers had become predictably dramatic, predictably woe-is-me, always off by himself on the sidelines, never taking responsibility. What has changed with this guy? Nothing, so why are all these people giving him a pass now? Adam Schefter thinks that Rodgers is 90 percent of the team? Dominique Foxworth doesn't know that a lot of Packer fans are tired of Rodgers' shtick? These people obviously live in their own bubble world.

After blowing a 19-7 lead late in the fourth quarter of the 2014 NFC title game against the Seahawks, Rodgers seemed to have lost the motivation to play, preferring to blame Mike McCarthy and his teammates for his failure to lead. In four of the next five seasons his level of play was strictly middle-of-the-pack in the NFL, as if he just wanted to get the season over. The drafting of Jordan Love could be said to have been a warning to Rodgers to shape up, motivating him to play better. If Rodgers needs “motivation” to play at an “elite” level, then there certainly is a question if there is anything a team can do to “motivate” such a player. Most players are motivated by the desire to lead and to win; with Rodgers, it is to make sure the “buck” doesn’t stop with him every time he chokes in the playoffs.

As a long-time Packer fan who still thinks the best football game he’s ever seen was the 1983 MNF game between the Lynn Dickey-led Packers and the defending Super Bowl champion Redskins—won by the Packers 48-47 on Mark Moseley’s missed field goal attempt to end the game—I don’t see the world revolving around Rodgers. Yes, he does offer the Packers the “best chance” to return to the Super Bowl at the present time, but four straight failures to deliver has dampened “expectations,” and elicits a lack of trust. It doesn’t really matter to me if he plays for Packers again or not, and I suspect that if he is traded, whoever lands him will discover that he isn’t all that he is cracked up to be by the media, especially under the “influence” of his new domestic situation, if in fact he decides to ever play football again.

Is this Packer fan “divided’? I’ve been “divided” about Rodgers since 2008.