Is "wokeness" destroying Canada? Or is that just another fantasy of right-wing outsiders?

 

And so Kevin McCarthy shows us what a human jellyfish looks like, deciding to "unilaterally" announce an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden after caving in to the likes of MAGAmaniac Matt Gaetz making comically threatening gestures on the House floor after it became clear that there wasn’t enough votes to support it. It doesn't matter that Jim Jordan and his ilk have already wasted a year pursuing evidence-free hearings of wrongdoing. 

This is the Republican Party, at least on the House side where they “represent” small-minded people while behind their backs they are really doing what their corporate sponsors are telling them to do if they want their money, because power, or the facade of "power," is the only thing that motivates them.

It's the same old story: Democrats are doers, Republicans are destructive do-nothings who spend all their time mischaracterizing the good that Democrats are doing to insure some kind of future for this country--that is when they are not enabling the rich like so many Prince Prosperos watching the divisive chaos they created from the "safety" of their  castles on the hills. It can only be hoped that the plague they unleashed reaches them eventually.

But what about Canada? We hardly ever hear anything going off the rails there; in fact, it is mostly non-Canadians who think there is a “problem.”

I’ve been putting off for awhile something I want to talk about concerning what one right-wing journalist named Steve Edginton, of the right-wing British newspaper The Telegraph, calls in his video report “Canada’s Woke Nightmare: A Warning To The West,” and this is as good a time as any to talk about it. What you say? You didn’t know about our neighbor to the north is in “chaos” because of all those “woke” and “promiscuous” laws passed by the liberal government under Justin Trudeau?

Right off the bat the narrator takes you into “the jungle”:

Canada was a very stable middle class country with reliable institutions; to say that's gone is to say almost nothing Canada under Justin Trudeau. The former British colony has sought to position itself as the global bastion of progressive politics, but has become a totalitarian state as his cultural revolution shows no sign of abating.

Edginton goes on 

I went to Canada to find out how ordinary Canadians are dealing with Trudeau's radical reforms, the sexualization has become militarized from the promotion of gender ideology…the legalization of drugs, overdoses are up, violent crime is up—it's a jungle. Radical new suicide laws; you think that they want you dead.

What exactly is an “ordinary” Canadian anyways? I mean the one who has voted to keep the “liberals” in power for the past decade? Well, Edginton apparently can’t find those people even in “liberal” Vancouver, British Columbia. But does find some people who think “our leader Trudeau, I don't think I've ever heard him say a true word, all this nonsense about compassion is the manipulations of snakes pulling in the useful idiots who perhaps are genuinely compassionate and that's Canada.” The person who said this actually represents a minority position, as polls in Canada show. Edginton goes on

So we're here on Vancouver's downtown east side where the situation whether it's open drug use or violent crime just continues to get worse and every possession of hard drugs including heroin cocaine and Fentanyl has been legalized in the city to find out the impact of these new laws. I met up with Aaron Gunn…

…the same Gunn, it should be pointed out, who has been widely criticized in Canada as a far-right extremist and racist, who tells us in his "unbiased" opinion that there is…

…the incredible increases in homelessness, kind of just general societal chaos and the explosion of open drug use here in the streets of Vancouver and really on the streets of every major Canadian city. What's going on in Vancouver then we've seen the street order explode we've seen open drug use explode overdose deaths are up more than one thousand percent in the past 10 years here in British Columbia The Province where Vancouver is we saw more than 2,000 British Columbians died last year from overdoses alone every day in Vancouver four people are randomly attacked.

Edginton finds two gay men, one who prides himself in calling himself “queer,” while the other, more “conservative” one, is offended by such open displays. Is he afraid that in this “woke” country “People are afraid of losing their jobs if they speak out against the new laws” as Edginton

...went to find out more about the consequences of questioning gender ideology in Canada. I met up with Amy Hamm a nurse based in British Columbia…I'm fighting to maintain my nursing license...the two members of the public complained to my regulatory body, incensed by my involvement in putting up an I Love J.K. Rowling billboard. this billboard got a lot of attention in Vancouver that has a huge population of very hyper woke kind of Lefty people and that triggered an investigation...I don't think Canadians are necessarily polite maybe it's more passive aggressive could be the right word…I think as a country it's almost as if Canadians have chosen to do that. That's what cancel culture feels like here.

Now, the billboard being referred to caused immediate controversy and was covered over with hours it was displayed. Rowling—who already attracted “controversy” by supporting Johnny Depp—has made comments that suggest she thinks transgender identity hurts “real” women and girls, such as in sports. We can be honest about it, can’t we? She is probably correct, but being “right” isn’t the point; the question is do people have the “right” to wish to be whatever they want to be? 

They do (I mean, do I even have a "say" in it?), but people who disagree with that have a “right” to make that known as well without being “silenced” or “cancelled.” If they still can’t take the “heat,” then that is their problem; people who have the courage of their convictions are more “admirable” than those fanatics trying to silence them.

Multiculturalism is also a “key pillar” of Trudeau’s “vision” of Canada’s future, we are told. That includes welcoming immigrants from India, some of whom only seem to accept that “vision” if it benefits them and allows them to express their own prejudices against other immigrant groups. So Edginton finds an Indian immigrant woman with fake blonde hair…

 

…complaining about multiculturalism and alleged transgenderism in the schools, which elicited a “fierce backlash” from people who either brought with them their own racist social mores (East Asians) or from a society “ordered” by a discriminatory system based on “caste” distinctions (South Asians). The woman says

I came from India in 1974…there was racism, people not happy that other colors are coming so they were throwing eggs and calling them names many things were happening…After 1980 it started improving (but) now so many taxes they are increasing it looks like that 50 50. 50 government is taking from us and we have only 50.

She goes on to say that she loves “multiculturalism”—but only that of her "kind": “Bringing from every country and not seeing what their back records are, so many criminals can come too and crime gonna go very high so there should be some standard to bring people.” Stereotyping people from what countries, huh? Do we need to guess? What a hypocrite—she is acting just like the racists who supposedly were throwing eggs and calling names at her all those years ago.

It was at that point where the last shred of credibility of all of this evaporated for me; the woman's son chimed in about gender identity issues being jammed down people's throats, although I was not willing to take his word about just how much. This “report” was simply another right-wing hit piece, excepting some points about the tyranny of “woke” culture. Edginton goes on to talk about the assisted suicide law which puts fewer roadblocks in the terminally ill’s or those permanently in pain their “right to die.” 

But instead of talking to someone who has made that decision on their own volition, he finds a paralyzed former military service member who is complaining about Canada’s public health service and how the need to cut costs has lengthened the time she needs to wait to receive a new motorized wheelchair. Her life is so “challenging” now, it is if “they” want her to just “die.” This is the best Edginton could do?

So what’s the “truth”? Is Vancouver a safe place to visit and not simply a far-right commentator’s worst nightmare or the typical if-it-bleeds-it-leads media impression, asks a travelers' website called Bounce, as of this year?

Vancouver is the most populated city in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and one of the most beautiful. It is surrounded by clear blue waters and soaring mountain peaks, and these picture-perfect landscapes are unlike any other. It is also a hub for arts and culture and has a fantastic quality of living.

Some people don't think to check for travel advisories or restrictions when planning a trip, but in reality, that should be your first step. Currently, there are no dangers of vacationing in Canada and it is a great country to travel to. In fact, it is the 10th safest country in the world according to the Global Peace Index. That being said, you should always consult your own government's advice before you visit any city, including Vancouver.

How safe is Vancouver really? No city is truly crime-free, and minor crimes can still happen in Vancouver. Overall the city has a very low crime rate, does not have a risk of natural disasters and there is almost no chance of any serious crimes happening. As a tourist, you'll only have to watch out for pickpockets, but scams or other major crimes are not a threat. It is normal for major cities to have crime but Vancouver is actually very safe.

In other words, you only see the “bad” if you are looking for it.  That is not to say there isn’t any “bad”—every large city or country and has some of that, even right-wing dictatorships like Florida and Russia. 

Last year The New York Times commented that Canada’s assisted suicide law had the “least” amount of safeguards than any other country, which was criticized by some. However, the Times noted that

Although the Canadian law was hotly debated in 2016 when it was originally enacted, it has won broad public acceptance since then, with polls showing strong support. Through December of 2021, 31,664 Canadians have received assisted deaths. Of those, 224 who died last year were not terminally ill, taking advantage of last year’s amendment.

 

British Columbia’s “experiment” in decriminalizing hard drug possession under 2.5 grams has of course come under heavy criticism by the right and blamed for a rise in crime rates. It is still illegal to sell hard drugs, however; The New York Times noted the incongruity of this policy in an op-ed about Oregon’s similar law: 

 

Here, too, defenders of the system point to funding shortfalls, especially for treatment. But the sticky fact that proponents of decriminalization rarely confront is that addicts are not merely sick people trying to get well, like cancer sufferers in need of chemotherapy. They are people who often will do just about anything to get high, however irrational, self-destructive or, in some cases, criminal their behavior becomes. Addiction may be a disease, but it’s also a lifestyle — one that decriminalization does a lot to facilitate. It’s easier to get high wherever and however you want when the cops are powerless to stop you.

 

Another issue concerning “wokeness” in Canada is about half-empty bookshelves in school libraries…

 

…with many old, mostly unread books removed. I noted a CBC story that showed images of  books being discarded—mainly by or about women in an apparent effort to gaslight and “heighten” the “outrage” about this. One of the books appeared to be from the Seventies and falling apart at the seams, and its subject matter female musical artists of the time. Now I’m all for Seventies music, but kids today hate that music assuming that they actually even ever heard any of it, and would probably roll their eyes if you told them the Seventies was the best decade for popular music; presumably now it was just taking up "space."

The point would have been better made if classic novels and historical works were being shown the refuse pile, for it would have made the point better that today’s youth have little understanding of “culture” other than what the “woke” and “anti-woke” folks tell them it is.

As mentioned, polls in Canada suggests that people there are for the most part blasé about what the right-wing media calls “chaos” and “crisis.” The CBC notes that

But grappling with the pejorative use of the word "woke" at this point could be like trying to box a shadow. Because whatever it originally meant, woke has become a way to say something without saying anything. According to new survey data from Pollara, 57 per cent of Canadians claim to have at least a general idea of what woke means. But less than 27 per cent of all Canadians say they could explain the term to someone else (Pollara deliberately did not offer a definition to survey respondents when it conducted the poll). And it stands to reason that, even in that group, there are different definitions in use.

This suggests that, especially in the U.S., wokeness and "cancel culture" is driven by a small but fanatical minority of people for whom the meaning is "clear." In a another recent survey by Spark Advocacy,

Most (56%) say there are some challenges, but they don’t feel Canada is broken.  Most of the 35% who think Canada is broken, don’t seem ready to blame the Trudeau Liberals. Some blame global issues, some blame the right.  When you boil it all down, only 14% of Canadian voters believe the country is broken and the Canadian left is to blame. Only a small majority of Conservative voters (58%) think Canada is broken, and only half of them blame the left.

What that means, it appears, is that despite the efforts of a few far-right fanatics in Canada like Gunn and Pierre Poilievre, hyper-partisanship hasn’t taken in Canada as it has in the U.S. The Trudeau government has taken some popularity poll hits, and has been criticized not for its “wokeness” but for not taking more decisive action on the affordable housing “crisis,” although it claims it has “heard” the people and are taking action to remedy it. 

It seems that the “anger” about “wokeness” is coming mostly from people with extreme-right or "foreign" viewpoints, and by outsiders seeking out only the people who are “dissatisfied” and are natural complainers. Again, that’s not to say “wokeness” can’t be annoying as hell, but in Canada it is simply not THE issue that culture warriors in this country think it is. 

No one on the right in Canada is running on abolishing the public health care system or other social programs that the Indian woman is complaining about paying taxes for, no one is talking “culture war” nonsense—in fact the “conservatives” in Canada are actually taking the lead on the housing problem, which is quite different than the concerns of the far-right (let alone the right generally) in this country. For all the phony complaints about homelessness, most right-wingers believe the gutter is where they “deserve” to be anyways.

Add new Elon Musk biography to Vimeo documentary for more insight into the "real" Amber Heard

 

First things first: four plays into the Jets' season and Aaron Rodgers tears his Achilles tendon and is out for the season and probably the next, if he so chooses to continue. A total freak injury, although both Tom Brady and Peyton Manning themselves missed an entire season due to a catastrophic injury. But this is different due to Rodgers’ age, and it will be a tough decision going forward. I’m not “happy” about this at all, since I thought it would be interesting to compare the way his and Jordan Love’s seasons' progressed.

Now for the real “news.” Amazingly enough, the mainstream media can’t ignore the information about Amber Heard in the new biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. In the book, we are told that people close to Musk expressed nothing but contempt for Heard, calling her “toxic,” a dealer in “chaos,” and even “evil.” Do you really think they would be putting this out for the record if they didn't know this was Elon's views as well? The bio does mention that Musk had a tendency toward "outbursts," and he is probably the kind who feels animated when confronted with the endlessly illogical, pointless arguments of someone like Heard--who herself was quoted as saying that if someone plays with “fire,” then they will get “burned."  That “fire” was, of course, herself.

Isaacson noted how Heard initiated the brief affair, pretending to be a “geek” despite dropping out of high school (after the suspicious car accident that killed a friend and her driving privileges suspended for four years), and supposedly not knowing how to edit that TMZ video. We are told how for a few months Heard played “nice” to get her hooks on Musk, and once she accomplished her mission it was the same old story: she and her friends mooched off of him, she got him to pay part of that “donation” in her name, but once Musk became less “generous” with his attentions and money, Heard became that psychopath that we all know and hate. Interestingly, there is apparently no interest by the author about Musk’s “relationship” with Heard's baby born from a surrogate mother.

And then there was that documentary on Vimeo,  Surviving Amber Heard, which for $12.99 to “own” may seem like a “lot” to some people—especially those not interested in the truth. Well, I forked-up the money; was it worth it? I mean what the hell else is out there if you want the “unvarnished” truth all in one place? First of all, most of the two-part documentary is the audio and testimony heard in court, so it is nothing “new”—with one notable exception, that being the devastating interview with actor and former Heard friend Steven Crowley, describing her drug use and relationship with Tasya van Ree before she even got her claws on Depp.

The documentary, narrated by a woman presumably to make it more credible to doubters, makes a few trenchant observations: while their therapist noted that Heard would speak in a “jackhammer” fashion that Depp had trouble keeping-up with, it was observed that on other occasions—especially when we hear Heard’s evil, demon-possessed “laugh”—she pokes fun at his quieter, more deliberate way of speaking. 

The therapist also noted how “Amber used to keep Johnny in fights. I know she led on more than one occasion and started it to keep him with her because abandonment and having him leave was her worst nightmare. The second one is what she reported to me, which is if he was going to leave her to deescalate from the fight, she would strike him to keep him there.” How many times did that happen in reality?

Why did Heard have this “need” to keep Depp “close” enough to make his life hell with her abusive insecurities? When they met, Heard was just a bit player in B-films, not well-known by the public. Then she was cast in the film The Rum Diary with Depp, and there is no doubt that she played him from the start, enjoying being attached to his fame, money and extravagant lifestyle. 

She eventually got him to marry her, and from there things went from bad to way, way worse with the greedy, self-centered Heard whose idea of a “relationship” was constant conflict and gaslighting her victim into feeling he's always the "problem"—and not just with Depp, but with former partner van Ree, whose relationship with Heard suggested that she had “practice” turning her domiciles into war zones before she even met Depp.

Depp was more than generous in allowing Heard’s free-loader friends—such as Raquel Pennington and iO Tillett Wright—paying not a dime for room and board; if he hoped that they would keep Heard "company" and keep her away from him, he was wrong: they just became her co-conspirators. 

During depositions when questioned about their job descriptions, Pennington and Wright were clearly being evasive and unwilling to describe exactly what they did to earn their own bread during their time at the Eastern Columbia Building. Heard’s sister Whitney also stayed at the penthouse living the care-free hobo life, her only "function" was to support her sister, which included being the occasional punching bag; Depp apparently felt “sorry” for her because he recognized in her abusive relationship with her sister his own childhood experiences.

When all of this came under “threat”—not just with Depp’s stated desire that Heard’s friends and family find their own places to live, largely brought on by their alienation of his own friends and family (Heard described his friends as “old guys playing guitars”), but when Depp finally told her that he was finished with her too. She wasn’t going to change; she didn’t mind living in chaos as long as she was the puppet-master, in fact she thrived on it. But when she realized he was serious this time, she had to twist the narrative to make him look like the “villain.”

Now, let’s take a look at a transcript (created from the SRT file) of that interview with Steven Crowley, who worked with Heard on the film Never Back Down, which somewhat surprisingly went by largely unnoticed at the time by even Depp's social media supporters:

And she goes, you party? And I'm like, oh yeah, I party. She whips out some Coca-Colas and starts doing it and she's like, would you like some? I go, oh, I didn't know that's what party meant. I thought you meant do like, we'd party. I hang out, let's go out, let's go drink. Um, it, it was either Ketamine or GHB she'd put it in our vodka. (So you never, you never drank from the bottle in the fridge, huh?) Dude, she's a  professional. It is wild. And that was my first experience with anything. And for sure, true story, I don't think I'd seen weed in person at this point. I'm 21 years old. I really don't think I had, so like the first thing I'm exposed to is cocaine, ecstasy and GHB, laced vodka or ketamine.

On the film set, the production crew started doing drug tests of

Amber, because they were suspicious of her sobriety on set. She was upset that production asked her representatives that they wanted to start doing testing because they thought something was wrong. We were talking and she's like, she's getting all pissed. And she's like, you know, they don't, they don't test Lindsay, referring to Lohan at the time, who I don't think was like completely off the rails yet. And there was always a weird, she'd bring up Lindsay Lohan a lot, I guess that’s who she lost to supposedly, is what she said. She lost Mean Girls. It, it's hard to know what was true, uh, with her when it came to stories. But what I saw is like, what I saw.

Then there was the “visit” to Heard’s drug dealer’s house:

You know, she's doing bombs all night. I don't know. Four in the morning I head home. It's Sunday now. Around 11:00 AM I get a phone call from her and she goes, Steven, come, come over. We're gonna go play pool. We go to the pool hall and two other actors are with us. So Tilky and Amber and then Evan, they had not slept and Amber for sure. So they had been up all night playing pool, drinking. She's doing, blowing in the bathroom. 

This big guy comes and I'm like, dude, who is this guy? Like, he goes, oh, that's Amber's drug dealer. And I'm like, oh, he's been fairly friendly. He goes, alright, we're going, uh, we're going to my place. And he grabs Amber and he walks her to his car. We drive to his house. So I'm like, we're driving. I'm like, Sean, what are we doing? He's like, dude, we can't, we can't leave her with that guy. We got, we have to film by the way, on Monday.

Once at the dealer’s house:

 He disappears. He goes to his bedroom. We're all out like hanging out by the pool table. We're playing pool, okay at this point. And it's awkward. Amber's like, shit tanked. Like out of her mind up for two days. She's like swaying. And Sean's like, dude, we can't leave. So more or less that's what's going on. He comes out of  his bedroom. He tells us to like move from the pool table. He puts down like this tray gallon Ziploc bag filled with cocaine, Opens it and just like mic drops it all on there. Now I had seen cocaine for the first time because of Amber. 'cause she'd always ask me to do it with her. Come on, just do it. Just do it. And that was the first time I was like, this, this can't be real life.

He would've probably have let us leave, but he wouldn't let her leave. But he was like, you're not leaving. And he goes, and she's not leaving at like midnight at this point. Like she's out of it. Like, she's basically like, kind of like fallen asleep. She'd been up for two days and we have to be on set. Not good. Not good. That was crazy, so when you see her on the stand lying about how she, she only did coke like once when she was 18, when she explicitly told me I would rather be addicted to cocaine than cigarettes. As she's doing a bump, I'm like, baby, baby doll.

Then Crowley describes Heard’s relationship with van Ree, the victim of her assault at Sea-Tac Airport in 2009:

The first time I had been to a strip club was with Amber. She's like, oh, my favorite stripper's working tonight. I was like, what do you mean your favorite stripper? She's like, oh, I come here a lot. And I was like, do you? So we go in, they sit us right down in the middle, um, and then her favorite stripper comes out and she's dancing on her.

Heard did not care who knew about this, except van Ree:

Uh, she said Tasya was sober and against drugs. To the point when Tasya came to visit on set, Amber told me and anybody else who like hung out with her, Hey, Tasya's coming. Do not mention anything about drugs, partying, alcohol, she cannot know. So if she's on set, don't tell a story that we're at the strip club, you know? And I was like, okay. Yeah, not a problem. Tasya found out about something that Amber and the stripper had been hooking up and maybe some other people. I get a text, I get a call, text or call, I don't remember. And Amber's like, Hey, come over. And I'm like, all right.

So I go over and the apartment is trashed, like, looked like a robbery was through there. And I'm like, dude, what happened? She goes, uh, Tasya found out about the stripper. And I was like, okay, but what happened? She goes, we got into a huge fight and described some of the scenes that she's described with Johnny Depp. It’s like, glasses all over the floor, but there's no pictures like that apartment. I was like, oh my God, if I'm the owner, I'm gonna be pissed.

The “picture” we see here is that regardless of the stories we heard about Depp’s drug use, which was severe enough that he needed to “detox” (instead of just "napping") without the “help” of someone like  Heard, who apparently enjoyed seeing Depp in agony while she withheld his medicine, we don't really need any more evidence to underline the fact that Heard is a liar and not the kind of person anyone would want as a domestic “partner.”

I’m not feeling sorry for van Ree, by the way. By keeping quiet about Heard’s abusive behavior—in fact denying it—only allowed Heard to abuse others after her. I talked about this dynamic in a post in 2016; the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey in 2013, which showed a close to equal number of heterosexual men claiming to be victims of domestic violence as women, also for the first time included same-sex couples. It showed that domestic violence was more prevalent in non-heterosexual relationships than of the hetero variety; 44 percent of lesbians (compared to 26 percent of gay men) claimed to be victims of intimate partner violence at some point in their relationships. 

Why are these incidents not reported to law enforcement? This from the Wiki page on the subject of same-sex DV:  “Fear of reinforcing negative stereotypes has led some community members, activists, and victims to deny the extent of violence among lesbians.” Someone named Beth Leventhal of some LGBQT support website told us that “Abuse is not about violence; it’s about control. You can be just as controlling of someone if you are small — as if you’re large. It’s about using violence or any other means of gaining and maintaining control.” I noted at the time that it was curious that DV activists did not apply this same dynamic to heterosexual relationships, as this was clearly the dynamic at work in Depp and Heard’s relationship.

The second part of the documentary lacks a similar “smoking gun” reveal as the Crowley interview, but does go into detail about what made Heard’s testimony in court not only not credible and completely at odds with her sneering 2016 deposition, but often ridiculous. After the “anecdote” about Depp wearing a mesh T-shirt and her dog stepping on a bee that garnered such ridicule on TikToc:

While telling the convoluted stories, Amber appears to add random details to make her narrative believable. One of them is when she tries to paint Johnny as an animal abuser, again, appearing to ascribe her own actions to Johnny (a video is shown of Heard laughing as she holds her little dog half-way out the passenger window of a moving car). The constant staring at the jury came off as if she was trying to see if the jury was buying the convoluted stories and the absurdity of filler details that she sounds like she's making up as she goes.

Then there is Heard’s free-loader friends joking about Depp’s missing finger-tip, and discussions about Heard’s need for the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel,  used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Interestingly, we hear Heard claiming that it doesn’t help to “calm” her—it just slows down her heart rate. We can take that as meaning that in her mind it only helped her to continue her “fights” without causing heart health issues.

Well, that’s enough of that. Will it change any minds that don't wish to be changed? We still hear desperate gender activists grasping at straws on the Internet; for example, as "evidence" one person points to the alleged kicking incident on the plane. The seating arrangement on the plane shows that this would have been extremely difficult to do. Depp testified that he “playfully” aimed his foot in her direction as she was leaving the area after another round of incomprehensible argument.

Heard’s "truth" was that his bodyguard wrote a text saying that Depp was “sorry” for kicking her; but he testified in court that the only reason he wrote that was to placate Heard and her version of “reality,” otherwise  she would just continue the “fight” until she felt that she was the “winner." 

Meanwhile, the "forgotten" or dismissed include those who threw in their entire stake betting on Heard; they include the long abandoned Eve Barlow, who is now “begging” not to be “canceled” or be accused of being a “racist,” and for someone to please give her a job. Of course Heard is not hurting for money despite having no apparent source of income that either she or any of the shill media wants to talk about; that is a question that Isaacson apparently didn't want to ask either.

After slow start, Jordan Love looking OK in rout of hapless Bears

 

Game One of the official start of the Jordan Love Era—however long that will last—began in what one has to admit was an impressive 38-20 victory, insofar as the Packers seemed well-prepared to play against an ill-prepared Bears for their ninth-straight win in the “greatest rivalry” in the NFL in Matt LaFleur’s coaching tenure. I was only able to take in the game via the Bears Radio Network, and on some of the postgame commentary we could hear language referencing the Bears’ performance that one might say the FCC might frown upon on the public airwaves.

To be honest, after the Packers scored an early short-field touchdown after the Bears botched a fourth-down play, I started to have my doubts following three punts and rookie Anders Carlson bailing Love out by kicking a 52-yard field goal on the last play of the first half after the Packers failed to take advantage of another short field opportunity. Love played as I feared he would in the first half, generally speaking. It was noted repeatedly by the game commentators that Love was not effective on deep throws because of his tendency to just airmail the ball hoping someone would run under it, and frequently on short throws where Love would fire-breath uncatchable balls.

The Packers were also largely unable to run the ball early, with AJ Dillon in particular having trouble getting past the line of scrimmage; whether this could be an issue with the offensive line remains to be seen. That the Packers managed to enter halftime with a 10-6 lead was largely the result of a Packer defense that read Bears’ quarterback Justin Fields like a book. While Fields is clearly the Bears best offensive weapon, that really doesn’t say much for an offense that even in practice, we were told, was having a hard time scoring touchdowns.

The second half was a bit different, and as we often saw with Aaron Rodgers, it was a tale of two halfs. On the Packers first drive of the third quarter, Love managed to get the ball on a screen pass to the Packers’ best playmaker, Aaron Jones, who rumbled 51-yards downfield for the longest play of the game, followed by a Jones 1-yard run for a touchdown. Jones followed this with 35-yard TD catch-and-run on fourth down for a 24-6 lead. After the Bears cut the lead to 10, Love made the play of the day when after dropping the snap, picked up the ball and caught the Bears secondary napping as TE Luke Musgrave stood all alone 37 yards downfield waiting for the ball, which if it had been better thrown would have resulted in a touchdown.

As it happened Romeo Doubs caught his second TD pass of the game to make 31-14, and that was quickly followed by Fields throwing a pick-6 to Quay Walker to make it 38-14 and the rout was on. The Bears managed to score a late touchdown and backup QB Sean Clifford got in a few snaps at the end of the game.

The final score suggested an impressive win and good performance by Love, who after a slow start finished with 245 yards, three TD passes and a 123 QB rating. Of course the Bears did their part, showing no improvement over their 3-14 record last season. Fields just isn’t that good, and he has no real playmakers around him. As for the Packers, Jones limped off the field after his 35-yard touchdown catch, so that could be a problem if he isn’t available going forward for the Packers offense, which can’t expect the defense to always keep things tight if the offense struggles until it gets its act together.

Next week it is against the Falcons team led by second-year quarterback Desmond Ridder, who I’m sure most people never heard of. Although the Falcons beat the Panthers 24-10, the Falcons only gained 221 yards of total offense, half of that on two TD drives in the fourth quarter following turnovers. This is another road game, but this is the kind of opponent that Packers in normal times should be expected to beat, and they should if Love is for real.