Racist targeting of migrants is “easy”; fixing what is really wrong with this country won't be, since what is wrong starts at the top

 

Oh look at those pretty fences there now, except that they were not needed this time for the electoral vote count, because, you know, “liberals” actually believe in democracy:

 

Anyways, since white women are “special victims” in this society, it was easy for some House Democrats to take up on Joe Biden suggestion of “bipartisanship” with Republicans—and likely in the Senate and Biden’s pen hand—and pass the Laken Riley Act, which claims to target illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes, but in fact is being used to vastly expand the injustices of Bill Clinton’s personal “bipartisan” 1996 immigration “reform” law. 

Like that law, it also targets “noncitizens”—which is to say anyone who is a legal resident but not a U.S citizen—but now subjecting them to deportation for merely being charged with “petty crimes,” meaning that police, ICE agents or racist neighbors who merely feel “unsafe” can make faked charges leading to arrests and put those brown-skinned people in the deportation line.

In voting against the Act, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal pointed out the injustice in promoting a law that would put even innocent people in jeopardy on the basis of false accusations without the right to due process, but for Republicans, as reported by the New York Times who only see “criminals” like Rep. Mike Collins, anyone who isn’t a “citizen” who commits “minor-level crimes,” needs to be “off the street. These criminals are getting bolder and bolder while our communities become more unsafe.”

The racist hypocrisy is more apparent with the claim by Rep. Tom Emmer that “This bill is more than just a piece of legislation; it’s a return to common-sense American values.”  You know, like the “common sense” values expressed by Trump and Republicans after 59 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, or the El Paso mass shooting in 2019 which of course Trump’s racist rhetoric against migrants had nothing to do with. What did Republicans do about it? Nothing, of course, except to claim that there would be less mass killings if there were more guns on the street. It’s an “American value” to have a gun and use it once in a while.

Notice how quickly Trump and the media swiveled from the New Orleans terrorist attack by a man with an ISIS flag posted on his vehicle to suggesting that such attacks would “end” if the border is sealed, as if migrants committed the act. The man who did conduct the attack was a former U.S. Army soldier and a U.S. citizen, just like the man involved in the terrorist attack in Fort Hood in 2009. Ok, so yes that illegal immigrant who claims he was “drunk” set fire to a woman on a New York subway, a horrendous act among hundreds that happen every day. But that never happens on NYC subways, right? But the culprit was already under arrest when a 67-year-old man was found burned six days later on the subway system.

We are also told that a week ago someone who witnesses claimed was a Hispanic woman in Seattle made an “unprovoked” attack on a man, punching him and stabbing him once before simply walking casually down the street; the victim spent a day in the hospital and was released, and the suspect has not been “found,” and it seems that what her “ethnicity” was is no longer “clear.”  But again, it’s not like stabbings are “unusual” occurrences in Seattle 1.

Yet Trump and his supporters act like all crime would end if we just “closed the border”; they even think that the “scourge” of fentanyl would end, forgetting where it actually originates from and its domestic demand for all illegal drugs. Chinese online “pharmaceutical” companies who deal directly with U.S. “customers” through commercial delivery companies are quite clever on what to call their “new” wonder drug next after it is put on a U.S. “banned” list. If the “demand” is high enough, we should remember that fentanyl was first created as a new, more powerful “painkiller” in the U.S. back in 1959. Someone can probably figure out how to bring “manufacturing” back here again.

But what you worry? Even the so-called “liberal media” is running scared. Forget that migrant labor is largely responsible for the avoidance of a recession during the last four years, that GDP has grown because of it, and Social Security is remaining “solvent” for at least a couple more years longer than it would have. And sorry, Thom Hartmann, raising wages isn’t going to bring anyone back to working in poultry plants—it’s just going to raise prices. Of course the “natives” will actually have to come back, like they didn’t when the Bracero program was ended in 1965.

We found out in 2019 how even “progressive” populists promote racist ideas that don’t “fix” the problems they imagine. Months after ICE thugs invaded those Mississippi poultry plants that resulted in 680 arrests of suspected “illegals,” one reporter who visited the sites noted that employees (most of them immigrants) still working at them had observed greater efforts at, but the continuing difficulty of, finding and retaining “native” replacements, many of whom quit soon after being hired because they simply did not like the work, or were fired because they were not motivated to come to work on time or every day.

Of course why would they? OSHA lists poultry plants—similar to other food production like meatpacking—as places where there is “exposure to high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculosketal disorders and hazardous chemicals…biological hazards handling live birds or exposure to poultry feces and dusts which can increase risk for many diseases.” And you wonder why employers can only persuade undocumented workers to take unfilled jobs?

The truth doesn’t matter. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mark Zuckerberg, now unashamedly sucking-up to Trump, is ending "fact-checking" on Facebook and Instagram. According to the WSJ, it is now "OK" to make demonizing and dehumanizing false claims about migrants because limiting such content based on lack of facts is "out of touch with mainstream discourse." It isn't hard to read between the lines there: lies are on the same level as truth in this country now. 

I have an updated volume of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World which includes his 1958 essay “Brave New World Revisited” in he which examines the similarities between the world related in his novel to that of Nazi Germany. He notes that “Hitler's aim was first to move the masses and then, having pried them loose from their traditional loyalties and morali­ties, to impose upon them (with the hypnotized con­sent of the majority) a new authoritarian order of his own devising.”

Sounds “familiar,” doesn’t it?  Any Jordan Klepper video will tell you that:

 

 Huxley goes on

 

Let us see what Hitler thought of the masses he moved and how he did the moving. The first principle from which he started was a value judgment: the masses are utterly contemptible. They are incapable of abstract thinking and uninterested in any fact outside the circle of their immediate experience. Their behav­ior is determined, not by knowledge and reason, but by feelings and unconscious drives. It is in these drives and feelings that "the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted." To be success­ful a propagandist must learn how to manipulate these instincts and emotions. "The driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door of their hearts." . . . In post-Freud­ian jargon, of their unconscious.

Huxley observes that while Hitler’s “theories” on race were incomprehensible and despicable drivel, his ability and knowledge of the people he was delivering that drivel to through speech was uncanny. Is it that difficult to believe that Trump learned some “lessons” from Hitler? Haven’t we been told that Trump’s former wife, Ivana, stated that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches that had been given to him by a “friend”—one who made of point of saying he was not Jewish as Trump had claimed as a way of “defending” himself—in their bedroom for nighttime reading?

Why shouldn’t we believe that Trump is privately contemptuous of his supporters when he knows he can say the most ridiculous lies and they believe him? The only other explanation is that Trump is a pathological liar who lives in world that isn’t real, as his supporters appear to do anyways. Of course even many in the mainstream media stupidly follow Trump’s lead to “explain” why people support him—thus those who are not ignorant about what is going on in this country should now be skeptical about what they are being told in even in the “liberal” or “moderate” media (meaning CNN) if it “justifies” what Trump is doing to this country.

But as long as he can keep his people “focused” on the brown-skinned “vermin,” they won’t spend too much time thinking about all those other things he is—or isn’t—doing, like “fixing” the real “problems” he keeps insisting didn’t exist when he was president the last time. Sure it is easy to deport those millions because they are easy to kick around and the Hispanic community won’t take to the streets to protest because it is itself divided and full of people who are racist against those “ugly” little indigenous people.  

It will only be later when people say “Wow, what happened to all those jobs we were promised, or why didn’t my pay go up, or why are prices going up instead of down, or why are same people who commit most of the crimes in this country still committing crimes?” People have been asking that since 1965, and the only people who saw any “improvement” were those billionaires.

Of course, MAGA types were stupid enough to believe any of that in the first place. Trump’s deportation and tariff plans if implemented fully will reduce domestic production and the peripheral jobs (including white collar jobs) that depend upon those “illegal” jobs being filled. Hell, just close whole businesses because they cannot operate on the margins without “illegal” labor because nobody wants to make it legal to bring any of those “vermin” here, because they might actually stay long enough to have kids who can vote in our elections and have that “say” that they otherwise are not allowed to have in this country.

Yeah, as I pointed out a few posts ago about Clinton’s “brave new economy,” the new “tech” economy does not really improve said economy or create long-term jobs at all (where do you think all those “call centers” with frustratingly unhelpful “customer service” agents who speak in funny accents are located at?)—and those new “data centers” in rural areas only create temporary jobs and reek environmental, water and electrical grid havoc on poor and rural communities. And of course Elon is more interested in sharing American space secrets with Russia and creating jobs in China than he is in the U.S., which seems to be against what Trump promised but is being pushed aside by his "co-president":

But you know what? What? Trump’s short-sightedness and purposeful ignorance is like an infectious disease, and people do not know what they have is a disease. Trump “unchained” is making both himself and the country look ridiculous and out of control not just with his cabinet picks, but also on the foreign policy side, with his desire of sending “shit-hole” Puerto Rico out to sea while adding Greenland, Canada and Panama (or at least its canal) to his list of personal playthings, whether they like it or not.

Maybe this is just a lot bluster he himself doesn’t take “seriously,” but if it is, what about everything else he has “promised”? Deportation is the “easy” part—just look for anyone who looks “Mexican” and demand their “papers.” But all the rest of that “stuff” that for now is just a lot of media-friendly blurbs that sound “cool” but is more like a stick of gum that tasted good at first but soon wears out its welcome. 

Well, we’ll just say the illegals are the problem for everything until they are all deported, and then we’ll think of someone else to blame it all on, like those “crazy liberals.”

Trump is 78 years old, so it isn’t surprising that he thinks in terms of short-term greed. He has his “legacy” to think about. Being elected by stupid people he knows are stupid was “easy”; after all, they were not “smart” enough to be born into wealth and inherit most of it from his father. 

Of course, Trump’s many branded business failures proves that he wasn’t that “smart” after all, and depended on smarter people to make him look "bigger" by whatever means necessary (like the illegal kind that landed Allen Weisselberg in prison) than he actually was. But then again, Hitler was a failed “artist,” but he could sure “talk," and Trump has proved that his real "talent" is in the infomercial business, where can sell himself.

Thus the future means nothing to Trump, it’s all about what’s good for him now, with no thought to the consequences of self-serving cupidity. Trump says he wants to make the country “great” again, but that is only through his own eyes and how it serves his self-promotion. Others may view things differently, but that is “fixed” by surrounding himself with sycophants instead of truth-tellers.

Is Trump worried about what happens to the planet or the country 10 years from now? Certainly not, because either complete dementia or death will likely catch-up with him before that part of the “future” arrives, and like William Barr, why worry about your “legacy” when you are dead, as long as you have “happy” thoughts about yourself when the end comes? Who will be around to him he is full of it? Probably not the “baby-boomer” generation—the kind that came of age in the 60s and 70s—which is on its way to oblivion along with their hopefulness for a better world.

Today the nihilism and narcissism of the generations that have come afterward will be asking themselves what happened? Why didn’t we listen? It’s like people who hate “old music” because it is just a bunch of songs about love and peace—they only like listening to music about being nihilistic and narcissistic. Maybe there will come a time (which I doubt) that people will ask themselves “why do we think like this?” It will because they didn’t listen, or didn’t want to.

People have been warned, and but by the time of reckoning comes it will be too late. Trump’s drill-baby-drill ignorance is manifest by his demands of Germany and the UK to end their renewable energy initiatives; the leaders of the countries shouldn’t even try to conceal their contempt of this for-the-moment fool. Trump thinks threats and retaliation for imaginary bullying by foreign countries with their own domestic problems but have leaders who are smarter than what we have now makes America "great." It doesn't. Such stupidity brought about our “problems” today, from the racist immigration policies from 60 years ago targeting Hispanics, to allowing China to enter the WTO in the belief that it would turn into a “democratic” country 10 years after the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests.

USA Today columnist Rex Huppke tells us that with Trump’s certification as president, it is time to “declare war” on “stupidity”:

The best thing sensible Americans who oppose him and the MAGA leadership can do is remember that stupidity should be embarrassing. Trump exists in our political sphere because he persuaded people to forget that simple fact. He somehow turned dunderheads like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and, of course, himself – public figures who routinely utter abject nonsense – into people who get taken seriously. Following the New Orleans terrorist attack on New Year’s Day, Trump ranted about immigration when the suspect killed in the attack was a U.S. citizen. That was stupid and unhelpful. For a president-elect and elected leaders who protect him, it should be deeply embarrassing.

Huppke tells us that ignorance and stupidity should not be allowed a way to become “comfortable.” But that is exactly what Trump and his MAGA supporters have done. By blaming migrants for “everything,” they have allowed themselves not to look at their own selves in the mirror and see who is to blame. Some of the fixes should have been "easy" to see, like raising the income limit on Social Security taxes, or investing more in green energy. But we live in a country that is reactive to problems rather than proactive, like waiting for a bridge to collapse before "fixing" it.

Until they feel shame and embarrassment about what they allowed to happen by believing and promoting lies, lunatic conspiracies and paranoid delusions that led to the kind of disastrous policies that Bill Clinton allowed to happen during his administration, the same “problems” that have occurred in differing relative forms from one administration to the next will continue until people realize that what they thought was the “problem” really wasn’t the problem after all, that the “fixes” as enunciated by Trump and the “dreams” of far-right Republicans were always the real problem after all.

As he goes out the door, Biden's "legacy" isn't that he is personally "responsible" for the country's "problems," it is that he allowed people to forget the past

 

Tim Murphy in Mother Jones declared Joe Biden to be one of the “Monsters”—rather than “Heroes”—of 2024, due to Biden’s belief after the 2022 mid-terms that only he could “save” the country, and his subsequent decision not to step down after one term turned out to be a disaster for the country. Democrats and liberal media types followed “the leader” and frustrated efforts to find primary challengers who polls suggested that “anyone” but Biden would defeat Donald Trump. By the time it was realized that people had allowed themselves to be fooled, it was too late.

Biden’s age and mental faculties were an issue even in 2020, but voters then saw him as a man who harkened back to an age of “civility.” But he had a difficult time in explaining his policy decisions in a coherent manner to allow people to believe that there was a “method” to his “madness”—just as MAGAmainiacs believed of Trump. And oh how people “forgot” that back in the day (like 40 years ago) Biden sometimes seemed like an adolescent clown who often “misspoke” on occasion. Years later his reputation was such that even Barack Obama had to “advise” him on occasion not to become an embarrassment to his election chances with his “word play.”

Considered a “moderate” voice during his political career (like we needed anymore of those), I remember seeing him in 1987 on campus at some function to get to know what young voters and potential supporters in the 1988 primary were thinking. I recall that Biden seemed to be exchanging good-natured barbs with students, like it was some sort of “game” of who could lob the best “barb.” Gary Hart was considered the leading Democratic candidate until he had woman trouble and dropped out.

Then it was Biden up next, but then came that plagiarism business that was embarrassing enough for Biden to step aside; the fact that it never came up again is probably testament to the fact that it was “small potatoes” compared to causing a violent insurrection. By the way, I voted for Jesse Jackson in the primary; I suspect that if he were white, that dull Dukakis wouldn’t have had a chance.

As Murphy pointed out, Democrats and their media supporters should have seen the writing on the wall long before Biden’s disastrous debate performance:

Biden only got more and more unpopular, and it was hard to separate the general public anxiety about his advancing age from the general national malaise that was bringing him down. The line from the Democrats was that there was something ageist and unfair about all of this—if you can do the job, you can do the job. That was a bit cynical: Biden’s own aides reportedly thought he could do his job best between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and internal rumblings about his stamina dated back to the early months of the administration. The disastrous debate finally put an end to the facade, even if the complaints that this was all a vast media conspiracy persisted in some corners.

But Biden himself is most to blame, for insisting on staying on the shelf long after his “expiration date”:

It would perhaps be more forgivable if it were just denial. But Biden, who positioned himself as the defender of the nation’s “soul,” continued to act as though only he could win the election, when in reality, he was tanking the Democratic brand so severely that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had to stage an intervention.

By continuing his conceit and arrogance when he should have been honest with himself and thought of the country instead of “saving” his “legacy”—which is now no more than a temporary rest stop to “rethink” the Trump “legacy,” which many voters troubled themselves little to do.Voters were bored with the Biden/Harris line about the past; that just came off as self-serving. The needed a new "voice" with a different take on what was wrong with a return to Trump, and how he would make things worse rather than "better."

Murphy goes on that “Biden did more than ease Trump’s path to victory; he was the apotheosis of an entire gerontocracy that brought us to this point.” Of course it was a habit of the Democratic Party to have “old line” members who thought only they could “save” the country from the moral and ethical criminality of the far-right. Of course it is difficult to blame them in this time of political and social narcissism and nihilism, and believe me I was “there” and a lot has changed in the national consciousness; heck, back in the day someone like Taylor Swift would have been considered a selfish bore left grasping for crumbs on the fringes of the music business.  

Of course, some people just can’t accept the truth. Where I work there is a tenant in the building that believes that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the end-all, be-all in their world, but the “undefeated” couldn’t “defeat” death even though it was knocking at her door for decades, and as Murphy points out, “she declined to retire when Democrats could still replace her, and likely cemented several decades of right-wing dominance on the Supreme Court.” I think it is just odd how some people throw something into people’s faces when they don’t realize it only landed in their own.

As mentioned, there were polls that asserted that “anyone” but Biden would defeat Trump in this past election, even before that debate; his performance was so “bad,” that it allowed listeners to avoid the fact that the maniac he was debating told a well-practiced lie every time two words came out of his mouth. By the time Biden allowed himself to be “forced out,” there was no time to do anything but to accept Kamala Harris as next in line.

But Harris was too closely tied to Biden to be seen by the “fence-sitters” to be a legitimate alternative to what they saw as “wrong” with the Biden administration, even though that was a matter of opinion; things could have been a lot “worse” as had been predicted by many economists back in 2021. In reality, jobs and profits had grown, but lack of production of consumer goods and Trump’s ongoing tariffs kept prices high in the aftermath of the pandemic lockdowns.

But if people wanted an “alternative” to Biden/Harris, there just wasn’t the opportunity. There was literally months before the election and it was too late to conduct a proper primary. I suspect that if there had been an ad hoc debate and primary vote at the Democratic Convention, there would have been a very good chance that Harris would not have been selected. The Democrats needed a real “populist”—someone who could out-talk Trump with his/her own catchy verbiage, who would point out that Elon Musk and his friends were not their friends.

Musk seems to think he’s running the show, even as he is facing possible legal trouble for his questionable foreign dealings (say, with Putin) despite being given government contracts that expressly prohibit such contacts. Today we see that Musk is towing the billionaire corporate line that it is “OK” to be racist against brown-skinned people doing jobs nobody wants to do (because they have no “use” for them).

But it is “racist” to be against the other brown-skinned people brought in cheap by corporate billionaires to do the jobs the “natives” do want to do, but are considered too “stupid” to do, but in reality because of caste and cultural prejudices. This story 2 tells us that Google's "AI" is imputed with information on poverty in India by people who don't want you to know that much of the country. Theses images help define what "shit-hole" actually looks like because of these prejudices (this being Calcutta, the "black hole" of India):

 

 

 

Outside of possibly Haiti, no place in Latin America looks like that.

I admit that in Seattle, downtown and the SODO district look like they have seen better times, and that is true. Book, video and music stores no longer exist there; even the Elliot Bay Book Store moved out of Pioneer Square. The Amazon Effect is partly (maybe mostly) to blame, but as the Seattle Times pointed out, in the city where there are a lot of “tech” jobs—or rather telephone answering and data entry jobs—that constitutes almost a third of the office jobs in the city that are now “homework” jobs, the highest percentage in the country among “large cities.” “Stay at home” office workers are increasingly refusing calls to come back to the "office," the kind of thing that would get most people fired. From what I can see, even of those who “technically” are listed as “back to the office,” only a small percentage work for more than a day or two a week.

So what that means is that the lack of foot traffic by people with money is causing the downtown businesses to falter. If there were more people to shop, you wouldn’t even notice the bums and vagrants all that much, and the police would actually make an appearance once in a while. What I see in the front of the building I work in is drug-abuse out in the open—last week some guy keeled over on the sidewalk from an overdose, and probably would have been just ignored until he died had the security guard not called 9-1-1 just to get him out of the way. 

And of course there are people with mental health issues or are just hanging around looking to fight someone to take out their frustrations on; I heard some yelling outside and looked out a window and saw some guying kicking someone laid out on the street, and the “victim” decided to he hadn’t had enough of that and followed the kicker to the next block, where he was laid out flat again.

Where are the police these days? “Back in the day,” it wasn’t in “Chinatown,” the sight of the worst mass shooting in Seattle’s history, the 1983 Wah Mee Massacre where 13 people were killed in an illegal gambling house. Police didn’t hang around there much because everything happened in “secret,” including Asian gang activity. Of course the community was in denial about the criminal element there, and was upset by all the media publicity about it. 

But today the “Chinese” are mostly gone, and the International District is now called “Little Saigon” where the residents complain loudly enough about those “other” people that the SPD spend most of their time there doing occasional “round-ups” while elsewhere, as mentioned, illegal activity mostly occurs out in the open, which police are quite willing to allow, because people always need something to complain about.

But in a “liberal” city like Seattle, you count your blessings and feel “guilty” that you got a job even if it is below your education level. I’ve been living here for 34 years and have never been out of work for more than 2 weeks; when all looks the bleakest, temp agencies will take anyone who walks in the door to send to some place that the last people they sent there didn’t want to work. 

Thus I myself have little sympathy for the people who don’t seem to have anything else to do but hangout even into the wee hours of the morning making a nuisance or spectacle of themselves. This is not Biden’s or even “liberals’” fault; cities are where all the “public assistance” and stairwells is located for people who have allowed “bad times” to become an addictive habit.

So I won’t blame Biden for half the stuff that is wrong with this country, more like one percent; he didn’t create this broken down immigration system that since 1965 was one stupid policy based on racism that made the next stupid policy even less of a “fix.” Naturally, nobody stops to think that if you stop kicking the dog, maybe it won’t keep biting you back;  racists tell you the “fix” is to kick the dog out of the house and don’t let it back in. 

But it is still out there, waiting to get back in. The dog, of course, was only allowed in to begin with to kick around because someone needs to vent their frustrations on something that has little to nothing to do with their problems and is not supposed to fight back; as such, if mass deportation is the “answer” to all the  “problems” in the country, some people may still stupidly wonder why they don’t see all these lower prices or crime going down that Trump promised them.

Thus if Biden can’t be blamed for stupid policies of the past, on his way out the door he has done some foolish things, like sign that Social Security Fairness Act, which should only have tweaked previous laws in regard to people who did not work long enough in government jobs to earn full-time retirement benefits, not to allow people who have such retirement benefits to be allowed SS benefits that they never paid into that will harm people who not only did, but some of their own tax money paid for those retirement pensions. Now, they will only see SS go insolvent quicker, and they get less money while the recipients of “fairness” still have their guaranteed government pensions.

Biden also deserves a swift kick out the door for suggesting that Democrats need to be more “bi-partisan” with Republicans the next time out. What does that mean? You mean like the “bipartisanship” that Bill Clinton practiced, as I discussed three posts ago, to cave-in to the far-right agenda? Or that practiced by Trump’s White House “transition” team, which is being suggested resembles a cat-fight between whoever has access to the litter box first?

Or that of Kyrsten Sinema, whose idea of “bipartisanship” was riding on the coattails of Senate Democratic bills that a few Republicans who deigned to defy Trump supported? Or is it the exposure for her potential legal troubles 1  for showing she has some of that Republican in her by misusing campaign cash for “lavish” expenses? Instead of taking those expensive globetrots, maybe she should have hung around D.C. to cast a vote once in a while instead of acting like a pouty child? Oh wait—that one time she did show-up to vote was on the orders of her corporate paymasters who wanted her to vote against the pro-labor NLRB candidate.

I guess it really doesn’t matter much anymore, since the inevitable future is upon us, one that should have been left in the past. Biden did provide us one useful final “service,” albeit one he was obligated by law to do, which was to hang the flag at half-mast for 30 days following the death of former president Jimmy Carter. Despite Trump’s complaints, it is supposed to hang so least through inauguration day—as an “unintentional” reminder of what is to come.   

Packers lose to the Bears, and will play the Eagles next week--the only non-division team they lost to this year

 

If Jordan Love hadn’t exited the game early in the second quarter, down at home against the lowly Bears 14-3, with what he called a sore hand, I would have wondered what was Matt LaFleur’s “objective” in this game—that is to win it or not. With the Commanders beating the Cowboys on a last gasp TD pass, the Packers fell to the seventh seed in the playoffs with its eventual loss to the Bears. What to make of the Packers season? Sure they won 2 more games than last season, but do you feel anymore “confident” about their chances in the playoffs?

The Packers are a different team on offense than they were last year, focusing more on the running game, which we assume is what LaFleur always wanted to do anyways. Last year they had 581 pass attempts, this year 479. Last year they ran the ball 441 times, this year 526. Frankly, I’m not sure if the Packer played better with Love than Willis at quarterback, since Willis this season, mostly in 4 games, completed 40 of 54 passes for 550 yards, 3 TDs and no interceptions, and did as he was told to do to make the Packers running game effective while throwing the ball only as needed, and generally surprisingly well. However, Willis entered the game with a QBR of 88.5, but was only 34.2 in this game, so his general effectiveness in leading the offense was not as efficient as previously.

The 24-22 loss to the Bears was unfortunate. After Willis came in relief, the team actually out-scored the Bears 19-10 with him as quarterback. With under 2 minutes to play, the Packers forced a fumble and Brandon McManus hit a 55-yard field goal for the apparent winning points with under a minute to play. I mean this is the Bears we are talking about. But on third-and-11, with 15 seconds to play, Caleb Williams completed a pass for 18 yards to the Packer 33, and Cairo Santos hit from 51-yards away on the last play. This is the same Santos who had the game-winning kick blocked in an earlier loss to the Packers, 20-19. Why is that an “interesting” stat? Because if Santos had made that kick, the Packers would be nothing-and-six against their division opponents.

That’s right, the 11-6 Packers are just 1-5 against their division rivals this year. Maybe that doesn’t concern LaFleur at the moment; since the Week One loss to the Eagles, the Packers have won 10 straight games against non-division opponents, including 4-0 against the NFC West and 4-0 against the AFC South. During that time only two of those 10 teams had winning records at the time the Packers played them. And of course the Packers will play the one non-division team they lost to, the Eagles, next week. They will need Doubs and Watson off the injured list by then.