History All Over Again and NFL Week 2

 

Like most everyone, I've been preoccupied with the Charlie Kirk shooting.  I'll admit that until the shooting, I only had a vague idea of who he was.  I had seen some of those "Prove Me Wrong" videos online where he slams a hammer on college kids with overly simplistic and well rehearsed bar room comebacks.  To me he was always just part of that MAGA grifter tent village that orbits around Trump looking for a buck and more clicks in the attention economy that dominates the world of 20 year olds.  Charlie Kirk seemed like one of those Dunning Krueger effect debate guys that you see in high school that smugly think they're an expert on something because they saw a couple youtube videos on a topic and wave away more nuanced deeper understanding as inconvenient.  When I was a high school sophomore, I would absolutely dominate in a classroom debate on a topic like the Death Penalty.  That shit is easy when you're thinking like a teenager.  When you gain some life experience is when you realize it's not an accident that topics like abortion, capital punishment, Middle East, etc have various pros/cons that make things much more complicated than the world of provocateur speakers like Kirk would have you believe.

Like most of our societally accepted daily national gun murders, this didn't make much sense.  As soon as it happened I thought "I wonder where they are going to find the white guy in his twenties that did this" as that is 99/100 who the shooter turns out to be.  Sure as shit, it's a 22 year old gun loving suburban kid that dressed as Trump for Halloween and spends WAYYYY too much time on the internet.  Just as predictably, our beloved leader then went on Fox News to blame "radical left extremists" to further divide and inflame the edgy population.  Now I'm not sure how you box this 22 year old Mormon that appears to be a radicalized right wing gamer kid into a hardcore left radical especially since he lives in fucking rural Utah, but that's what we are going with on this.  That means that whatever pretzel logic the Fox Viewer will need to do to spread further hate online will take about 12 hours, and we can nestle in for more shooting and killing from white suburban males.  The only way you can believe that purple hair urban baristas confused about their sexuality are going to bring the downfall of the country is to have never been inside an independent coffee shop or punk rock bar in your life.  However, every dipshit with a beard in a pickup truck and grandmas in assisted living will be convinced that everyone except the suburban white male in his twenties that pulls every trigger is somehow responsible for all crimes.    

I don't know how a suburban white guy shooting another suburban white guy will turn into ICE agents herding brown people and cross dressers into "detention centers", but that's where we are going.  "They" are going to get blamed, and you better not get lumped into being one of "them" or you're gonna get fucked.  As a guy that has read a great deal of German history from 1918-1939, I can tell you with great confidence that USA 2025 bears an uncanny resemblance to Germany in 1936 except our version is dumbed down as a "brought to you by Wal Mart/WWE/Marvel" vibe.  We are all getting used to having the military on the streets like it's no big deal.  The federal private police force ICE has a larger budget than all armies on the earth except our own and China.  Remember when we were freaking out about Iraq's army during the Gulf War?  The masked goons in ICE have a bigger budget.  The German circle of power in the 30s is eerily reminiscent of the podcasters, flunkies and tv hosts sitting atop the pedestals of power today.  The administration ignores the courts and the opposition hasn't quite grasped that the guys in power have tossed out the rulebook.  The country you grew up in is o-v-e-r.  This is a new age my friend where anything goes, and if you're not in the clique, you ain't getting paid.  It will be a short run as that comet burns across the sky, but the money is flowing and you can deny it all later.   

That leaves you with the choice to watching Rome burn OR watching the Cardinals kick the Panthers in the fucking teeth.  Me?  I'm watching that.  I am of the impression that the Panthers might be worse than everyone thought.  That weird flicker of life they had at the end of the year seems like an anomaly and not a trend.  All those player rating services like Pro Football Focus, though flawed, are in agreement that the Panthers various units all sit in the bottom 20% of every metric.  The Jaguars, who aren't exactly elite, handled the Panthers easily.  The Cardinals just beat the Saints on the road, so why won't they smack the Panthers around in Arizona?  Bad teams don't win on the road.  Arizona -6.

In Week 2 I like to look for teams that I know are good that lost in Week 1.  Good teams usually don't  start 0-2.  KC is 0-1 but I'm not sprinting to the window to bet them against the Eagles.  This could be the fall off the cliff year for Kansas City.  Baltimore lost to Buffalo, but let's be honest... We know the Ravens are legit.  You have to like them against a Browns team that is probably better than national opinion thinks they are, or at least until they put in a rookie QB.  I have some concerns about the point spread on that Ravens game because the Browns defense might be for real, and they know how to play Lamar.  In the last four years that Browns/Ravens series is 4-4.  I just can't see the Ravens losing another game after that heartbreaking loss to Buffalo.  The Browns offense is NOT the Bills offense, and then I saw a Browns safety poke the Bear and say Derrick Henry wasn't hard to tackle.  I don't know why you would do that.  I want to tie that game into a parlay with another 0-1 team.  I'm thinking Lions.  Detroit might not be as good as last year, but they didn't disintegrate after being 15-2.  The Packers look like an elite team at this point so that loss in Green Bay isn't terrible.   Baltimore/Detroit money line parlay.

Let's be honest though...  The Packers made the Lions look bad last week.  Let's also face another fact.  The Bears are NOT the Packers.  I have to think Dan Campbell has the boys all whipped up and ready for action in the home opener.  I think this Lions team is not as good as last year, and the schedule is very challenging.  Still, they should be a playoff team.  Monday Night the Bears looked like... well... the Bears.  This doesn't look like a team that goes on the road and beats good teams.  They look like a team that beats up on the Panthers and the Titans and the Giants.  Detroit-6.  

Current Record:  1-3