I have a problem.
I think the Bears might be good, and I don’t know how to handle that.
Not good in the sense that they might accidentally beat a better team because the opposing quarterback got food poisoning. Not good in the sense that we could sneak into the playoffs if there are a few upsets and maybe a plane crash. I mean actually good. The kind of good where you expect them to win football games.
I have absolutely no idea how to behave.
I was 11 years old when the Bears won the Super Bowl. I naturally assumed this was how professional football worked. You assembled a collection of terrifying men, humiliated everyone in your path, made a novelty rap record, and collected your trophy. Repeat whenever.
Forty years later, I’ve learned that the actual Chicago Bears experience involves watching a series of quarterbacks get murdered behind an offensive line assembled from Craigslist, followed by a press conference where a man with the charisma of a municipal parking administrator explains that we’re building something special.
I don’t expect victory. I expect disappointment, and I became exceptionally good at managing it. But now the Bears are threatening to become competent, and it’s making me nervous.
Which brings me to the “blue wave.” (Those are air quotes.)
For those who have spent the last week avoiding the news, a practice I generally recommend, the Blue squad won some things. Not just the ones they’re supposed to win.
They’ve been winning in places where they usually go to lose; the political equivalent of the Bears winning at Lambeau Field.
And I’m experiencing exactly the same uncomfortable sensation.
The parallels are disturbing. Both the Bears and Democrats have spent years explaining why their latest humiliating defeat was actually an encouraging sign of progress. Both have insisted that their fundamentals are sound and the future is bright while the scoreboard suggests otherwise. Both have developed elaborate theories about how next year will be different.
And both have fan bases that have learned to regard hope as a dangerous recreational drug.
Then there are the Packers fans.
Packers fans are the MAGA movement of professional football. They’re loud, entitled, aggressively nostalgic, and convinced that a period of historical success entitles them to permanent control of the future.
They believe Green Bay is America’s Team, despite considerable evidence that most of America would rather watch the stadium collapse into a sinkhole.
Like Trump supporters, Packers fans have constructed an elaborate mythology in which their team represents traditional American values, rugged individualism, and the moral superiority of people who own camouflage formalwear.
They worship elderly legends, confuse arrogance with confidence, and regard any defeat as evidence that the referees have been weaponized against them. Their favorite historical period is one they insist was better for everyone, even though most of the people who lived through it remember things differently.
I’m not ready to celebrate either the Bears or the Blue Wave.
Sure, maybe the Bears really are good. And sure, maybe the same process that brought us this nightmare will get us out. Maybe voters are finally getting tired of the national experiment in government by a deranged carnival barker. Maybe this is what it feels like when things start getting better.
Or maybe I’m about to watch another fourth-quarter collapse.
As another fading empire says of its own football league, it’s the hope that kills you.