{"id":5407,"date":"2009-09-14T12:45:33","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5407"},"modified":"2009-09-14T12:45:33","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:45:33","slug":"darkness-before-the-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5407","title":{"rendered":"Darkness Before The Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I’ve noted in this space in the past, the Chicago Bears fortunes tend to be a leading indicator for the nation as a whole.<\/p>\n

The evidence is writ large across history, and is inescapable for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and voices to cheer:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In the mid-thirties, the Bears dynasty dominated football – foreshadowing the recovery from the Great Depression.<\/li>\n
  2. In 1940, as war clouds gathered on the horizon and Europe knelt before Hitler, the Bears – heavy dogs to the Washington Redskins – punctuated the end of the beginning.\u00a0 Their record 73-0 win over the ‘skins in the NFL championship gave the nation the courage it needed to face the upcoming challenges, leading – albeit indirectly – to victory in World War II.<\/li>\n
  3. The twilight of the great Bears dynasties began in ’63, with the Bears final NFL championship for nearly twenty years.\u00a0 But amid the collapse came hope in the form of the ’63 team’s tight end, Mike Ditka, whose emergence as a utility receiver\/blocker\/enforcer presaged the entry of Ronald Reagan to electoral politics the next year; we’d hear from both of them shortly.<\/li>\n
  4. The Bears’ nadir – the late sixties, when epic talents like Dick Butkus and Gayle Sayers shone on otherwise-mediocre years, when Wes Montgomery led the team in rushing with 200-odd yards on the season<\/em>, when quarterback Bobby Douglass out-rushed the rest of the backfield because if he didn’t he’d get sacked into concussionland, the entire Abe Gibron era – coincided with the Great Malaise, with stagflation, with the Nixon, Ford and Carter years all in one.<\/li>\n
  5. The nation’s recovery began shortly after Walter Peyton started playing.\u00a0 And like the recovery, the Bears’ fortunes with Peyton started slowly and fitfully; like America, Peyton needed a leader who could channel and energize all that talent and power.<\/li>\n
  6. The ’86 Super Bowl – which happened at among the Cold War’s darkest hours – that leader arrived.\u00a0 The year brought Ditka together again (metaphorically and metaphysically, at least) with Reagan, as well as John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and the like, to begin the trip up the road that would end, five years later, with the fall of communism.\u00a0 Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope laid the political and moral groundwork for the revolution; but to accomplish big things, a people need big hopes -and that’s what\u00a0Ditka, Peyton, Singleterry, Perry, MacMahon and company brought us.<\/li>\n
  7. On the other hand, the Bears’ Super Bowl loss to the Baltimore Clots laid the groundwork for the electoral fiascos in ’06 and 08; when the Bears are down, the nation is down.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And so all I can say today at hearing this news<\/a>…:<\/p>\n

    [Middle Linebacker and team leader Brian] Urlacher left Sunday’s 21-15 loss to the Green Bay Packers<\/font><\/a> with a wrist injury in the third quarter.<\/p>\n

    Bears coach Lovie Smith said Urlacher dislocated his wrist, and no timetable had been set for his return.<\/p>\n

    Citing unnamed sources, the Chicago Tribune reported on Sunday night that Urlacher will have surgery when the team returns to Chicago. The newspaper reported that Urlacher had an X-ray at halftime, but an MRI was not needed.<\/p>\n

    “It’s always tough to have your leader go down,” linebacker Lance Briggs<\/font><\/a> said, according to the newspaper. “He knows the defense better than anybody and he communicates everything to everyone else.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    …is “oh, crap”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As I’ve noted in this space in the past, the Chicago Bears fortunes tend to be a leading indicator for the nation as a whole. The evidence is writ large across history, and is inescapable for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and voices to cheer: In the mid-thirties, the Bears dynasty dominated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}