The Olympics start on the 21st, at 3:30am, with the USWNT vs. Sweden in soccer. That's only hours away. Against all odds Japan has managed to actually host this most-pressured-to-cancel-Olympics-in-history. Thank God for that.
The Olympics will be a wonderful few weeks of endless sports entertainment covering every imaginable feat of the human body from grace to reflexes to strength to endurance to flexibility to accuracy to wits to speed to coordination. People will show their mastery of various tools like horses, skateboards, surfboards, ribbons, guns, bows, polevaults, and swords in addition to the athletes specializing in their own bodies. Everything will be on display, the full range of human greatness, both physical and mental. Even spiritual. Sometimes it takes a burning spirit to outdo yourself and your competitors. Who arrives at the venue wanting to win the most will often determine the result regardless of the base stats of your body.
In addition to the best of the best all across the world assembling to show off for us as individuals, we get to see two fonts of nationalism. The medal race, where the whole world watches to see which nations produce the best results in front of the whole world, proving their legitimacy as nations capable of churning out high quality people, and the host's ability to put on a show for the rest of the world. Beijing 2008 had an incredible opening ceremony, as did Sochi 2014. China and Russia paid massive money to showcase the greatness of their nations. Will Tokyo 2021 be able to do the same? They've spent over $20 billion dollars on this, and with no fans there's no chance of recouping the costs. The only thing they can do now is leave a favorable impression on the world by being good hosts. Do the venues look good and are they convenient for the athletes? Will the Opening and Closing ceremony be memorable? What about all the journalists wandering around Japan and showing off its cool attractions? A lot of the Olympics is pure tourism, vicarious tourism if you will. I think Japan is the best place on Earth so I hope the journalists showcase that. I hope Japan earns a well-deserved positive review by all these tourism-focused journalists.
The medal race actually has two components. One is raw numbers, seeing who is the strongest nation on Earth. It's a nice alternative to constant world wars to figure these sorts of things out, and worked great in deterring the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The other side of the story though is a quality of life contest. If a small nation like Hungary or Denmark wins the most medals per capita, it can pride itself in being the best place to nurture youth in the world and the best place to start a family. In this way even small nations can compete with the big ones on the world stage and win. Underdog medalists from tiny places like Slovenia are the sweetest stories that come out of the Olympics and cheer up entire nations. There is no other place a small country can leave such a big mark on the world stage and be noticed by billions of people worldwide.
When Iceland made the World Cup there was something similar to that, but they were quickly eliminated. In the Olympics countries like Iceland can win the gold and play their national anthem and raise their flag over the competition for all the world's billions to see.
I can't think of any more feel-good aspect of humanity than the Olympics. The entire world getting together peacefully to celebrate human potential in every field of endeavor. What could possibly be better than this? More uplifting? Men and women together showing off their youth and beauty? It's hope personified.
So why is such an unqualified good constantly under attack? Why are so many people so hellbent on destroying the Olympics?
In 2020 they succeeded -- the Olympics were cancelled. They tried desperately to do the same this year. All on the basis of a virus that poses no risk whatsoever to young athletes. Athletes are so immune to the coronavirus that they could perform while currently infected with the virus and hardly notice. Even if they got together and spread the virus all over amongst themselves, not a single person would have died as a result. So why cancel it? What was the point? And are we seriously going to cancel worldwide festivals that cost $20 billion dollars to put on because one person might die as a result? Is there truly nothing worth dying for? Eternal glory just no longer cuts it? How about world peace? Or the smiles of billions as they watch their champions bring home the bacon?
We are in the same position now, in 2021, as we were in 2020. Fans still aren't allowed to attend the Games, and athletes are still catching coronavirus. (and somehow surviving it nonetheless.) Nothing has changed except the additional expenses poor Japan has had to pay for the delay. We should have been celebrating these games last year. Or if 2020 was right to cancel, 2021 should have been canceled too. Nothing has changed between the two summers. Once you admit that a virus with a 100% survival rate among professional athletes is sufficient cause to cancel a worldwide event, you may as well cancel all Olympics forever into the future. After all, the Olympics could spread the flu, and someone might die of the flu too, you know. So why are we canceling the Olympics over something that is less deadly than the flu to young athletes but not canceling the Olympics over the flu?
Recall in 2016 they tried to cancel the Olympics over the Zika virus. Something they puffed up as this horrendous danger to the world, that suddenly vanished the moment the Olympics was over. The whole purpose of this virus was to cancel the Olympics. Once it had served its purpose it vanished again. Every Olympics they're going to trot out some new disease or variant and demand the Olympics be canceled. It's foolproof. Once you admit their logic, which we did in 2020, it will apply every time.
Aside from the preposterousness of canceling worldwide athletic events while allowing worldwide commerce and open borders immigration to 'control disease,' they have many more reasons to cancel the Olympics. They keep harping on its cost, its cost. But a nation only hosts an Olympics every 50 years or so. These are major nations which produce trillions in GDP every year. The idea that a host nation cannot cover the cost, a few billions, once every 50 years is absurd. It's defeatist beyond belief. If we are truly that scraped for cash that we can't even put on a party once every 50 years there's something much more wrong with your nation than the Olympics. It isn't the Olympics that are to blame, it's countries which cannot live within their means the other 49 years between Olympics. I can point to a million cost savings that would cover the cost of the Olympics easily that any nation could do -- for starters cut the military budget, which we spend a trillion on every year, for no known purpose. The Olympics does more to foster world peace than the military anyway.
The next reason they seize upon to cancel the Olympics is to punish human rights abusers. They're already screaming over the 2022 Beijing Olympics and want it cancelled too. You see how this works? Every time there's a specific reason why an Olympics should be cancelled, but somehow if you take their advice every single Olympics is canceled. They universally loathe the Olympics and only come up with their local excuse after the fact, the important thing is to cancel the Olympics by any means necessary.
The Beijing Olympics are only 7 months away and are going to be the highlight fun of 2022. They are out for blood because China does not support Islamic terrorists and gay pride parades. Apparently that's a new rule for host nations, even though the Olympics was hosted for centuries by countries which did that much or worse to its citizens without a peep. The Soviet Union, which was responsible for the deaths of 100 million people, hosted the Olympics in 1980. No one complained back then. No one said anything when China, responsible for its own communist massacres, hosted in 2008. But now in 2022 being a tiny bit tough on Hong Kong or whatever means it all has to be called off. What's with these ridiculously shifting standards? It isn't the good or bad conduct of host nations that has changed (The Nazis hosted the Olympics in 1936!), it's simply journalists' and politicians' hatred of the Olympics and their wish to cancel them.
In Rio they actually argued that the crime rate was too high to host an Olympics. Wouldn't this apply equally well to Paris and Los Angeles, the coming Olympic hosts? There's a huge dangerous underclass in both of those cities. Actually, crime was a huge problem in Atlanta but they still hosted the Olympics in 1996. How did that work? But suddenly in Rio it mattered. Crime is too high, so sorry, I guess we have to call off the Olympics.
I've even heard people say the Olympics contribute too much to global warming. The expense of all those airplanes flying athletes and fans, you see, it's just too much. It will kill the planet.
Nevermind that world tourism and commerce, using those same airplanes, is completely inoffensive to these people and never criticized. The Olympics specifically are the sole and only cause of global warming and must be canceled.
The Olympics are hanging by a thread. Every two years there's a severe risk of the whole thing being called off for one reason or another. This proud tradition which was only interrupted by World Wars, that brought humanity together and grew in scope and grandeur every time, has carried on a brilliant legacy from 1896 forward. It was canceled in 2020 because of a completely non-lethal disease. It was almost canceled this year too. I don't even understand how it managed to survive since the same reasons exist to cancel it this year as last year and Japan folded last year. Where did Japan find its backbone this time around and why? What changed?
It might be cancelled in 2022 for equally bogus reasons. Or in 2024, or at any time. They come after the event with knives every single time.
It may be this century long tradition, the greatest event in the world, will not be available to our children. They'll only read about it in history books. It reminds me of the moon landings. Things humanity used to be able to do, we're somehow no longer able to do anymore. Will the Olympics join that gallery of shame? Are we really incapable of doing anything important these days? Are we doomed to regression in every field? Or will we stand up for something and do what it takes for once? We should be on the moon right now. And we should not cancel the Olympics.
No comments:
Post a Comment