As I predicted, team USA moved ahead of China in the gold medal count on the last day of competition. We officially beat them, 39 to 38. We also won the total medal count 113 to 88. Better luck next time, China! Paris 2024 is only 3 years away.
It took a crazy twist of luck, a gold medal in indoor cycling of all things. The first time we've ever won gold in that sport. But I knew we'd manage somehow or other! America has 330 million people, we're the richest nation on Earth, and we have a wide range of body types that can excel in any endeavor. No matter what new silly sport is invented and put in competition, from surfing to rock climbing to skateboarding, Americans are up to the challenge and go get medals in them all. Americans are an amorphous blob that can do anything the world can do, except better.
We are the sports superpower, and we will continue to be for many years to come. People are quick to clamor that sports aren't important, that judging nations by their athletes is stupid, and it's all fuss and nonsense. What these people are missing is that there is truth in sport. These are objective competitions with level playing fields. There is no other place or occasion on Earth where nations can fairly compare their citizenry and judge who's best. We shouldn't judge countries by their medal count? Fine, then what should we judge them by? GDP? The numbers are easily cooked and anyway they're meaningless. Some countries enjoy the slow life and take more vacation days while others are workaholics. In some countries things are cheap and in others they're expensive. Making more money doesn't improve quality of life past a certain point, it actually decreases it.
Length of life? People choose to sacrifice their later years for pleasure, who's to say they're wrong? A country that stubbornly insists on being healthy at the cost of every joy in life hardly deserves praise.
Patents? Again, easily manipulated. You can file thousands of patents for meaningless 'inventions' that'll never do anything in the real world and never see market.
Nobel prizes? So the subjective views of some random panel of Norwegians is going to be the final say?
Art? Subjective. Everyone will say their art is the best and you're back to square one.
Wars? Really? You want to kill billions of people to find out the same answer that sports can provide for free?
Dismiss the medal table if you want, but I demand you first provide an alternative everyone can agree upon as an objective and fair measure of a country's and people's worth.
We can all agree that the athletes who won gold actually won gold, and that 39 is bigger than 38. Can you say the same of any other criteria?
What we know from the Tokyo Olympics is that Europe, the Anglosphere, Russia, China and Japan can produce results. They can produce numerous competent individuals who are the best in the world at something that can be measurably determined. All those people should be proud and have proven their right to exist, that they aren't strictly inferior to anybody. At the same time, we can look at nations like India (one gold medal, behind Kosovo's 2 gold medals. Kosovo isn't even a country!), and see that all billion people in their country are clearly a waste of space on God's green Earth. (Pakistan and Bangladesh are even worse performers, that's another billion useless eaters.) If you aren't good at a single thing we can measure then maybe you just aren't any good.
The Olympics has many, many sports. They aren't all pure strength or speed like weightlifting or the 100m dash. If your nation was competent, they could become good at something technical like equestrian or surfing. There are many sports that are almost entirely mental, like shooting. There are no excuses. It's impossible to have some sort of latent talent that not a single Olympic sport reveals. If there were any beauty in your soul you could at least master the ribbon in Rhythmic Gymnastics or diving or synchronized swimming or something.
This is a fair contest. It's the fairest contest on Earth. Unlike the Winter Olympics, the sports of the summer Olympics can be practiced anywhere, even in a tropical rainforest. This is the contest. And America won. Or if you prefer per capita, I guess New Zealand or San Marino won. But the point is India most certainly did not, by either measurement.
I'm proud to be an American. Our nation, our people, our system, can still produce results. So many wonderful people went out there, flew to the other side of the world, and proved they were the best at everything. They all grew up in our midst, influenced by each and every one of us, and clearly in a positive manner, or else they couldn't have broken world records and become the best in world history at something or other. We can take pride that we're clearly doing something right or, like India, instead of 39 golds we'd have 1.
None of those medals came easily. The world really gave us their best shot. But we triumphed over them! We won it all!
Meanwhile, I've read 3/5 of '100 Waifus,' editing along the way. I cut another 'just,' corrected another Iris eye color reference to purple, and rephrased a section explaining how virtual reality was attained to be more convincing. Now it reads as such:
"Then how did they make all those breakthroughs?" I asked, still not satisfied.
"With enough monkeys on enough typewriters eventually by pure chance one will churn out the collected works of Shakespeare. Now imagine Mitsuki's instead of monkeys and there you go." Mira explained succinctly the infinitudes she'd traversed.
"Even though I've warned you so many times about the dangers of Dimension W, you went anyway?" I finally got around to my real objection.
"Dimension W depletion destroys the world. And every time I leave my body I may not come back. But it would take a lot more usage of Dimension W to deplete it, and my life is well worth this invention. Virtual reality is more important than me. Plus, as you can see, I did it perfectly and came back fine." Mira flexed her arm in a sign of full strength. "I'm not just the tonkatsu you always say I am. In a pinch I can come through."
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