........because, believe me, I know it's been waaaaaay too long since I've posted anything.  I can't even blame the weather because, guess what.....it's the last Saturday of April and there's several inches of snow on the ground.  Hey, you live in this part of the country and you have to be prepared for anything weather-wise.  I like the idea of having four seasons so I can't complain....much. :)

I just got done reading a post from mareserinitatis about the rudeness and self-serving behavior of local politicians and their minions. This prompted me to post a good-ol'-fashioned rant about something that's been bugging me for some time now:  the Olympics, especially the upcoming Games in China. I've been reading a series of articles in the New York Times which have brought little-known historical facts to light, facts which have confirmed my worst suspicions about the Games.

For starters, no nation on the face of the Earth, not even the good ol' U.S. of A., can claim to have a spotless record on human rights. The People's Republic of China, however, has taken violations of basic human rights to an obscene art form, using its sheer size and history to justify what it does. The current best-known example is China's domination of Tibet.

According to Elliot Sperling's article, "Don't Know Much About Tibetan History", the Tibetan view that Tibet has remained independent from the seventh century until the 1950's and the Chinese view that Tibet has always been part of a unified multi-ethnic Chinese state can both be challenged by history. It is true that no Chinese government exercised control over Tibet until 1951.  However, Sperling states, "There is something less to the arguments of both sides, but the argument on the Chinese side is weaker. Tibet was not 'Chinese' until Mao Zedong's armies marched in and made it so."

And yet, the International Olympic Committee, in its infinite (lack of) wisdom, felt justified in awarding the 2008 Games to Beijing in the hopes that international exposure would bring China in line with the rest of the so-called "international community"  and foster sweeping human rights reforms to match the economic reforms carried out by the Chinese government.

What a f*****g joke. Try telling that to the Tibetans who were brutally supressed after a recent series of protests and riots meant to bring their situation to the attention of the rest of the world.  What really pisses me off is the attitude of some people, who don't even bother to gather a few simple facts about the situation they're commenting on, say something along the lines of  "Well, I don't see why those people have to protest and riot.  All they're doing is making trouble. Why can't they deal with their problems in a civilized manner?  In fact, with the Chinese government providing them with education and other services, why should they have a problem at all?"

There's just one teeny-weeny problem with this point of view: it's the exact same attitude used by European "settlers" to justify the subjugation and, in some cases, genocide carried out against native peoples of the American continent, whether it was the Spanish conquistadors wiping out the Mayans and Aztecs or U.S. armies "civilizing" the "pagan" peoples they encountered from the Appalachians all the way to Hawai'i.

Now just a minute, I hear you say. The Olympic games provide an opportunity for the world's best athletes to come together every four years in a spirit of fair competition and universal brotherhood which the wise leaders of the Olympic "movement" work hard to protect from the taint of politics. The Olympic spirit is embodied in the worldwide relay of the Olympic torch, ignited at the base of Mount Olympus, an ancient ceremony dating back to the original Olympic Games themselves.

Or is it? Edward Rothstein's article, "The Relay of Fire Ignited by the Nazis," sends this "ancient ceremony" myth crashing down in flames (pun intended). The article opens: "If you want to know how the Olympic torch really began its "Journey of Harmony," as the Chinese call its current relay, if you want to see why the torch has had to pass through a human obstacle course composed of protesters, SWAT teams and police in San Francisco, Paris and London, then do not look to Tibet's grievances against China. Look to the opening of Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 film, "Olympia."  In that homage to Berlin's 1936 Olympic Games the origins of this ritual are revealed. Never before had a lighted torch been relayed from a Greek temple in Olympia to an athletic competition, let alone by thousands of runners trying to keep it from extinguished." (emphasis mine).

That's right, folks. This "ancient" ritual is actually an invention of one of the most successful propagandists of the Nazi German government. The articles goes on to relate the peculiar roles of Germany and France in the history of the modern Olympics: it was a German scholar who proposed archeological study of Olympia; the modern Games were established by a French nobleman; Germany was banned from the 1920 and 1924 Games after World War I before being allowed to host the 1936 Games; Hitler intended Germany to host the Games permanently starting in 1944 and planned a 400,000-seat stadium in Nuremberg.  You'll notice there's no mention of Greece in all this.

Buzz Bissinger, the author of "Friday Night Lights" and "Three Nights in August," comes straight to the point in his article, "Faster, Higher, Stronger, No Longer" by calling for a permanent end to the Olympics. He gives a list of incidents over the past 40 years which belie the Olympics' lofty ideals, beginning with the massacre of 200 to 300 student protesters by Mexican government troops in Mexico City only 10 days before the 1968 Games. The article goes on to say that the single best argument in favor of the Olympics, the culmination of the athletes' time and effort, is not enough to overcome their sordid history.

Not to mention the obscene amount of money involved in the Games, from the construction of facilities that often go unused or underused after the Games' conclusion, to the mega-million-dollar amounts spent for sponsorship and TV broadcast rights.

Long story short, the ideals put forward by the modern Olympic movement have been mocked and crapped on since the beginning, especially in the past 40 years, and would better be honored by admitting that the Games have failed to realize those ideals and bringing them to an end.

For me, it all comes down to this: one of the biggest logical and philosophical fallacies driving the actions of the world today is the idea that a false hope is somehow better than no hope at all.  The Olympic Games have held out such a false hope, that somehow, someway, bringing together the best athletes in the world in one place on a regular basis would bring together all the people of the world and help us acknowledge our common humanity and solve our problems.

On a philosophical level, the Games might have done this.  History, however, clearly shows that this hasn't carried over into the real world. Innocent victims are still being killed by Chinese weapons in Darfur and American weapons in Iraq.  Maybe, just maybe, eliminating the false hope of the Olympic Games would force enough people to look the horrors of war and the prejudice and greed that drives war straight in the eye and deal with them honestly, instead of maintaining a phony surrogate "war" which solves nothing.

The above-mentioned articles are (hopefully) still available at http://www.nytimes.com.

Peace.

Tags: olympics, politics, stupidity
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