Let's cut to the chase and call the "Olympic movement" what it really is.
Child abuse...
Does anyone have any question in their mind about Olympic sports being a vehicle of systemic child abuse? After a fifteen-year-old is submitted for competition by a country ALREADY OFFICIALLY BANNED for wholesale doping who is still allowed to "unofficially" field a team and STILL puts a fifteen year old in the position of being administered illicit performance enhancing drugs then subject her to the WORLDWIDE shame of being caught? Then, after a corrupt regulating body somehow allows her to compete while indefinitely postponing ANY awards ceremony for any medal winners until her drug event can be adjudicated, the fifteen-year-old is yelled at by her coaches on worldwide television for failing to place and "disappointing" her entire country?
Does anyone have any doubts about the Olympics being a vehicle of systemic abuse after THREE HUNDRED female gymnasts were systemically raped or sexually abused by their "team doctor" and psychopath Larry Nassar? Does anyone think Larry Nassar is the only doctor or coach with access to dozens of young children over DECADES who didn't physically or mentally abuse children under his / her control?
Over forty years, American media has perfected the art of carefully crafted "backstory vignettes" about the years of sacrifices made by "Olympic families" moving to remote cities to be near famous coaches and enduring daily 4am wakeups to hit the ice at 5am for before-school practice along with after-school training sessions etc. All of this "sacrifice" starts with kids probably no older than second grade. Is there any seven year-old child who is capable of making an informed choice about that type of sacrifice or does that level of parent-induced "focus" constitute abuse?
Child abuse... masquerading as patriotism...
Patriotism is a much nicer sounding word than nationalism / jingoism but those are much better reflections of what the "Olympic movement" has become. Whatever the claimed motivations for resurrecting the concept in 1896 in Greece, the Olympics have never succeeded at spreading a shared, enlightened view of humanity -- that we are all one global family. They didn't fend off World War I, they were leveraged as a worldwide propaganda coup for Nazi Germany as it openly revved up for World War II, they served as a backdrop for Islamic terrorists killing Israeli athletes in 1972 and took on the baggage of the Cold War between the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" (US beating the Russians in hockey), the 1980 summer Olympic boycott by the US (because the Russians invaded Afghanistan) and the 1984 summer games boycotted by the Russians because we boycotted the 1980 games.
And how patriotic can an Olympic athlete be if they are forced to scrub their Twitter feeds of prior criticism of the host country or risk losses of future endorsements by speaking out about current domestic issues in their own country while waiting between events or standing on a podium they've worked twenty years since the age of 7 to reach?
Child abuse... masquerading as patriotism... masquerading as sport...
For some reason, the modern Olympics fetished on the concept of amateur athletes being the epitome of sportsmanship and all that is holy about the "Olympic movement," much in the same way we feel about college athletics.
Right...
That lasted until after the 1992 Olympics when western countries grew tired of the charade in which communist country athletes in EVERY sport arrived looking like American pro athletes in our elite sports while Western country athletes were limited to actual college athletes or (worse…) true amateur outsiders who couldn't get college scholarships for luge and similar crowd-kryptonite sports that weren't suitable for exploitation by the NCAA to line its pockets. The governing body decided to let any country use "professional" athletes, thus leveling the field (as it were) in the higher profile sports for training facilities, coaching talent, athletes and illicit performance enhancing drugs.
None of this is new to us in 2022. Hell, in 1988, Saturday Night Live had a Weekend Update skit lampooning Olympic drug scandals by a report from the first-ever "All Drug Olympics," an event in which nothing was off the table. The skit led off with Kevin Nealon setting the scene as Russian Sergie Achmodov prepped for his attempt to clean and jerk 1500 pounds ("a new world record…") while on a combination of anabolic steroids', Novacain, NyQuil, Darvon and some sort of fish paralyzer along with several cocktails in the past hour. This was funny in 1988 because it was already the impression EVERYONE had about the Olympics then -- thirty four years ago.
And stepping back for a moment to tie the patriotism and sport aspects more closely together in hypocrisy...
What possible value does national participation in Olympic games provide to a country's jingoistic fantasy that "we're better cuz we won the luge or curling or shot put" if every country is scouring the world for members of their team? China has two American-born athletes who gave up their US citizenship to skate for China. And of course, Canada has lent out its entire 18-30 year old male population to other countries who are unable to find natural born skaters for hockey. In some cases, these athletes may opt to change jerseys to represent a country they feel more attached to, regardless of where they were born. In other cases, athletes may be making a tactical decision to join a team / country providing them a better chance of making it to the Olympics if they have been brainwashed from age seven by their parents that competing is a worthy life achievement, right up there with solving global warming or inventing a new vaccine that can prevent millions of deaths in the face of a global pandemic.
Child abuse... masquerading as patriotism... masquerading as sport... masquerading as a crime syndicate
If any of the above is deemed to be true, then by definition, the work involved in bidding for and selecting host sites and building the infrastructure to conduct "the games" is a highly organized crime. And in the same manner as World Cup Soccer, the organization controlling decisions about where Olympic Games are held has figured out how to turn itself into a trans-national master of grift and corruption, transferring millions in wealth to organization officials and business cronies while imposing crushing debt on host cities and host countries for stadiums, arenas, ski jumps, luge tracks and similar facilities poorly suited for ANY other practical function.
If the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was pure as the driven snow and its members not PERSONALLY profiting from their selections, it would be relatively easy to show a spine and allow participants to speak their mind when visiting host countries eager to squelch unpleasant story lines about human rights abuses, labor conditions, etc. Instead, the IOC not only allows monster states to participate despite obvious violations of world norms and Olympic rules (remember, Russia is still competing despite being BANNED for prior wholesale doping behavior -- some ban) giving them a fig leaf of respectability and normalcy, it coaches other participating countries to control their athlete's public statements and avoid discussing any elephants in any rooms to avoid offending the monster states.
How bizarre is the result? The medal ceremony for women's figure skating was postponed for weeks AFTER the closing ceremony, on the CHANCE that the doped up fifteen-year-old Russian skater MIGHT win and trigger another wave of hand-wringing about which medals to grant if the win MIGHT be later nixed after doping chargers were confirmed. Again, all of this for a situation in which the ENTIRE TEAM was already "banned" (yet still allowed to send athletes) and a situation in which an athlete ON that team tested positive for performance enhancing drugs even prior to the actual games and was caught AND a situation in which after being allowed to complete, the suspect athlete didn't even place for would-be bronze, silver or gold. How insane is that? How fearful of offending Russia must the IOC be to allow this farce?
Seriously, the entire western world needs to look at the Olympics through a new lens and eliminate sponsorship and participation in them. Surely, there are other programs that could be devised to promote concepts of honor, fairness, self-sacrifice and some fun for kids that don't institutionalize environments fostering mental / physical / sexual abuse and don't support a trans-national crime syndicate bent on grifting billions of dollars from countries trying to prove their modernity or trying to disguise their modern take on tyranny.
WTH
