Let's Send All Who Want To Go To The Olympics
Wed Apr 09, 2008 at 07:48:32 PM PDT
Ah, here we are again in that same situation as we were decades ago when the outrage was building over the Russians brutalizing the Afghanis and heading towards some sort of political boycott of the Olympic games.
I'm here to tell you that although we did the noble and feel-good thing back then by staying home from Moscow, Jimmy Carter, a man I have great respect for, might have made a mistake with the boycott and it seems possible we could make the same poor choice if we allow emotion and protests to keep us away from full participation in the upcoming games.
I am horrified by abuse of Tibet by China. I've heard disgusting tales of brutality and human rights violations that make any ethical person cringe. We should be outraged and vocal about these problems.....but not just every 4 years.
Let's look outside the box a bit here and think in terms of being a repressive leader of a communist country who's biggest tool in controlling his population is absolute power over the flow of ideas. Your citizens want to feel a part of the world and you've inflated their egos with an intense nationalism. To keep them believing in themselves you have to showcase your accomplishments on the world stage so it's perfectly natural to be a player in and even a host of the Olympic Games. You see this much as Hitler did before he hosted the festivities as a way to stick out your chest and elevate your standing in the globe.
Once the choice is made for you to be the host, you get that visit from your chief of security. Suddenly the realization hits you that there's a huge drawback towards inviting the world into your very secure environment. You have filters on the internet, you own all the media, you have informants in all the cities to ensure party loyalty but tourists are unpredictable. They don't play by the rules. There's too many to imprison and the you can't do that while the spotlight is on you anyway. They have this annoying habit of talking to your citizens about any old political topic without fear of being locked away or shot. They'll be in your stores, your restaurants and most importantly, they will not be demonstrating the nasty, greedy capitalistic image you've so cleverly crafted to help show why your strict lifestyle protects them from the horrors out there.
You'd think that it would be a time for you to clean up your act a little bit and pretend that you're not as repressive as you seem but instead you hit upon an idea. One thing you know about the major democratic superpowers is that they react very strongly and predictably on the world stage when you can throw a little outrage their way. You still get your time in the spotlight and the warm fuzzies for your own citizens by hosting the Olympics but you can minimize or even eliminate the threat to your internal security if you can bait these powerhouses into a full or partial boycott.
I'm stricken by the fact that China could easily have waited until the Olympics were over to step up its suppression of Tibet as they have in recent months. The Russians also seemed to ramp up their activities in Afghanistan during the build up to their Olympics. Just perhaps the intention in both cases is and was an act of protection and we as the guys with the white hats fall for it every time.
So just imagine if Carter had thought outside the box and instead of keeping our athletes and citizens home, had offered hundreds of thousands of Americans a chance to become "Ambassadors of Peace" and given them free or very inexpensive transportation to Moscow with the only instruction that anyone taking him up on the offer promise to spread out throughout the Russian countryside as much as they could and interact with the citizens of that country. Talking world politics and human rights would be highly encouraged. If the numbers of people expected were too much, they could limit the participants by having a huge essay contest and choose the brightest and most eloquent of the country to go show the Russians that we weren't the ogres presented by their propaganda machine.
Now obviously we're ruled right now by a real ogre so I'm not holding my breath that this will come to pass for this current Olympics. Thinking outside the box for the chimp in charge means looking for the prize from his Cracker Jacks after spilling the contents. However, it's a marvelous thought imagining the panic that would set in in a country that is used to controlling the message so completely and knowing the comings and goings of every visitor. To overwhelm an organization like the KGB or the Chinese Secret Police would be a historic coup.
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