The Olympics

[Keltyke]

The upcoming Olympics are being held in China - Communist China, for Pete's sake! Why are we there? We've boycotted Olympics before, why not now? It's the country with the worst human rights record in the world!

One team member has lost his visa for being an "activist", and another is in trouble over a nude photograph. If they have their way, we won't have a team there anyway.

 

[Musketeer]

We boycotted 1980 because of the invasion of Afghanistan.

I don't agree with boycotting any games. The Olympics are intended to transcend politics. It is supposed to be a sporting competition between each nation's best athletes. Saying "I don't like you so I am going home" defeats the whole purpose of the games.

Carter was a tool for boycotting them.

 

[Musketeer]

Odd question, since you are so opposed to having them in a communist nation what about playing against one? Should our hockey team have refused to play the Soviet team?

 

[applesanity]

We've boycotted Olympics before, why not now?

I've decided to hate you. I don't like you at all.

The Olympics Games are about sport. The Olympics are not about politics. The Olympics are about watching perfections of human athleticism compete. Athletes who have forsaken partying or social lives or even relaxing lives, to train hours upon hours every single day, for that one faint and nearly impossible goal of winning it all.

Here we are, typing on a gun forum when we're really supposed to be finishing that proposal at work. Meanwhile, Olympic athletes are probably at this very moment straining, fighting against excruciating pain and utter exhaustion, to run those laps just a few seconds faster, or vault just a few inches higher.

Every time someone, some entity, or some party has tried to inject politics into the Olympics, there were always miserable results. Munich, Moscow, Los Angelos, Berlin, Mexico City, to name a few.

Come Friday, so many of us Americans are gonna turn on the TV and cheer on the hundreds of Americans who have worked so hard to represent our country. You're not welcome in the celebrations.

Are you going to deny Micheal Phelps or Shaun Johnson the right and the honor to show the world what they can do? To deny them what they've been seeking at the expense of untold sacrifices? [redacted]

Wow.... just.... Wow.

 

[Keltyke]

Odd question, since you are so opposed to having them in a communist nation what about playing against one?

Odd only if you don 't find anything wrong with China. Playing a team on neutral or home soil is VASTLY different than participating in an event that will support the Communistic government and give tacit approval to their actions. You gotta stand up for something somewhere.

The Games are SUPPOSED to be a sporting competition between the world's teams, but it's rife with politics and agendas far removed from the original purpose.

 

[black]

hopefully they can compete and not come home with black lung from being over there.

 

[TwoXForr]

Well I would like to think that not only is it bringing a spot light on some truely amazing individuals, but it allows atheletes and others to travel and see the world.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
- Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain

 

[Citizen Carrier]

No, we shouldn't boycott the Olympics.

If a competitor feels strongly about such a thing, he or she is certainly free not to compete.


What I will say is that the Olympics should NEVER have been given to an authoriatarian police state to begin with. They don't deserve the legitimacy of the Olympics.

They don't deserve this "coming out" party.

You think it is wrong to inject politics into the Olympics?

Tell me something. Do you think POLITICS had nothing to do with China lobbying it's ass off to get the Olympics in their grungy, smog-filled, George Orwell city?

It was COMPLETELY political. They wanted to look legitimate. They wanted the prestige. They thought they could turn their whole corrupt, dirty, illegitimate, murderous thugocracy into a big Potempkin Village and the world would be just as easily fooled as their own people.

I don't know if you remember this, but they were given the Olympics on the condition they DO THREE THINGS.

Clean up the air. Didn't do it.

Loosen up on political dissidents. If anything, they've clamped down harder.

Loosen press restrictions. Have no intention of doing it.

The Olympics should only be hosted in countries that have at least a minimum understanding of how human beings are supposed to live.

I hope their whole window-dressing operation turns into an embarassing train wreck and I hope the United States kicks their sorry butts...

 

[Keltyke]

I've decided to hate you. I don't like you at all.

There are only a handful of people in the world whose opinion of me matters, you aren't one of them.

What I will say is that the Olympics should NEVER have been given to an authoriatarian police state to begin with. They don't deserve the legitimacy of the Olympics.

Excellent, and I couldn't agree more. Thank you for providing the details I either didn't remember or didn't know.

Now that they have AGAIN violated our trust, what should we do? I DO agree that denying the athletes their day would be a sad thing to do, but how do we combat this?

 

[applesanity]

It was COMPLETELY political. They wanted to look legitimate. They wanted the prestige. They thought they could turn their whole corrupt, dirty, illegitimate, murderous thugocracy into a big Potempkin Village and the world would be just as easily fooled as their own people.

And now the whole world will be watching as athletes choke on smog, as Japanese journalists get beat up, and as various searches on the china edition of Google turn up nothing. If anything, the inevitable negative press all over China will be a catalyst for some real reforms.

[redacted]

 

[Keltyke]

If anything, the inevitable negative press all over China will be a catalyst for some real reforms.

ROTFL! That's the best joke I've heard in a long time! Do you really think China cares what the rest of the world thinks of them? Not by their actions.

Negative press? How about that poor slob who stood in front of that line of tanks some years back? Lots of negative press there. One poor student standing up to the symbolism of the whole Chinese political structure. Did it change ANYTHING? No. BTW, did you ever hear of that guy again? Changed him - from alive to either dead or exiled.

China will not respond to negative press or world opinion. Money is the only thing they will respond to. Gotta hit'em in the pocketbook, like loss of revenue if the Olympics were held elsewhere.

 

[TwoXForr]

China is already responding, what with cell phones, internet, and my favorite ambassador for capitalism in the world McDonalds.

(although the same happened in the USSR, but then the party lost total control and Organizd crime went beserk and now with have good old Russian Nationalism coming back with a former KGB man at the wheel, Let us just hope the cultural and rule of law in China keep the lawless in check) Sorry lost my head there for a second.

China is changing, slowly but surely.

The infusion of cash from the Olympics is nothing compared to the copywright/patent infringements, and cheaply produced products from cheap labor they dump on the market.

 

[Musketeer]

Playing a team on neutral or home soil is VASTLY different than participating in an event that will support the Communistic government and give tacit approval to their actions.

This does NOT support the gov't of China. People paying money to go watch may help China but the act of competing there does not. Blame those who choose to line China's pockets, not the athletes or policy of competing.

It also does NOT give approval to the Chinese gov't's actions. If anything I have seen far more negative press about the Chinese Gov't in the last couple of weeks than in years. All of it is related to how they are hosting the games and how glaringly obvious the totalitarian regime really is.

The way to change China is not through isolation but through outright invasion by western ideals and standards. That is what ended Communism in the USSR and it is steadily chipping away at China. People want STUFF, even Chinese people want stuff. When they see the entire world there with tons of stuff they never had, but were force to make , it is a greater driving force for change than anything else.

I thought the US put on a pretty darn good show in Berlin just before WWII or should we have avoided those games as well?

 

[Citizen Carrier]

I thought the US put on a pretty darn good show in Berlin just before WWII or should we have avoided those games as well?

Germany was awarded the Olympic games in 1931, two years before the Nazi government took power.

If we knew then what we know now, yes, I would have gotten a much earlier start in disrespecting Germany at every opportunity.

And there was a boycott attempted. The U.S. Olympic Committee voted to boycott the games unless Jews competed on the German team. Germany found two token Jews (both living outside of Germany, having wisely fled) and convinced them to compete. This slight of hand averted the American boycott.

Here's National Review Online's Jay Nordlinger writing about the German Olympics in the context of holding them in Beijing this year:

Traditionally, Americans are taught that the Berlin Olympics were a great failure for the Nazis, given the fabulous performance by Jesse Owens: The black American trackster won four gold medals. And that was supposed to have refuted Nazi race theories.

This is a very nice story, but the 1936 Games were a great boon to the Nazis, giving them legitimacy and cementing their power. Years later, the journalist William Shirer wrote, “Hitler, we who covered the Games had to concede, turned the Olympics into a dazzling propaganda success for his barbarian regime.” And Duff Hart-Davis, in his book Hitler’s Games, tells us that Berlin was turned out prettily and benignly — creating the illusion that Nazi Germany was “a perfectly normal place, in which life went on as pleasantly as in any other European country.”

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWQyODNjOTk0YjYyODdjNzQ0MDA3NTRmOTllM2I1ODI=&w=MQ==


Is anybody under the illusion that this isn't what China is trying to achieve with these games?

 

[Forwardassist]

The problem with China is that even though the Government has embraced a form of restricted capitalism, only the members of the Communist party, their families, and connected people benefit from from it. The vast majority of the population outside the major cities does not benefit at all from the economical changes, and in many ways are hurt by it. Their land is seized by the government to sell to developers, or for government projects. They have to work in grueling conditions in state run factories to produce the crap we buy at Wal-mart. Their is a very wide gap between the have and haves not in this country. A vast majority of the country lives in poverty. On top of that the government controls all the media and even the internet. The people really are fed propaganda all day long, and many are completely brainwashed to accept their condition. No outside Western influences is going to change their opinions on their country. Western ideals are completely foreign to the Chinese people. One has to realize that these people have a completely different cultural ideals than in the west. They do not share the same beliefs as we do. The only way to influence the people of China is to hurt them where it counts in their pocket book. Don't buy Chinese made goods. Boycott Wal-mart.

The problem I see with the Olympics is that it legitimatizes the Chinese government. The Chinese government will do all it can to put their best foot forward, while making sure outsiders don't see the real truth of the situation of millions of people in China. The Government will capitalize on positive reports on how well the games went in China to spin a positive image. Any negative reporting will be severely dealt with. All reporters and foreigner are going to be carefully watched by government agents. Any negative reports will lead to arrest and possible deportation. The foreign media knows this and will play along to broadcast the games.

 

[dresden8]

A conundrum:

Now that Islamic seperatists are attacking the Chinese in Western China, who do we support and think is right- Radical Islamists or an Evil Empire?

 

[hkg3]

Shooting is being televised sometime between 2 and 6am on Sunday on MNBC.

 

[Mr. James]

The Olympics Games are about sport. The Olympics are not about politics.

Why. . . that's almost . . . touching.

Citizen Carrier has said it all.

Now that Islamic seperatists are attacking the Chinese in Western China, who do we support and think is right- Radical Islamists or an Evil Empire?

Can we just buy popcorn and cheer for injuries?

I couldn't give a three-day-old fart about the Olympics, although I blame the networks covering them more than the games themselves. I find both the summer and winter olympics to be an unrelenting video-emetic.

But they can never take away Lake Placid in 1980!

 

[applesanity]

I can't believe there are people out there who can't deal with the Olympics this year. Consider these two representatives of the US Olympians.

Come on. I dare any one of you to call them, approach them, or even send them a quick email saying, "No offense, but I'm not gonna watch you guys. Yeah, I understand that you've worked your whole lives to beat other people (who have in turn worked their whole lives) just to get here - just to get the pinnacle of your respective sports. But whatever. What matters more to me is this awesome soapbox on which I'm standing. Boycott China! Save Darfur! Free Tibet! You should be boycotting the games too."

Feel free to track down any American who would have competed in the 1980 Moscow Olympics and as them if they're big fans of Jimmy Carter. Whole carreers and big dreams just crushed because athletes became political pawns to be used against those moonbat Soviets. Did the boycott stop the invasion?

Hah. Hah. hahahaha.

Hah.

Will boycotting the 2008 Olympics stop the Darfur business, bring freedom of the press, increase human rights, cause free and fair national elections with multiple political parties, and/or stop those lame "Free Tibet" concerts?

Hah. Hah. hahahaha.

Hah.

Will boycotting the 2008 Olympics ruin our opportunity to show the rest of the world exactly who's boss on the track, in the arena, in the swimming pools, on the floor mats, at the dimond, and at the range?

Well, duh.

I wonder if any TFL members know any shooters in Beijing right now, or are those shooters themselves. Let's tell them to pack their bags and go home; China won't let you search for "Dalai Lama" on the Chinese edition of Google.

Maybe our NBA teams should boycott the Houston Rockets because Yao Ming is playing for the Chinese national team. They really aren't basketball players. They're just an extension of the Red Army's propaganda machine. Maybe Yao Ming is an evil Communist Pinko baby killer. Or maybe he's just a really, really great athlete, who loves his country, regardless of who's in charge.

The ironic thing here is that all of you who are defending the original post can see right through China's attempts to legitimize itself. The harder China tries, the worse it looks. Even liberal MSM bastions like MSNBC and NYTimes have jumped on the "China Sucks!" bandwagon. Feel free to talk trash about China; they deserve most of it. But don't deny the opportunity for our American athletes to compete. That's what Jimmy Carter would do.

The Chinese government is doing terrible things. Nobody is debating that issue. But that's not the point anyway. For once, can you all just set aside all the politics and just enjoy some sports?

 

[KDM]

It's funny...people say, "Don't politicize (SP?) the Olympics!" Yet, the Chinese revoked the visa of a skater, forgot his name, because he started a Darfur support organization. If that's not politicizing the Olympics, I don't know what is.