Let's Sit These Olympics Out...

I do not believe that the United States ought to participate in the Olympics this year. I suspect that most of the world will disagree with me about this, but I really believe we ought not, in good conscience, be a part of this venture.

For one, I don’t believe that the Olympics have much value any longer. Sure. There are wonderful athletes from around the world who are competing against one another. Sure, there are some heart warming stories of the accomplishments of some young (or somewhat old) amateurs who are competing. But let us be honest. At this juncture, the Olympics is a contest of professional athletes from around the world. What made 1980 so special when the United States Hockey Team defeated the Soviet Union is that the US team were truly amateurs going against pros. These days have long since passed. It’s now all pros, some trying to pretend to be amateurs.

The Olympics are not what they were intended to be. Frankly, we should all boycott them on TV.

My second reason is China and my reasoning is two-fold.

We are reading and observing China clamping down on dissidents. They want to give the world a vision of China as one, big, happy country where everything is great. It is not. China is one of the world’s leaders in human rights violations. They practice misogyny openly and have little problem destroying baby girls so that they can have baby boys and fulfill the ‘one child to a family’ rule. We were, rightly, horrified by the cruelties of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The sad reality is that China is really no better. By even venturing into this country we are giving tacit approval to a horrendous, murderous, regime.

Additionally, whether we want to accept this our not, China is become our leading economic enemy. I use the word enemy very deliberately. They have a goal to destroy us economically and they are being successfuly.

A large reason the Soviet Union crumbled was because of economics and an inability to compete with the United States in spending. In the early 1980's, we heightened the Cold War and began, essentially, creating a wartime economy. Large amounts of money went into purchasing weapons and technology for weapons. A war time economy when there is no war, for a capitalist nation, means that there are plenty of jobs and plenty of money in the pipeline. The downside is that often the government does this with hot checks. Ronald Reagan’s plans had lots of people working and lots of manufacturing of arms, but he put it all on MasterCard. That brings about its own set of problems, obviously.

The problem the Soviets had was that this drained them financially beyond a point of no return. They were in a wartime economy that they couldn’t afford----but they were also fighting a war. A wartime economy when a nation is at war, drains the country. As a result, the money runs out as the debt accumulates. The Soviet Union collapsed.

History is repeating itself. China is building itself up militarily and financially, and is not in a war. They are using more and more oil----thus raising the prices of oil, and generating capital----much of which the United States is borrowing.

We are in a wartime economy but we are fighting two wars. Incomes are not growing. There is no place to invest money for it to grow. Interest rates are going higher and prices are going higher. We are borrowing more and more money and facing economic collapse ourselves.

Our big opponent in all of this is China as well as ourselves. By participating in the Olympics, a large amount of American money will flow into China and put us further and further in economic trouble.

We have no business going there.