The Olympics: An Olympic-Sized Scam

The only thing people are asking me more right now than, “Who are you voting for?” is “Are you watching the Olympics?” The answer to both questions is: I couldn’t care less about it. Now, I know that slamming the Olympics is tantamount to blaspheming the false god called World Feel Good, but it needs to be taken down a peg or two and put back where it belongs. Which is, right there on the “one off” channels with championship bowling, disco roller-skate dance-offs, and the World Series of Darts. Except darts holds more interest for me than the Olympics.

Check out the big squishy world liberals regaling us with tales of world solidarity and sportsmanship right there in one of the world’s most impoverished cities. I read one Olympic athlete has already been rolled for his wallet there. These world liberals are the same folks laying guilt trips on us because not enough is done to help the world’s poor. Ok, well, did any of you geniuses figure out that if, instead of having a gigantic festival of government-sponsored athletic ego-stroking, you lifted the poor of Brazil up with that cash, then you’d have at least solved poverty there? No, of course not. Because governments would never allow that, for one thing. Why?

Look, ever since the Third Reich discovered what a great propaganda machine the Olympics could be, governments have been using them for self-aggrandizement thereafter. Excuse me, but does anyone remember the good old days when the United States got into an Athlete Race with the former Soviet Union? An Arms Race, Space Race, and a Doomsday Race weren’t enough for the government that had everything. No, we needed a Sports Race, too. Remember how if the United States threw enough money at an Olympic Team and they managed to defeat a Soviet team, America acted like we’d just won a war with them and only suffered a hangnail in doing so?

Myths, Misunderstandings and Outright lies about owning Gold. Are you at risk?

How much money has been wasted on this obscene spectacle of Ancient Greek pagan festival revivalism? Ok, let’s call it what it is. People went and revived an Ancient Greek sporting event where they all gathered to watch young men and boys compete and the only women allowed to watch it with them were high-paid prostitutes. Right, and this died out, but like an embarrassing fad from the 1970s that has been revived, the Olympics returned with a vengeance. How dare the world forget that ongoing civil wars in Ancient Greece only ceased long for the Olympics and then resumed afterwards? And people today think that the Olympics demonstrate world peace? Excuse me, then why are nations competing in it, instead of cooperating with it? These are just wars distilled into high jumps and pole vaulting. Come on, people, think about it. Where do you think throwing javelins originated?

If this really was about world peace, they’d cobble together teams from nations that all hate each other and force them to cooperate together as a team and compete with other teams made up the same way. Except with that, governments would never have the chance to gloat and massage their over-inflated egos. The United States would never have had the chance to “show” the Soviets how much better our athletes were, even though the rest of the American people were never mollycoddled and fussed over like that. And, thankfully so, because the only thing worse than a government fussing over your health is a government trying to groom you into some “ideal person”.

People have told me, “Jack, they have archery in the Olympics! Aren’t you watching that?” I’ve seen those bows. Those aren’t bows. Those are high-tech projectile weapons, launching high-tech projectiles. If the Pentagon had to design a bow and arrows for combat and couldn’t go with compound bows, Olympic-style bows and arrows are what they’d come up with. I say give them an Osage orange longbow and sourwood arrows fletched with turkey feathers and we’ll see who’s a real bowman in the bunch. That might be worth seeing if only for the frustration factor they’d all have with their high-tech toys taken away and replaced with pre-Columbus American technology.

The most amazing thing is people are actually concerned over who wins these Olympic games. “Our team won! Yay, our country is the best!” Says some country where most people are living in squalor, but they’ve managed to build a winning Olympics team. Hey people, what difference does it make if “your” country won if you’re living in a shack cobbled together from cardboard and barely able to afford rice? I couldn’t care less who wins. It isn’t doing anything for me or anyone I know. Oh, I know it does a lot for the television networks who take a break from their usual run of government propaganda and move the government propaganda in a new direction. It also does a lot of breakfast cereal companies who will compete in the “Cereal Olympics” to get the winning athletes on their boxes of highly-sugared fractions of corn, wheat, and rice. Which are allegedly part of a balanced breakfast. Yes, well, balance this breakfast where the morning sun doesn’t shine.

Since world peace is supposed to reign during the Olympics, where are we at with the Middle East? Have we let up on dropping bombs on people over there? And has ISIS sent out an email saying, “Guys, it’s the Olympics, we’ve got to put a jihad on hold for now in the spirit of international goodwill and cooperation…”? I’m surprised ISIS hasn’t seen what an effective propaganda machine the Olympics are and formed their own team. I suppose the 100 Yard Suicide Bomber Sprint won’t be approved anytime soon, so they’re kind of stuck for now.

Ugh, whatever events the United States government, um, United States Olympics Team wins, we’ll be hearing about it for years. We’ll see their smug faces plastered on cereal boxes throughout the nation. Thank goodness I eat grits for breakfast, so I won’t have to see the Parade of Smugness every morning. Kids will be forced to sit through “self-esteem boosting” events at school as various Olympic athletes tour the nation, informing kids that if they study hard, they’ll be able to one day chuck a spear at a sandpit, too. Wow, we need a team to do that? Why don’t we just do what we usually do when we wish to make a “point”, so to speak? Send in a squadron of F-16s to wipe the sandpit off the face of the map.

“Are you watching the Olympics??!!” No, and I’m not voting, either. I also don’t know the words to the Star Spangled Banner because the government has spangled enough of my stars for one lifetime. I can’t afford any more star-spangling, thank you very much. One reason I can’t watch the Olympics is that I haven’t got television. I know, I know, bring up the allegations of neo-Luddite. That’s a label I wear with pride. But I see enough of the United States glorifying itself on a daily basis, so to what end need I watch them do so on some sporting field?

Again, if the world liberals start hectoring us and badgering us with demands to help the world’s poor, I say: “How much money is wasted on these useless Olympics games? Hmmm? How about you use that money to help the poor, then? No? Can’t do that? Then shut up!” I still remember all the at-the-time cool celebrities singing “We Are The World”. You are? How many of you, since that time, have given your vast billions to the poor and moved yourselves into a trailer house in Winnemucca, Nevada, to live on a hundred bucks a week and not as part of some ridiculous stunt for one week? None of you? Then pipe down and put a sock in it.

It never fails. The resources are actually there to help the poor, but the liberals can’t part with their own. They want everyone else to do the heavy lifting so they can keep their own money and stuff. That’s a topic for another day. But if anyone believes the Olympics are about building a better world, I say, what happened?! These have been going on for, what, a hundred years now? I don’t know because I don’t care. But we did manage to have us another world war after the Olympics where America “showed” the Germans how much better we are, didn’t we? I guess the Germans weren’t buying it, huh? And we got into a Cold War with the Soviets, almost destroyed the world on a few occasions, and used the Olympics as an aspect of the Cold War, did we not? World peace, international solidarity, the dignity of humanity, blah, blah, blah. I’ll be busy smoking my pipe and reading. Don’t bother telling me who won what. I’d rather bet on two beetles racing across the sidewalk. At least some government isn’t sponsoring them.

“Jack, you’re so cynical!” No, I say things a lot of people think but won’t say in front of other people who might respond with, “How could you say such terrible things about the Olympics?!” Very easily. I type them when I’m not vocally saying them. People say those athletes are the “best and brightest”. Excuse me, but they say the same things about our politicians. And if those assorted crooks and scam artists are our best and brightest, I suggest that China better start looking for a buyer for all those United States T-bills before the government finally declares bankruptcy. “Anyone want to buy some United States government bonds?” Thanks, no, we’ve been to the store and gotten the toilet paper. We don’t need T-bills now…”

Some people will be angered by this. But to them I say, don’t whine about war and poverty when the Olympics basically celebrate friction between nations, which is a cause of war. And spends obscene amounts of money on that friction, which certainly doesn’t help people living in poverty. Beg pardon, but where are you peoples’ priorities? Shouldn’t you create world peace and solve world hunger first, and then have worldwide sporting events to celebrate those achievements? Right now, the achievements of the Olympics are as follows: Ego-inflation, smugness, jealousy, pride, greed, anger, strife, nationalism, hypocrisy, narcissism, national conceit, wasted resources, government propaganda…shall I go on?

So, no, I’m not watching the Olympics. And I don’t care about them. The world should be embarrassed by them. Especially holding them in a city with an astonishing poverty problem. So, stop lecturing. Haven’t you guys got another music video you can make millions off of and donate that money to a charity where the CEO makes a $500,000 per year salary? Didn’t think I knew about the “compassion scam”, did you? Oh, yes, I know what you liberals pay yourselves to guilt us into giving you money to “help” people you exploit the very real suffering of. I won’t name names, but there are several charities that are supposed to help the poor but help themselves even more as far as salaries go. Who do you think you are? The Pentagon?

Well, anyway, if I’ve rained on anyone’s parade here, I’m not sorry. Enjoy the spectacle of people with expressions on their faces as if the fate of the world hangs on the balancing beam. Or throwing some cast iron ball is a life-and-death matter for the entire planet. Oh, by the way, since y’all are so concerned with “greenhouse gases” and “global warming”, how much fossil fuel are these Olympics eating up, anyway? I bet you’ve probably wiped out an entire forest just printing up all the endless documents such events require. Not to mention all the coal-fired and nuclear power plants providing the electricity to televise this global joke. Yeah, it’s all about saving the planet until you need to use its resources for your own crap, am I right?

I understand some people openly weep during the Olympics when their country wins. Are these people for real??!! These must be the same people that patronize such establishments as “doggy day care centers” and “artisanal gluten-free dog biscuit bakeries”. Or spend $150 on fake nails painted with tiger stripes but come up short on grocery money and call themselves “poor” as a result. I know, I’m being too hard on people. Yes, well, whatever. We’re really in a terrible, awful time in history right now. The Olympics and a presidential election cycle running at the same time. This could be the end. Abandon common sense, all ye who enter there.