Olympics no longer show ideals of liberal world
Might I interest you in considering a subject that does not interest you? The Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Winter Games.
Certainly not me and probably not you, for we, like nearly everyone else on the planet, will not have bought tickets. If Olympic TV viewership trends continue, nor will we be watching the proceedings with anything approaching the level of dedication that would please the creators of soft drink advertisements.
People are very excited about attending a performance by a North Korean orchestra in South Korea, less so for the actual competitions for which the orchestra is performing.
At first glance I can’t tell what is more — or rather, less — interesting: That we are not interested in these Olympics, or that we have ever been interested in any Olympics.
Of course I say this as someone who possesses no knowledge of sports except a vague understanding that I am bad at and kind of hate all of them. As a close observer of people who do like sports and also as a person who once every couple of years follows this single sporting thing, however, it is my belief that where interest in sports is concerned the sport itself is occasionally beside the point.
The Olympics are not only for jocks; they are for nerds. They are a dweeb’s fever dream of liberal internationalism, a peaceful coming-together of sovereign states in service of the highest good.
In the dream of the United Nations, that good is to foster co- operation, friendly relationships and security among all countries of the world; in the dream of the Olympics, it is to determine which countries of the world deserve to have the most ribbons with bits of metal attached hung around their citizens’ necks.
Regardless, this year the dream of the Olympics is more torporific than fevered. The Games will go on but many will sleep through them.
I wonder whether that may have something to do with the fact that the way we are supposed to feel about the Olympics is at odds with the way the world now feels to us.
The Games are organized to ( sort of ) reflect the ideal of the liberal rules- based global order, and they often proceed to ( sort of ) reflect the things that can go well and the things that can go wrong when trying to put the ideal of the liberal rules- based global order into practice.
But the Games aren’t a funny mirror held up to the planet anymore. The mirror has been shattered.
The world isn’t merely corrupted
( a little like the Games), but gone haywire. It’s not just lopsided ( again, somewhat like the Games), but upside- down.
In reality, the United States has lost the prestige and credibility as leader of any world let alone the free one; in the Olympic universe, the United States will dominate. In reality, tensions between North Korea and democracies have never signalled so much danger to so many lives; in the Olympic universe, the North and South will march under one flag.
The only part of these Olympics that makes any sense is Russia managing to evade punishment after going on a spree of illicit resultstampering, which, forgive me, isn’t very comforting.
Not content with teasing it, reality is making a laughingstock of the ideal of a more peaceful, more democratic world, and with it the ideal of the Olympics. If the rules- based global order faces existential annihilation at the hands of even its own makers, how excited can we get about a bad multi- billion dollar metaphor for it?
Nationalism, not internationalism, is on the rise; hatred, not peace; neoNazism, authoritarianism and fascism, not democracy. Perhaps when the world is sufficiently interested in putting an end to all this will we care a little more about the Games.
— Shannon Gormley is an Ottawa Citizen global affairs columnist and freelance journalist.