Olympic medals and political mettle

Can the Olympics save the world?

The recent Winter Olympics in South Korea might prove to be an event that assisted the process of cooling down the superheated staredown between North Korea and America/South Korea.

Those Games might have provided an opening for talks among government leaders.

But until we see those talks happen, and until such talks result in a more peaceful world, it’s OK to be a bit skeptical of the conventional wisdom that the Olympics are the great unifier of mankind.

Leading up to the Winter Olympics, Russia was caught red-handed in widespread, state-sponsored doping of its athletes. That’s a common tool of similar governments past and present: Russia, East Germany, China. They seize the Olympics as an opportunity to show the world the superiority of their heavy-handed political systems.

(Rule of thumb: The countries that love their massive military parades are the most likely to lie and cheat, in sports and otherwise.)

Russian officials responded to the cheating charges by remorsefully confessing and promising to reform. Just kidding! Putin lashed out at false accusers such as the USA, and Russian officials accused Americans of spiking the Russians’ punch. Peace out.

I’m no historian, but I can’t recall when the Olympics actually promoted world peace in a tangible way.

You hear about how America spit in the eye of Hitler in 1936, sending Jesse Owens to Berlin to shatter Nazi beliefs of racial superiority. But did Germany’s loss in the long jump really set Hitler straight?

Hitler used the ’36 Olympics to BS the rest of the world, and to prepare Germany’s young men for war. Owens’ heroics didn’t straighten out even America’s racist beliefs.

I love the idea of what the Olympics can do, as poetically expressed by one famous leader:

“The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It does not separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps connect the countries in the spirit of peace.”

The silver-tongued devil who spoke those words in 1936 invaded Poland three years later.

Maybe now the Olympics will help save the world. It’s about time.