Why Can’t China be Just Like Us
Professor Higgins, sexist as he was, wondered, “Why can’t a women be like a man?” I, great patriot as I am, wonder “Why can’t China be like us.” I fervently believe that the whole world would be very much happier if every country was exactly like the United States of America. Just think how wonderful it would be if everywhere you went it would be just like not leaving home. Imagine a McDonalds there, a Starbucks here (that is one still open for business) a Wal-Mart right around the corner, nothing could be cozier. China does have McDonalds and other good stuff, but that doesn’t make China like us, no siree. You see, with the Olympics just about to commence the Chinese government has issued an order to all foreign owned hotels (private enterprises) that they are to install monitoring devices and spy on their guests or face “severe consequences.” This has got Sam Brownback up in arms. And he would like Congress and the President to do something about it.
This is pretty damn serious. If we don’t put a stop to this, who knows what the Chinese will do next? Maybe even decide to whip up on a little county. But before getting hysterical let’s get historical to calm us down a bit. Olympic games, you know, have been around for some time. Not always happily.
The Olympics started way back, seven hundred years BC to be fairly precise. For folks that have difficulty getting a handle on how far back that is, it was before “I Love Lucy, before television, even. Hard as it is to believe, once there were sports without television. That is like hotdogs without beer. Hannity without Colmes. Haeckel without Jeckel. Olympics without TV? Impossible, who paid for them?
Try to wrap your head around this. These were Olympics without sponsors or steroids. In those early Olympics, a bunch of naked guys ran around, jumped, threw, wrestled. hugged and otherwise cavorted. When the Romans took over The Olympics fell out of favor and when the Romans became Christian, the Olympics were banned as a pagan festival. A bunch of naked men cavorting and doing it all for Zeus, just didn’t sit well with the Christians of the time. Probably wouldn’t sit well with some Christians now, Sam Brownback probably being one of them
Centuries passed. Ages darkened and then lightened up. Wars, famines, more wars, droughts, and more wars, epidemics, still more wars, came and went. One thing that hadn’t yet made a reentrance was the Olympics. There was some piddling around in the 19th century but nothing major. Then an archeological dig unearthed the stadium where the Greeks cavorted and a French Baron, Pierre de Coubertin, hit upon this great idea, bring back the Olympics. Actually he was trying to figure out why the French lost the last war, but he also thought maybe if athletes from all over world competed the good fellowship generated would create such an aura of good feeling no one would want to go to war, anymore. I didn’t say he was smart, only that he was French.
And so the modern Olympic games were reinstituted in 1896 where they first happened, Athens. Athletes from anywhere from 12 to 14 nations competed. It wasn’t that people couldn’t count then, or that 12 in Greek is 14 in some other language, there was some question of what was a nation and whether people competed or not. Be that as it may, crowds flocked to a new fancy stadium and the modern Olympics inaugural was hailed as a huge success. So much so that from thence forward every four years in different countries athletes from all over assembled to compete in Olympic games that were supposed to substitute for war, except of course in those years when war got in thee way, 1916, 1940 and 1944..
At first the games were for the athletes but over time the emphasis was on the nation. The nation whose athletes won the most medals demonstrated their superiority. This certainly was the heart of the matter in 1936, when the games were to be hosted by Adolph Hitler in Berlin. Hitler was hot for the Olympics because he knew that the results would demonstrate the superiority of the master race. There was some talk of boycotting because by that time Hitler was already making life miserable for Jews and others, He was also getting ready for war. The head of the US Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage would have none of this boycotting talk. To make sure Germans would dominate the medal count, Hitler added 13 new events in Jew baiting. Avery Brundage helped design those events. That never happened. Although at each Olympics more events were added. It wasn’t until 1928 that women were able to compete in track and field, the center piece of the original Olympics. There was no competition in Jew baiting in the 1936 Olympics, although there was anti-Semitism everywhere. Avery Brundage made Hitler feel better by withdrawing the two Jewish runners from the 400 meter relay team. What goes around comes around (and that certainly is true for the 10,000 meters) Hitler awarded Brundage the contract to build the German embassy in the United States. Germany did win by far the most medals in the 1936 Olympics (89, the US was second with 56, Italy third with 22). It would have been glorious occasion for the fatherland were it not for the African Americans, Jesse Owens most notably, that performed so spectacularly. And considering what Joe Louis did to Max Schmeling the following year, that Hitler decided to launch World War II is difficult to comprehend.
After World War II the competition grew even more intense as the US and the USSR competed for world domination. With the USSR out of the picture. At least temporarily, China emerges as the challenger to US dominance.
And that brings us back to Sam Brownback. Sam, for those with good memories, was one of several who sought the Republican nomination for the presidency. Sam, like all of us believed anyone could be president. He didn’t read the fine print. Anybody can be president if he or she can come up with the entry fee of upwards of fifty million dollars. Sam couldn’t so he went back to his day job, United States Senator from Kansas.
Sam isn’t the only one upset at China and its sponsorship of the Olympics. Amnesty International is irked as well with the Chinese disrespect for human rights breaking the promise made when they were awarded the games. I ask again, why can’t China be like Us?
Except, Amnesty International accuses the US of disrespect for human rights in what goes on in Guantánamo and other extraordinarily renditioned places. Couple that with Sam Brownback’s vote in 2007 for the Protect America Act which allows the US to tap into international communications without warrants and 2008 for the reformed FISA allowing the government to do the same for folks at home. It turns out that, why can’t China be just like us, is the wrong question.
We should be asking, how can we stop being just like China?
This is pretty damn serious. If we don’t put a stop to this, who knows what the Chinese will do next? Maybe even decide to whip up on a little county. But before getting hysterical let’s get historical to calm us down a bit. Olympic games, you know, have been around for some time. Not always happily.
The Olympics started way back, seven hundred years BC to be fairly precise. For folks that have difficulty getting a handle on how far back that is, it was before “I Love Lucy, before television, even. Hard as it is to believe, once there were sports without television. That is like hotdogs without beer. Hannity without Colmes. Haeckel without Jeckel. Olympics without TV? Impossible, who paid for them?
Try to wrap your head around this. These were Olympics without sponsors or steroids. In those early Olympics, a bunch of naked guys ran around, jumped, threw, wrestled. hugged and otherwise cavorted. When the Romans took over The Olympics fell out of favor and when the Romans became Christian, the Olympics were banned as a pagan festival. A bunch of naked men cavorting and doing it all for Zeus, just didn’t sit well with the Christians of the time. Probably wouldn’t sit well with some Christians now, Sam Brownback probably being one of them
Centuries passed. Ages darkened and then lightened up. Wars, famines, more wars, droughts, and more wars, epidemics, still more wars, came and went. One thing that hadn’t yet made a reentrance was the Olympics. There was some piddling around in the 19th century but nothing major. Then an archeological dig unearthed the stadium where the Greeks cavorted and a French Baron, Pierre de Coubertin, hit upon this great idea, bring back the Olympics. Actually he was trying to figure out why the French lost the last war, but he also thought maybe if athletes from all over world competed the good fellowship generated would create such an aura of good feeling no one would want to go to war, anymore. I didn’t say he was smart, only that he was French.
And so the modern Olympic games were reinstituted in 1896 where they first happened, Athens. Athletes from anywhere from 12 to 14 nations competed. It wasn’t that people couldn’t count then, or that 12 in Greek is 14 in some other language, there was some question of what was a nation and whether people competed or not. Be that as it may, crowds flocked to a new fancy stadium and the modern Olympics inaugural was hailed as a huge success. So much so that from thence forward every four years in different countries athletes from all over assembled to compete in Olympic games that were supposed to substitute for war, except of course in those years when war got in thee way, 1916, 1940 and 1944..
At first the games were for the athletes but over time the emphasis was on the nation. The nation whose athletes won the most medals demonstrated their superiority. This certainly was the heart of the matter in 1936, when the games were to be hosted by Adolph Hitler in Berlin. Hitler was hot for the Olympics because he knew that the results would demonstrate the superiority of the master race. There was some talk of boycotting because by that time Hitler was already making life miserable for Jews and others, He was also getting ready for war. The head of the US Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage would have none of this boycotting talk. To make sure Germans would dominate the medal count, Hitler added 13 new events in Jew baiting. Avery Brundage helped design those events. That never happened. Although at each Olympics more events were added. It wasn’t until 1928 that women were able to compete in track and field, the center piece of the original Olympics. There was no competition in Jew baiting in the 1936 Olympics, although there was anti-Semitism everywhere. Avery Brundage made Hitler feel better by withdrawing the two Jewish runners from the 400 meter relay team. What goes around comes around (and that certainly is true for the 10,000 meters) Hitler awarded Brundage the contract to build the German embassy in the United States. Germany did win by far the most medals in the 1936 Olympics (89, the US was second with 56, Italy third with 22). It would have been glorious occasion for the fatherland were it not for the African Americans, Jesse Owens most notably, that performed so spectacularly. And considering what Joe Louis did to Max Schmeling the following year, that Hitler decided to launch World War II is difficult to comprehend.
After World War II the competition grew even more intense as the US and the USSR competed for world domination. With the USSR out of the picture. At least temporarily, China emerges as the challenger to US dominance.
And that brings us back to Sam Brownback. Sam, for those with good memories, was one of several who sought the Republican nomination for the presidency. Sam, like all of us believed anyone could be president. He didn’t read the fine print. Anybody can be president if he or she can come up with the entry fee of upwards of fifty million dollars. Sam couldn’t so he went back to his day job, United States Senator from Kansas.
Sam isn’t the only one upset at China and its sponsorship of the Olympics. Amnesty International is irked as well with the Chinese disrespect for human rights breaking the promise made when they were awarded the games. I ask again, why can’t China be like Us?
Except, Amnesty International accuses the US of disrespect for human rights in what goes on in Guantánamo and other extraordinarily renditioned places. Couple that with Sam Brownback’s vote in 2007 for the Protect America Act which allows the US to tap into international communications without warrants and 2008 for the reformed FISA allowing the government to do the same for folks at home. It turns out that, why can’t China be just like us, is the wrong question.
We should be asking, how can we stop being just like China?
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