The Olympics are essentially that paper you barely touched until the last possible minute, despite knowing its full importance to your reputation, grades, and future career. The Rio Olympic Games continue a long standing tradition of procrastination of infrastructure organization, bolstering security, and prioritizing the views of tourists above those of long standing residents.
Objectively, I know that the fanaticism that comes from the Olympics, which ultimately boils down to revenue, marketing, and nationalism, is more harmful than celebratory. While I count down the days to the Rio Olympics, I’m also confronted with the fact that something I love has lead to the destruction of wildlife, the displacement of the lower class, and widened an already huge poverty gap in Brazil. As a Chicagoan, I cannot lecture Brazil about the state of their nation as they prepare to host the Games. As someone who has seen more governors go to jail in her lifetime than election ballots she has casted, corruption is just as synonymous with Chicago as skyscrapers are. Hell, even as an American, I can’t. We may not be in the middle of the impeachment process, but we are close to electing Donald Trump as president.
This is not just Rio’s problem. In the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydeny, it was Australia's treatment of its indigenous peoples that was the predominate storyline going into the Games, not the athletics. In Beijing in 2008, it was China’s “displacement of nearly 1.5 million people living in poverty” to build new facilities for the Olympics, as sportsonearth.com put it.
In the 2014 Olympics, held in Sochi, Russia, many argued that the US should hold a boycott due to Russia’s anti-gay laws, but the Olympics went on. All of these issues are concerns that should have been at the forefront of my mind, but as a child, I just wanted to watch the US win.
Years later as a twenty-year-old, I am beyond excited to watch my favorite athletes take a shot at the equivalent of their Superbowl or Stanley Cup that only comes once every four years. As a human being, I should be disgusted at the cost of what it takes to put on the Olympics. Between wide scale corruption and prioritizing Olympic parks over school playgrounds, none of these trade-offs should be acceptable to me, especially when they are mitigated by the organization of what is essentially a mass entertainment spectacle.
Yet no one wants to talk about a darker side to the sports we love. Sports—and passions in general—are supposed to be escapes. We don’t want to think about our escapes so we revert to being wilfully ignorant to make us feel better. To remove grey area and allow us to see the world in black and white. We shout things such as “stick to sports!” when a sports journalists brings up an uncomfortable aspect of the the Olympics—or any sport for that matter. It’s a defense mechanism used to reduce our feelings of discomfort and justify our choices when one of our passions—escapes, really—are under threat. These are feelings are tricky because, like the majority of issues, they are not black and white. Yet often, sport is just that. Sport is easy to consume because when all is said and done, there is a clear winner or loser. It’s either ecstatic cheers or boos.
For me, I’m more conflicted. Knowing about the Olympics’ corrupt past, unethical prioritization of revenue over lives of long-time residents, these facts will diminish my experience of watching it, but at the end of the day, I will tune in to watch the Opening Ceremony on August 5th. And there is no rationale explanation for my continued support, other than ignorance is bliss.
