My wife is a Chinese national who moved to the US at age ten.  When we got married, we had the actual ceremony in China.  On Chairman Mao’s birthday (Dec 26!).   While I was there, in 2003, I left with two distinct impressions.

1. China is very very very dirty.
2. China is very very very jacked about the Olympics.

I think it’s hard for us, as Americans, to imagine the kind of national pride the Chinese feel.   Or maybe it’s all too easy.  I’ve certainly ended up defending actions I’ve personally found abhorrent by my government to foreign relatives.  I don’t like it when my country comes under unfair fire.  China desperately, desperately, wants to be considered a Major Player on the world stage.   It wants the kind of awe and respect that the countries in Europe, Russia, and the United States once enjoyed (though I think it’s pretty safe to say no one is at that level anymore).  And it’s going to use these Olympics to show that to the world, god damn it.  China has ARRIVED.  And it’s about to show everyone what a country with a population so large that it can treat it’s citizens as disposable is capable of.

Everyone knows this already, but to China, the absolute PINNACLE of their athletics are the Olympics.   And they don’t give a fuck about what sports they have to participate in in order to get there.  Name an event, ANY event, and China probably had so many people scrambling to make the national team it’s depressing.  Families, often from poorer situations, totally mortgaging the future of their children for Olympic glory.  Do you think these children go to school?  If you count school as “12 hours of backbreaking practice in sports practically no one cares about”, I suppose.  What’s England’s pinnacle of atheletics?  I would bet that England would give up winning Gold Medals for twenty years if it meant they could win a handful of World Cups.  And the United States… well, we have our own sports.  Hockey Gold for Canada is nice… but the Stanley Cup is so much nicer.

The point is, in my opinion of course, is that China is taking these Olympics more seriously than anyone can imagine.  It’s been taking these Olympics seriously for several years now.  Event-wise, it’s hard to imagine China making serious dents in Gold Medals against the US/Australians in Swimming, and the typical track n’ field events (unless I’m seriously underestimating the effects of breathing in 100% pure shit.  I’m not kidding when I say China is filthy.  After a day in Beijing, I was hacking black mucus. BLACK).   But considering the amount of athletes they’ll have competing, in ALL Events, and it’s hard to imagine China NOT getting up there in Gold Medals.  And that’s why I think all these protests will do jack in the long run.  You have liberal hippies bitching about free Tibet this and Sudan that, blah blah blah.  It won’t matter.  The Chinese government isn’t going to care ALL that much.  The Chinese people probably don’t care all that much.  The rural poor, well they don’t have televisions.  The urban wealthy, well they’re the urban wealthy.  And I don’t think we as Americans don’t have much of a leg to stand on in terms of bitching to them.  After all, to them, we’re probably just player-haters.  Ain’t no thang.  I have a solution.

So obviously, the idea is to hit China where it hurts, right?  There’s only one place where it will.  A place where they HAVE to pay attention.  That’ll cut through all the garbage and noise and Western OH THOSE POOR TIBETANS OPPRESSED AT FIRST BY THEOCRATIC MANICS AND THEN BY INCOMPETENT ONES hand-wringing.  And that’s to nail them in the one statistic that matters the most.

The Gold Medal count.

A popular refrain is “Boycott the Olympics! Boycott the Olympics!”  Well, that’s just dumb.  That’s going to give the Chinese government EXACTLY what they want, a shortcut to the Gold Medal count, and years of propaganda that writes itself.   I’m sure the Chinese track n’ field coaches would LOVE it if the US didn’t field their athletes.  Or Basketball?

In my opinion, the best way to protest the Beijing Olympics, and the Chinese government, is to take the Olympics away from them.  Let’s go into their home turf and show them that even though we’re on our back foot right now, we’re still the Greatest Effing Country on Earth.  Let’s show them that even though we entered a war for some of the dumbest reasons imaginable, and our athletes sometimes have to work at Home Depot, that doesn’t matter, but we can throw balls through hoops and run faster than they can.   I want to see our 100M relay team win and then act like colossal jackasses afterwards.   Maybe wear the flag as a diaper.  Because we’re the Greatest Effing Country in the World and we don’t throw people in jail for being colossal jackasses on TV.   No sir, we celebrate that shit.   I want someone enterprising young man to catch the Chinese Basketball Coach saying something racist and then play that clip to the US Basketball team over and over and over on their flight.  And then have Coach K (ugh) say something patronizing after we win.  I want some American to win some gold medal in some weird sport no one cares about, and then he/she donates his/her bonus to a reputable Free Tibet charity, and then proceeds to lecture China as if he/she knew was  he/she was talking about.   Or somebody French, but we all know THAT’LL never happen.  So hopefully a Canadian will step up somewhere.  Because we’re the Greatest Effing Country on Earth and it’s not a criminal offense if some athlete lectures the host country and embarrasses us a little bit.

I want a Russian to win in Greco-Roman wrestling and become the new Scariest Man In Tights.  Also, so they’ll play the bad-ass Russian National Anthem.

I want our Basketball team, just once, play like it gave a shit.

I want a bunch of athletes from oppressed nations to defect, because we’re the Greatest Effing Country on Earth and we’re still the #1 destination for all the world’s poor.  Even China’s.

While I’m at it, I’d like a pony too.

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