Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.
*
Dear Janet:
Hi, it's me again. I think you know why I'm writing you today, given everything that's gone down since your fellow California girl Kamala Harris had her joyful rear end handed to her in the last (at least I hope it's not the last) presidential election. So I'll just come right out and say it - the 2028 Olympics, for which you are the organizing committee's chief athlete officer, cannot go on in Los Angeles.
Look, Janet, here's the deal. The Olympic movement is an international one, meant to foster good relations between the countries of the world through sport. And Donald Trump has managed to foster horrible relations between the United States and every other country on the planet in one short month. Right after we were in the Paris Olympics, he pulled us out of the Paris climate accord. He pulled us out of the World Health Organization. If the United Nations headquarters building weren't in New York, he would have pulled us out of the UN in a heartbeat - and given the endless real-estate repurposing possibilities for the UN's East Midtown property, he might just still do that and send the UN packing and off to Geneva. His hirsute Vice President was just in Munich admonishing European countries for refusing to acquiesce to the growing and increasingly dangerous rhetoric of right-wing populists and suggested that politicians who ignore the political concerns of the European far right are more of an enemy to American and European values than Russia or China. The only people in the audience for James David Vance's speech who applauded him were his own staffers.
Janet, how much more do you want to hear? When Trump isn't eroding human rights in America with his anti-abortion measures and his persecution of non-heterosexuals, he's starting trade wars with his tariffs. His erosion of public health standards - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who's a health expert like I'm a jet pilot, just got confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary - will make athletes who plan to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics much more hesitant to come here out of fear of catching something. And all of the bureaucratic elements that make a country function smoothly have just been gutted by Elon Musk. Need I say more?
Well, Janet, I will. Los Angeles and a few of its immediate suburbs just suffered some of the most catastrophic fires in the state of California's history. Even if former President Biden had been able to stay in the campaign and win re-election or if Kamala Harris had eked out a victory over Trump this past November, the fires still would have happened, and the loss of the entire Pacific Palisades section of LA merely underscores how sensitive southern California is to natural disasters - and in an era of climate change, that goes double. Given the scope and breadth of the disaster, Los Angeles, I would argue, is in no condition to host a major sporting event of any sort. And, given how the greater Los Angeles area can only sustain naturally a population of a couple hundred thousand, without all of those aqueducts, I don't see how Los Angeles County has the ability to host an Olympiad when it struggles for the necessary resources to sustain the 9.7 million people who call it home.
Look, Janet, I know it would have been cool to have a President Kamala Harris officiate at the opening of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, especially since it's her and her New Jersey-bred husband's adopted hometown, and no one certainly expected Donald Trump to be President in 2028. That's why LA got the 2028 Olympics and not the 2024 Olympics - I have no doubt that the members of the International Olympic Committee figured, when awarding the the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad to Los Angeles, that Trump would either serve two consecutive terms as President and be gone by 2028 or he would be lose his 2020 re-election bid and would be too politically wounded to win a second nonconsecutive term, especially since no former U.S. President had pulled that off since 1892. And, since Trump won a plurality in 2024, and since he made significant gains among black men, white women, and Hispanics of both sexes, and since Harris won solidly Democratic states by smaller margins than Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, the inference is that the country is moving in the direction of Trump's extreme agenda and is quite happy with where Trump is taking the country, if recent polls are to be believed. Here's something else we can infer, Janet - more Americans would rather have a racist, misogynistic, fascistic con man in the White House than a black woman with a Jewish husband.
Yes, yes, Janet, I know California is much more liberal than the rest of the country, and Kamala Harris may still officiate at the 2028 Olympics as governor of the state (though I think she's as politically dead as Albert Gore was in 2001), but holding an international sporting event in California and pretending that it's not part of the now-hated United States is like what holding international figure-skating or track and field championships in Minsk and pretending that Belorussia was not part of the hated Soviet Union would have been back in the Cold War era. In fact, to the rest of world, California means Hollywood, and to rest of the world, Hollywood is America. Clearly, under present circumstances and circumstances for the foreseeable future, holding an Olympiad in Los Angeles or in any other American city is a no-go.
Therefor, Janet, I am writing a letter to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach - a real postal letter, not an open online letter like this one - and asking him to move the 2028 Games elsewhere while the IOC still can do so. And, Janet, given that Trump could start a world war, the LA Olympics might have to be cancelled anyway.
Sincerely.
Steven Maginnis
P.S. You know I still love you, right? Just don't tell your husband.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment