Swum and Sunk

One of the most galling things about the outcome of the 2024 presidential election - a topic I will return to with much more vigor and vitriol tomorrow - is that, given that the United States about to co-host the World Cup with Canada and Mexico, celebrate a quarter millennium of nationhood, and host the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, we could have had Kamala Harris, a woman of Jamaican and South Asian descent with a husband of Eastern European Jewish origin, presiding over all of this from the White House - a White House with an intact East Wing -and demonstrating that the United States had truly become an international nation.  Instead we put a xenophobic, provincial, undereducated real estate developer from Queens back in charge.  And Trump not only knows he has the World Cup, the semiquincentennial celebration, and the Olympics happening under his reign of error, he brags about it.

Instead of a Jamaican-American President, we got once again a President from Jamaica Estates.

Because he's in like Flynn - Michael Flynn - with FIFA, the World Cup games in These States will go on as planned, at least with the teams that don't lose any members to Immigration and Custom Enforcement custody.  The semiquincentennial, however, is likely to be a disaster, because I already see less promotion, interest, or hype around it than that which surrounded the bicentennial fifty years ago.  CBS - now being denigrated by the Ellison family and Bari Weiss - can't even be bothered to air "semiquincentennial minutes."  And then there is the unpleasant subject of the Olympics.

Back in early September, I wrote about how I sent a letter to newly installed International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry (above) urging her to have the 2028 Olympics moved out of Los Angeles and out of the U.S. entirely.  At first I wasn't going to write Chief LA28 Athletic Officer Janet Evans make my case for the same because I had no postal address . . . until I found one.  And thus I went ahead and wrote both swimming legends, addressing them in their current capacities,  and subsequently waited for replies.

It's been nearly four months, and I haven't heard from either of them.

I'm not going to write them again.  I've had enough trying to convince the powers that be - and my Olympic heartthrob - of the need to stop the Los Angeles Olympics from happening under MAGA.  Even if Kirsty Coventry wanted to move the Games to another country - say, her own, Zimbabwe - she's need the support of the full committee membership and is unlikely to get it.  And Janet Evans?  She's just the athletic officer, she's not involved in location-related logistics.  These two women must get so much correspondence as it is, my letters probably never reached them . . . and even if they did, they probably had no time to read them themselves.  Besides, Janet Evans has a son who's a high school senior now, and she's probably helping him choose a college to attend (University of Southern California, no doubt), with no time to read a letter form little ol' me. 

It is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't.  All we can do right now is hope Trump and his entire administration are removed from power (consult Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution for more on that) before July 2028 (and hopefully before July 2026!).  I'm not going to get my knickers in a knot over Kirsty Coventry's failure to acknowledge my letter.  As for Janet Evans, I could never, ever be upset with the dear woman. 😊 

I am, however, upset with her 1996 Olympics swimming teammate Amy Van Dyken, who recently said she went back to church because she was inspired by what a wonderful guy Charlie Kirk was in the wake of his assassination.   

I don't want to talk about it . . ..

Anyway, the 2028 Olympics might not go on as planned.  Given Chinese saber-rattling against Taiwan, Iranian saber-rattling against everyone (but especially Israel), and the war between Russia and Ukraine grinding on, and given Trump's cavalier attitude toward all of this, we're likely to have a third world war anyway.