If China = Whore, Then all of us = Whoremonger

Well that's a subtle title isn't it. . .

I love the Olympics, I watch more sports in two weeks every four years than I watch during the four years inbetween. I love that a decision is made by who crossed the finish line first, who threw the discus farthest or who jumped the highest. I'm even ok with the judged events though I don't give a rip which judge gave what score. I'm the judge and I'll decide who made a ten and the rest can go pound sand.

NBC paid $894 million for the rights and has sold $1 billion in advertisements. Rest assured that those companies who coughed up a billion dollars expect to make that back a few times over and they will only make it if . . .  we go to the store and open our wallets.

But here's the rub, the world was invited to come to China but the fine print said "some restrictions apply. Tibet not included".

Behind the smiling faces and the mass hyponsis that passes for social niceties there is repression, persecution and fear. These folks make the 1936 Olympics in Berlin look like a romp at the UN . . . and guess who's paid the price of admission? We did . . . and I don't feel so good right now.

Maybe I will feel better about London - but I'm ashamed now. How do you feel?

ADDED LATER: Yeah, the title is a bit over the top even for me as is the last line but it speaks to the oppresive nature of the Chinese government. What we take for granted here in the United States is not even on the table for the people who live in China.

Comments

[Mike]

Wow! I must say that I agree with your overall sentiments, but the title is a little over the top. Now I’m seldom the one to worry about offending anyone, but ... ah ... well ... uh ... WOW!

[Davndize]

I'm no China expert, so my comments are nothing more than impressions and should taken with a pillar of salt (a grain probably wouldn't do it). But you know China went all out to make sure that Bejing put all 40 million or so of its best feet forward, to present a very vivid picture of a very modern and technologically advanced China. Anyone knows that outside of Bejing, the picture would be very different. But this is the picture of itself that China (i.e., China's leaders) WANTS to show to the world. Nothing surprising there--any country/city to host the Olympics is certainly hoping to look good in the eyes of the world. But when I looked at the featured scenes from Bejing, that is exactly what I saw . . . a modern, technological, MATERIALISTIC picture. And now I'm getting to the point where any China experts out there (or experts on post-modern communism/socialism) need to chime in. Is the Chinese government seeking to replace "religion" with "materialism" as the "opiate of the people"? Give the masses i-Phones and Blue-Tooth technology and keep them sedated? That might seem ironic for a Marxist state, to be offering the people the supposed fruits of a capitalistic/consumeristic society. But then again, maybe not, especially if you go all the way back to supposed Marxist--or even Hegelian--ideals. Old Mr. Hegel was a philosopher who had a great influence over Karl Marx, with his notion of the "material dialectic". This was in contrast to classical philosphers who had tried, in various ways, to work out philosophies based on spiritual or ethical dialectics--that is, systems that saw the world as a struggle between conflicting moral or ethical forces (good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc.). To Hegel, those guys were missing the point. The world is a material place, Hegel said, and the real dialectic is between those who have the material they need and those who don't--a struggle for the basic stuff of survival. Hegelian scholars, please excuse me for the gross over-simplification; but perhaps it serves to present a very general picture of how Marxism (with its notions of shared property, workers owning the means of production, etc.) could be developed from Hegelian philosophy. All this to say (yes, Joe Biden has nothing on me when it comes to being overly verbose) that it might actually make sense for an oppresive regime such as China's to offer up modern Bejing as the ideal, both to the world and to its own people. Do what you're told, and maybe one day you get an i-Phone (and do you really have to ask what will happen if you don't do as told?). Now, here's the really scary part . . . How different is that from what we see happening in our own country? We see powerful corporations (and the politicians they back) trying to convince the public that (to paraphrase) "what's good for big money is good for America". Politicians who seek to have us vote away our freedoms, while at the same time saying that our laws governing business and which seek to promote honest, responsible and fair trade are too restrictive (i.e., you need laws to govern you, but we don't . . . I guess some animals are more equal than others). And all this accompanied by the steady drumbeat of consumerism, always telling us to buy and consume more (Does anyone remember the movie "THX-1138"? Is anybody else chilled by the recollection that one of our government's first responses to 9-11 was to tell everyone to keep buying?). That maybe if we let big money do as it wants, while we make sure to do as we are told, we can all have an i-Phone. It can make you think (hopefully).

[BillB]

Well David, congratulations on making me look brief and concise :)

[Davndize]

I tend to do that for a lot of people.

[Mike]

I admit that I was being a little “over the top” myself when I made the “over the top” comment a few days ago. I think your comments pretty much summed up many of mine.

Until this morning. While I think that there is still a lot of truth in it, I have discovered that the deal with Tibet is not what the Dali Lama wants us to believe either. What we are hearing about Tibet is from the leader of the ruling class of Tibet that subjugated 90 percent of its people into a servitude that was essentially slavery, and possibly worse than in the US prior to the Civil War. And this was the case until the Chinese communists put an end to it and drove the DL out. I wonder if we are hearing from the 90 percent, or from the 10 percent that want their lush life back. The plight of the rest has improved considerably, no matter how bad the Chinese government may be in so many ways, even to that 90 percent when viewed by our standards.

I still agree with the overall sentiments. They were proven in Tiananmen Square, even if things have improved since. Watching those tiny gymnasts who were selected by the government and taken from their homes, sometimes as early as age 3 or 4, and trained in such a manner that they seem to show fear more than sadness when they do not perform at their best (and for that matter, at medal standard) says a mouthful.

Skeptoid #111, 7/38/2008, has a pretty balanced analysis on the Tibet issue. Neither side is pearly white and neither is entirely evil.