From the last Morning Jolt of the week:
Blame It On RioBlame It On Rio
For the next two weeks, American minds will think less about politics and more about the summer Olympics, and this year’s competition may offer a really different spectacle than sports fans are used to watching. The selection of Rio de Janeiro increasingly looks like a massive, historical mistake, with the city living down to its worst expectations.
Despite all this, the official line from the International Olympic Committee is that there are no major problems, all is well, and everyone should be ready for a terrific event. When IOC Coordination Commission chairwoman Nawal El Moutawakel completed her final round of inspections and meetings, she declared, “Rio 2016 is ready to welcome the world,” adding that “the Olympians of 2016 can look forward to living in an outstanding Olympic Village and competing in absolutely stunning venues.”
On every issue from Zika to the polluted waters to security to venues, the message from the committee is that everything will be fixed in time. Either we’re about to bear witness to a miraculous improvement on several fronts simultaneously, or the International Olympic Committee is demonstrating one of the most epic exhibitions of willful blindness ever.
No, really, this is abominable:
Just days ahead of the Olympic Games the waterways of Rio de Janeiro are as filthy as ever, contaminated with raw human sewage teeming with dangerous viruses and bacteria, according to a 16-month-long study commissioned by The Associated Press.
Not only are some 1,400 athletes at risk of getting violently ill in water competitions, but the AP’s tests indicate that tourists also face potentially serious health risks on the golden beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana.
The AP’s survey of the aquatic Olympic and Paralympic venues has revealed consistent and dangerously high levels of viruses from the pollution, a major black eye on Rio’s Olympic project that has set off alarm bells among sailors, rowers and open-water swimmers.
There’s an open sewer “50 meters from the Olympic village.” The Australian team entered to find “blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring.”
As I write on National Review’s homepage today, the decision to select Rio de Janeiro represented the International Olympic Committee’s fervent belief that Brazil had largely overcome its old flaws: corruption, crime, incompetence, disorganization. Undoubtedly, Brazilian society has seen some improvements in the past few decades, but they weren’t ready to host an event on this scale, and obvious problems remained unresolved throughout the preparation process.
If Trump is a deft candidate, he will point out that the troubles at the Olympics in Brazil and the current troubles in the United States have a few shared traits. Government leaders insisted that they could pull off a transformative change if given enormous amounts of money and several years. Those leaders ridiculed the skeptics, dismissed the criticism, and kept spinning the public that everything was fine and on schedule. When the mistakes became too big to ignore, they shifted blame – and in some cases, remained in denial. Ultimately, these crises stem from a refusal to see things clearly, our leaders an adamant determination to tell lies to other people and probably to themselves as well: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” ISIS is a “jayvee team.” “The world is less violent than it has ever been.” “By almost every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, or even eight years ago.”
If you prefer quotes from Hillary, we can offer, “Libya was a different kind of calculation. And we didn’t lose a single person” or problems within the Veterans Affairs Department have “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be” or “Director Comey said my answers were truthful.”
The electorate is constantly being told that the problems aren’t really that bad, routine snafus that will be fixed quickly and easily… and then one day you’re left swimming in sewage.