Don't let the Olympics blind us
The Chinese regime is evil
I may be in the minority here, but I’ve always been a big fan of the Olympics. Some of my great childhood memories involve staying home sick from school (it was legit, I wasn’t faking) and watching the winter Olympics during the day with mom. It would inspire me to the point that my brother and I would ask for Olympic computer games like World Games or Winter Games for the IBM PC Jr that we had at home. I may never star in the Biathlon in real life, but I will own that video record forever, baby.
What’s funny is that you couldn’t pay me to watch slalom skiing, or luging, or even hockey in any other context. But when it’s the Olympics, country against country, I’m totally in. Even into my early high school years I remember watching Ray LeBlanc as goalie for the U.S. Olympic hockey team save pretty much every shot on goal. It was so great.
The same is true for the summer Olympics, of course. Even though there’s usually more to do outside the house during the summer, I always make Jenny and the kids suffer through watching swimming, diving, water polo, all of it. Again, outside of the Olympics, I’d never watch any of that on TV, but there’s something about the international competition that I just love.
So, you’d think that the start of the Winter Olympic Games this coming week would have me excited, but this time it’s just different. While I certainly don’t feel like it’s bad to support our athletes who have sacrificed their lives to achieve greatness in their sport, there’s something that feels dirty about supporting what amounts to an international, worldwide commitment to whistling past the graveyard of suffering Muslim people in China, just to celebrate fun athletic competitions.
The entire civilized world knows exactly what is happening in China. We know the Uyghur population is suffering through a modern-day Holocaust, as the barbaric communist regime of China rounds them up, loads them on trains, and sends them to labor death camps. Just click on this Twitter thread to see the horror that we know is occurring.
This isn’t Hitler-hyperbole that is so common these days – where we accuse anyone we disagree with politically of being “literally Hitler.” This isn’t left-wing-activist-posing-as-objective-journalist Jim Acosta of CNN outrageously and stupidly asserting that the state of Virginia, now under a Republican governor, is operating under a “Soviet-style police state.”
No, this is the real deal. This is a brutal, godless regime that feels no moral accountability to its people that is brazenly committing genocide and daring the world to do anything about it. Actually, they are daring the world to even publicly acknowledge that it’s happening. And so far, staggeringly few are; and those that do, are admitting they don’t really care. Here’s the wealthy billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya who, among other things, owns part of the Golden State Warrior NBA team:
In the U.S. history textbook I use in class, it discusses how so many people around the world grieved over how long they let Hitler’s Holocaust of Jews persist before doing anything about it. Both U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill publicly lamented allowing Soviet dictator Stalin to discourage any allied effort to liberate the death camps once they were discovered. It makes me wonder how long until our history books will be saying the same thing about what Xi Jinping is doing in his Holocaust of Uyghurs.
That’s what makes me feel more than a little dirty at the thought of tuning into the coming Beijing Games. As much as I enjoy them, as much as I want to support and cheer for the Americans who have worked their entire lives for this moment, as much as I want to champion the Christian athletes from around the world bringing glory to God in their triumphs, it makes me feel like I’m participating in some public denial of the unfolding Chinese evil.
Of course, this is not to even mention the ongoing persecution of the underground Christian church in China, or the absurd violation of basic conscience rights and civil liberties that occur in that country regularly. If CNN’s Jim Acosta really wants to bemoan a “police state,” I would advise he stop looking at conservative U.S. governors and instead look at things like this:
In Monday’s Memo I expressed my sincere prayer that the world would be spared yet another war that seems to be shaping up in both Ukraine and potentially Taiwan. I certainly don’t mean to seem self-contradictory by expressing my belief that we have an obligation to speak out on behalf of the abused and against the abusers. And on the world stage, it’s hard to pinpoint a more obvious, more aggressive, more hostile abuser of humanity than the Chinese.
ICYMI…
There’s now a vacant Supreme Court opening and our president has announced his intention to engage in race and sex discrimination while naming a replacement. It’s gross, so I made this video in response:
Also, here are a couple columns I wrote this week dealing with transgenderism and a shocking, but revealing moment in Oklahoma we should all pay attention to:
In general I would agree about supporting our athletes who have worked so hard to get where they are; but this year I really could have wished that many of them would have boycotted the Olympics, VOCALLY!
I also would add that the world allowed Berlin to host a summer olympics in 1936 while Hitler was in power setting up his plans for terror. The Holocaust was documented so that this would never happen again. It is happening again but so many go by the mantra, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." I just hope that the world comes to its senses before it is too late.