If It Happened to Us.......

The Olympics are over; the fife and drum, the razzle and the dazzle, the furs and limos have moved on. For a moment the adrenalin is on pause; the recipients of shiny objects are 'basking in glory' and marketers everywhere are determining the long term value of their new commodities.
How can you tell I'm not a big fan? Medal winners make enormous amounts of money selling endorsements, hockey players make enormous amounts of money anyway, approximately one third of $50 billion (NO ONE can count that high in their lifetime) has been siphoned off in questionable fees? and still everyone went home happy.
There's the rub. Not everyone went home. The people of Russia have to pick up the tab and pick up they will....for a long, long time. Somehow, going in to the Olympics, the paying never seems as long as the coming out. Fifteen, twenty years down the road a lot of people will be sincerely pissed. Much like Ontarians with Hydro's debt reduction, or the good folk of Montreal and Expo. What about the Vancouverites? Well, there's a fair bit of money in that lovely city, you may say, but there is a fair bit of hardship in the parts of the province as well.
Not everyone went home. A certain little village has been all but destroyed. For the building of a shiny new highway and a glistening train, the people now have no local water supply. A middle aged man has lost his fig trees and can no longer sleep at night because of the noise. In Beijing, thousands were displaced so the city would look good.
But that's OK. As long as we are away from all of this, it's OK. Let other people suck up the sacrifices for the glitz that disguises itself as 'Games'.
How would you like to be in a bulldozer's path? How would you like to lose your water, your yard, your home? Please, please use your imaginations. About war most of us can do nothing, but about ego stroking, greed fueling, czar building......come on.