Once upon a time, wars ceased during the Olympic Games. Today, they are not stopping and new ones are being created. A terrorist attack has just been launched on the French railways. Only a naive person would believe that Putin's criminal regime is not involved. The call to stop the wars for the duration of the Olympics games was rejected by Russia and Syria.
Europe has been paying the price for its naive policy in recent years of trying to act democratically, making it very easy for evil to gain a foothold. The whole democratic world is in vital need of new leaders, strong personalities. Only they can effectively confront evil. This has always been the case when a world crisis has broken out and incompetent politicians have been replaced by capable ones who always set the necessary course. This cannot be expected from the rule of capital and power structures. It is estimated that there are 1-2% psychopaths among the population and up to 20% among politicians ! Whoever succumbs to power, money and blohobyt, gradually destroys himself, his surroundings and the environment where he lives. Alas, if the majority of them are in positions of responsibility in society.
It is great that we have a statue of Věra Čáslavská in Paris. Through her sporting achievements, exemplary life and indomitable character, she represented the Olympic idea in the best possible way. More about the statue in a short interview with the author David Černý.
During the opening ceremony, the organizers remembered famous athletes - they forgot about Vera Čáslavská, world-famous for her protest against the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Emil Zátopek was not forgotten. They cannot know that his character did not reach the qualities of Vera Čáslavská. The author of the statue knew that.
Let's keep our fingers crossed for France and the French, lest we see a repeat of the 1972 Munich Olympics tragedy or something much worse. JŠ
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Timothy Snyder: "One source of our disease is the drastic inequality of wealth that separates the life experiences of a very small group from everyone else. As Plato realized, this is how democracy becomes an oligarchy, the rule of the rich. When money becomes the only goal, values disappear and people begin to imitate the oligarchs. This is how we act now, when we marvel at fantasies of immortality instead of asking the olygarchs why our own lives must be shortened. By tolerating such dreaming by the richest, we create what Plato called a "community of the rich" and a "community of the poor."
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