Hypocrisy Nation
President Biden chimed in Saturday: “Everybody knows of the rules going in. Whether they should remain the rules is a different issue, but the rules are the rules. ... I was really proud of the way she responded.”
Under WADA’s policies, substances are placed on the prohibited list if they meet two of three conditions: They have the potential or proven ability to enhance performance, they have the potential to cause harm to an athlete, or their use is considered against the spirit of sport.
- The doping rules that cost Sha’Carri Richardson have a debated, political history
By JM Hamilton (7-10-2021)
The suspension of Sha’Carri Richardson – a world class American athlete - from the pending Tokyo Olympic games - really burned some nerve endings for this writer.
For me the story is personal, for reasons I will not share this week, but on an entirely different level: the story speaks to the rank hypocrisy we see every day in the United States, from our courts, our Congress, our government… right into the boardrooms and C-suites, which are loaded with murderers. We see it globally as well, with billionaires, oligarchy, and Saudi princes.
At a time that the nation finds it worthy to persecute a star athlete for taking a relatively benign, but federally banned substance, it’s simply amazing that America turns a blind eye to the rank hypocrisy surrounding the criminal elite.
What rank hypocrisy are you writing about JM?
Well, I’m so very glad you asked.
This week, fifteen states’ attorneys general signed on to a deal that would allow the Sacklers, owners of the infamous Perdue Pharma, to basically walk away from murdering hundreds of thousands of Americans with their billions safely left in their possession. The Sacklers designed synthetic heroin, pushed it on doctors and the public as a less addictive pain killer alternative, and, also, made money on the rebound, by selling drugs to wean addicts off Purdue Pharma’s addictive opioid products. International drug dealers have a new patron saint, named Sackler.
The American West has been ablaze, as has Western Canada, thanks to the climate crisis and Big Oil & Gas. Exxon, et al., of course, knew of the hell that they were unleashing upon the earth, for decades, and covered it up. As a result of the global heat wave & climate change, hundreds will die, and thousands already have. Moreover, neighborhoods surrounding oil refineries and operations have long been known as cancer communities, with significantly higher rates of preventable disease & illness. More recently, an Exxon lobbyist was recorded as admitting that, to present a cleaner image, Exxon supported a carbon tax because – the US congress is so entirely corrupt & owned – that a carbon tax would never become law.
Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of endless war, died recently. The flames of hell are dancing merrily. Mr. Rumsfeld played a considerable role, during the Bush Administration, in destroying the sovereign nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The WMD and Al Qaeda claims, used to justify invading Iraq, of course, were all great works of fiction. The Iraqi nation was destroyed, tens of thousands of civilians were killed; and conveniently enough, Big Oil & Gas as well as military defense contractor stocks soared. And Rumsfeld’s epitaph, if there was any justice in this world, would read: Mass Murderer.
And speaking of Big Oil, seems to be a theme, the Saudi Prince, who ordered Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, killed… well, it turns out that members of his hit squad were trained by the United States.
But these are trifling things: Saudi princes getting away with murdering journalists; C-suites and boardrooms selling drugs and highly addictive synthetic heroin; Big Oil and Gas destroying the planet; a Wall Street that tells Americans they can’t divest of these criminal enterprises; and an entirely corrupt, and complicit, US congress that sits on their hands and obstructs positive change.
After all, the US has far more important things to do, like persecuting a world class athlete, who just happens to be black. Not unlike the persecution of blacks throughout American history, via: slavery, indentured servitude (see sharecropper); Jim Crow; systemic racism embedded in the US economy; the criminalization of cannabis usage; the resulting ‘law & order’ politics; the GOP’s racist Southern Strategy; and lest we forget, mass incarceration (a profit center for the private prison industrial complex and a boon for American lawyers).
Isn’t it all so very special, malignantly evil, wrong, and … quintessentially, American?
So what to do about Ms. Richardson? The FT reported, yesterday, that the Biden Administration has taken a personal interest, and plans on discussing the circumstances surrounding Ms. Richardson’s ban from the pending games with the World Anti-Doping Agency (yet another, opaque supranational body, directly and indirectly controlled by commercial interests and sponsors?)
But let’s cut to the chase, shall we? What really should be done? Not necessarily in this order: but perhaps the US Olympic Committee, and its subsidiary, the US Anti-Doping Agency, should get down on bended knee and beg Ms. Richardson to appear in the Tokyo Olympics. These organizations should also provide a written statement to the effect that it was wrong to make Ms. Richardson apologize for her cannabis usage, and the matter is now considered closed, except to make sure it never happens again. The US Senate should, immediately, vote, and pass into law, cannabis legalization.
And above all, whether the IOC or the World Anti-Doping Agency are on board or not, Ms. Richardson should appear in these Tokyo Olympic games and compete. Ms. Richardson – in Tokyo - should be presented for whom and what she truly is: An undisputed American champion. Such a move is, likely, a political and commercial winner as well.
This would be a tremendous start in the United States’ rehabilitation, and a pivot away from the nation’s, and its elite’s, recidivism concerning endless hypocrisy.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2021
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