I'm no expert on Brazilian affairs, but this really isn't about Brazil - every community and culture create their own scapegoats to avoid dealing with real, entrenched problems (if you're looking for an easy example: the US scapegoats party culture as a way of avoiding our dysfunctional attitudes towards drugs, alcohol, and sex).
In reality, Rio isn't a very safe place. The government had to take extraordinary measures just to bring their security up to a minimum acceptable level for an international athletic competition. They mobilized reserve military officers, cleaned out favellas, and basically cordoned off entire neighborhoods to give the Olympics clear access to the parts of the city they needed access to. It was like they created a city within the city (or, more correctly, four small cities with dedicated road and rail ways in between) to ensure that the global generalization of Rio as crime-ridden wouldn't be the story of the Olympics.
That is part of the reason why this Lochte lie is so infuriating to them - here's an actual made-up story that reinforces the stereotype. People deserve to be mad. That sucks, especially after all the work they went to. But it's a bit hypocritical to say Lochte is creating a false narrative about the safety of the games when really he's just creating a false perception about the already false narrative Brazil itself took to present a different face to the world.
If Rio was as safe a place as we're led to believe, none of those pre-Games precautions would've been necessary. Lochte, as wrong as he most certainly was/is, just presents a convenient scapegoat to avoid the larger, uncomfortable truth. The entitled American. The beauty of a scapegoat is that they're rarely 100% innocent, which makes it easier to pin all the blame on them. Before Lochte, in Brazil it was the favellas - the famous Rio slums - thus justifying the displacement of poor communities. Prior to that, the ongoing class tussle over who's more responsible for the spiraling economic inequality.
We saw the same thing with the World Cup in Brazil just two years ago - and those street protests led to huge corruption probes and the impeachment of the President. I found it ironic that an official spokeswoman this week said in a radio interview that the World Cup went off without any incidents - but I remember reading multiple first-person accounts from journalists that involved sprinting down closed streets under armed police protection while angry crowds launched homemade Molotov Cocktails at the special protection zones set up for World Cup participants, journalists, and fans.
It's a "king has no clothes" scenario - and the scapegoat provides the out.
Yes, four drunk swimmers messed up a gas station, tried to buy their way out of it and told a lie assuming their credibility would hold up and Rio was too poor to have decent video surveillance? That's not good, but it's not the makings of an international incident - as the Brazilian government and the US media would have us believe. It's a diversion - and not an unfamiliar one.
Our real problems are buried deep, and addressing them requires facing and enduring pain we'd rather just avoid. Putting all that drama, junk, and responsibility on someone else seems like a great deal. They become the villain, we excise our demons; life goes on.
Of course it doesn't, though. Because the pressure will just build up again and we'll need another outlet. One scapegoat can only survive so long, then we'll go looking for more. And more. It's as if we're addicted to denial and, at some point, there's not even enough left to get us high.
In the end, the real mistake is pinning fault on one person or a group instead of people taking a collective responsibility for the problems we've collectively created. I still use, "we," even though I'm not Brazilian and have never been there, simply because there is no limit to the scapegoating. It would be easy to oversimplify the other way - say "Rio is unsafe," and move along. I made a stupid, snide comment on Facebook about the whole thing the other day that played right into the danger stereotype in a way that just scapegoated Brazil rather than addressing the issue (part of the reason why I'm writing this longer piece - I need atonement). It's the same problem created by making Lochte just another spoiled athlete or boorish American athlete; we avoid claiming responsibility for our own severe lack of global understanding, empathy, and cameraderie, as well as our severe wealth of arrogance.
Blame someone else, I can pretend it's not my problem. I'm not an alcoholic because that other guy beats his wife every time he comes home drunk. We make "him" the villain to keep fooling ourselves into thinking we're not so bad. It's all about perspective - are we looking at the world in the easiest way for us, in ways that make us comfortable - or are we genuinely interested in tackling the real, entrenched problems that tend to bring us (all of us) down?
Gosh, personally, I'm just not sure - but I think the best course of action is to take responsibility first and dole it out later.
In the summer of 2002 a lot of things were happening in my life. A lot of things that made me feel like a grown-up, but really exemplified that I was just another stupid college kid.
I spent that summer working on campus at Eastern Nazarene College. Which means I was living in 80 year old brick dorms without air conditioning. I literally had seven box fans strategically placed around my couch. For a week or so, I snuck into the office where I worked and slept on the floor. I at nothing but hot dogs and bagged salad all summer. I grew a beard - a large, shaggy, red beard. I went on a couple quasi-dates with a crazy girl who already had a boyfriend. I lost so much weight that, coupled with the beard, it looked like I'd survived an Andean plane crash and spent two years in the woods eating grubs and berries.
The summer of 2002 was a strange summer, but beyond most of those other memories I'd be happy to forget, is the one I hope to remember for a very long time. The World Cup was played in Korea and Japan that summer, which meant most matches started at 1am or later. I convinced the night security at the college to let me into the student center to watch said games. I spent a lot of nights there.
I was 20 years old and the stars of the US Men's National Team at the 2002 World Cup just happened to be a pair of 20 year olds - Landon Donovan and DeMarcus Beasley, who'd previously taken the world by storm in a youth tournament the year before. They were surprise additions to a squad reeling from a terrible 1998 performance and even more surprising: they got big minutes.
Both players contributed mightily as the US team knocked off heavy favorite Portugal and then drew with co-hosts South Korea. They lost to Poland, but somehow managed to advance - beating Mexico - MEXICO! - in the first knock-out round and then losing to Germany in the quarterfinals because the referee refused to give a clear penalty for a handball in the box - a slight my generation will never forgive.
It was the greatest performance in the history of US soccer and it was lead by guys my age. I spent a lot of lonely nights jumping and screaming around the ENC student center. If the denim-clad misfits of 1994 launched soccer in the US - these boys cemented its position. An entire generation of us will forever be linked to those late nights in 2002.
Donovan and Beasley had a lot of ups and downs through the next decade. Donovan more ups than downs (and vice versa for Beasley). 2014 found him the all-time leading goal scorer for the US and hands down the greatest player we've ever produced. It also found Beasley surprisingly apt at left-back and reviving his career on the back line.
Beasley had done so well this year, in fact, he now seemed a lock to make the World Cup, with Donovan, the fourth time each would represent the US at the biggest sporting event in the world. Donovan was a given, after all.
Or so we thought.
Today, #USMNT coach, Jurgen Klinsmann released his final roster for Brazil - which, as it turns out, is just a preliminary roster for 2018. Landon Donovan's name is not on it.
This turns my stomach. Literally.
I can't even think about watching US World Cup matches this summer without Donovan at least on the bench. It's just not fair. I know Klinsmann is taking a young team to get them some experience before 2018. He's written off this summer in favor of future development, but that is such an un-American way of approaching things.
US Soccer deserves the chance to bid a proper farewell to Landon Donovan. We need to see him donning that ridiculous jersey and sprinting onto the pitch for a standing ovation from Sam's Army. This guy is single-handed responsible for the growth of the sport in the US over the last decade. He's born unbelievable pressure and paid a steep price.
At this point it all seems like a Zombie World Cup. Something that happens - it will have a life, or sorts - but something that's not quite there, not quite real.
I'm going on vacation to Hawaii during most of the group stages (and the US has very little hope of making it beyond the group - less now that Klinsmann has launched a grenade into his own locker room), so it was going to take work to see the US play. I'm not sure any work will be worth it.
I know. I'm delusional. I'm still holding out hope this is part of Klinsmann's master motivational plan. He'll leave Donovan at home only for Julian Green to be mysteriously "injured" during practice in Brazil and Saint Landon will have to come flying in to rescue the tournament. Then the US can ride that wave out of the group stage and who knows how high?!
There's a part of me that wants to believe, but there's another part that recognizes unemotional, German pragmatism when I see it.
I've been on the Klinsy bandwagon from the beginning - from 2006 really. I have, and I think I still do, believed in his philosophy and plan for the development of the #USMNT. I just think he downright missed the boat here. US fans aren't going to stand for this. It's a travesty, a betrayal - at least for those of us who came of age on uncomfortable couches in the wee hours of 2002.
I gave up baseball a few years back. The steroid era ruined things for me - took all the joy out of the game. I can't even describe the disconnect, really. I replaced baseball largely with soccer - the English Premier League and the US Men's National Team. The #USMNT is the only team whose games are scheduled on my calendar (I haven't missed one in over 18 months). I'm feeling the same way, right now, about that beloved squad, I feel about baseball. Emptyness. Disconnect.
I sure hope this isn't a feeling that lasts. I don't want to think one move like this could sever a really happy part of my life so quickly and completely. I'm not optimistic right now. It really is a travesty - a betrayal - at least for those of us who came of age on uncomfortable couches in the wee hours of 2002.
US Soccer needs to do something about this or they risk losing the generation they thought they had for good.
