Good morning.
We’ll have snow today in Whitewater, with an accumulation of one to two inches, and a high of seventeen.
It was a good day in Sochi for Sage Kotsenburg, who won a snowboarding gold:
Here’s his happy, justifiably proud tweet afterward:
WOW!! I just won the Olympics!! Bringing back the first Gold here to the USA! Love seeing all the support from everyone YOU RULE!!
— sage kotsenburg (@sagekotsenburg) February 8, 2014
Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and (since his retirement from competitive chess in 2005) a human rights activist, as a fine post online about politics and sport: Putin’s Sochi and Hitler’s Berlin: The Love Affair Between Dictators and the Olympic Games. Kasparov is a powerful, succinct writer, and in this essay he nicely addresses political manipulation of sporting events, among other topics.
Significantly, Kasparov isn’t opposed to the Olympics, or even to the Olympics in Sochi, but to their politicization under Putin:
Do not mistake the epic graft in Sochi as unusual or incidental. Corruption is the overriding principle of Putin’s 14 years in power and looting the Russian treasury and the Russian people is itself the goal. For all the foolish attempts to interpret Putin’s geopolitical strategy and personal ideology, the common denominator is always whether or not an action helps him maintain the cash flow that in turn enables him and his clique to stay in power.
Of comparisons to Hitler generally – when legitimate or when overwrought, here’s Kasparov’s spot-on assessment:
I will detour for a moment because this where I often see interviewers and pundits roll their eyes. The phrase “Putin is no Hitler!” forms on their lips before the word “Berlin” is completed. It is a fascinating development in historical ignorance that nearly any mention of Hitler or the Nazis is now ritually scoffed at, from professional journalists to anonymous tweets. “Godwin’s Law,” which doesn’t even say what most wits seem to think it says, is immediately invoked, as if the slow and public evolution of a German populist politician into history’s most infamous monster is beyond rational contemplation.
Of course the evil of the Nazis is beyond comparison. Of course no one can rival the murderous fiend Hitler became in the 1940s. Of course no one expects a new world war or an attempt to emulate the Holocaust. But summarily discarding the lessons of Hitler’s political rise, how he wielded power, and how he was ignored or abetted abroad is foolish and dangerous. In 1936, even Hitler was no Hitler. He was already viewed with suspicion by many inside and outside Germany, yes, but he stood beaming in that Berlin Olympic stadium and received accolades from world leaders and stiff-armed salutes from the world’s athletes. There is no doubt this triumph on the world stage emboldened the Nazis and strengthened their ambitions.
Powerful, all of it, and well worth reading and bookmarking.
For chess players in particular, I’d recommend also Kasparov’s The Bobby Fischer Defense, a review of Frank Brady’s Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall—from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness.
Kasparov so evidently understands and respects Fischer, all the while appreciating Fischer’s later, sad decline into paranoia.