1 Boring Old Man

As a child 30 year old, I went to the 1972 Munich Olympics. At the time, I was a reluctant draftee in the Air Force, living in England where I was stationed in the early days of my marriage to a sports nut. So off we went to Munich with a fist full of tickets supplied by the Air Force. It was an event of epic proportions – Mark Spitz, the primo Arab terrorist attack, a dinner with our host family in which our host got plastered and pulled out his "bible" – Mein Kampf – and a side trip to the Bavarian Alps. It was during the Viet Nam War [the reason for my reluctant service]. During those years, I changed my medical specialty and solidified my politics for all times on the Left Side of the aisle. It was a huge coming of age for me.

Now I find myself slowly recovering from my second spinal fusion after discovering what it’s like to have my lower spinal cord turned off in early June. While I’m happy to have that behind me, lying on my back for two months has been an encounter with two things that I’d just as soon put out of my mind – fear and boredom. Back in 1972, those two weeks in Germany were intense – no boredom but lots of fear. It was a time when I realized how complicated "Germany" was – and began to understand a little bit how a lunatic like Hitler had engaged the people with his "simple solution" to Germany’s insoluable dilemma after WWI by demonizing the Left.

Watching these 2008 Beijing Olympics has brought a lot of those feelings back, as did the 1996 Atlanta Olympics when they came to our home town. Watching the Olympics has been a shared passion of ours since those early days of our adulthood. But lying in a rented hospital bed in my living room with little else to do but watch the t.v. makes these games particularly front burner. On top of that, a trip to China when they were gearing up for this show a couple of years back make it all the more compelling.

I could not believe Nixon was re-elected in 1972 [just like I could not believe that Bush was re-elected in 2004]. I had no idea that the attack on the Israeli team in 1972 was the harbinger of the the world dominating conflict in the Middle East that haunts us to this day – 36 years later. And I could not conceive that my musings on that trip about how Hitler came to power would still be in my mind at my ripe old age. But while it’s fallen out of favor to analogize the Bush Administration to the German Fascists, that analogy is still very much alive in my mind.

Thinking about all of this clarifies something for me – my big fear. Nixon tanked and we were able to elect Carter. The "right" crucified Carter. After 12 years, Clinton came along. Clinton was crucified by the "right" [though he held on longer and made himself a target]. Obama has a good chance of winning this time, but the "right" is already gearing up to crucify him.

Fascism is apparently appealing to "the right." It always has been. Look a Rush Limbaugh’s Market Share or Fox News’ ratings. Creeping Fascism scares me like nothing else under the sun. Our host in Munich all those years ago said [in his drunken state] that Hitler was wrong about the Jews. He said they weren’t the problem. "It’s the Turkish Guestworkers!" he exclamed banging his fist on the table. Xenophobia is the tool of Fascism. So we live in a country that announces "all men are created equal" and we watch the Olympiad which cries "we all are one," but the other side of the coin is always there – undermining the human experience.