3 years ago
08/16/2016 9:47am CDT
When Brazil was awarded the games, they were riding a tremendous wave of economic expansion and were rising as the first major world power of the Americas. Since the crash in the energy market, the country has been rocked by massive corruption scandals and has an economy that is in a severe recession. Progress in reversing the massive disparities in wealth has halted and is now moving rapidly in the wrong direction. Efforts to rid favelas of drug gangs have failed miserably due to local corruption and now the drug gangs are even more dominant and many areas of the favelas are complete war zones. Then, on the cusp of the games, there was the Zika virus and the embarrassment of the sewage problem in the bay. The Olympics should have been the moment when Brazil burst onto the world stage as the great new first world nation. Instead, the olympics have just highlighted Brazil's many failures.
Brazilian fans have been pretty terrible. They have been impossible to quiet for starting guns. They cheered for competitor's deductions on the men's floor routine. They harassed Hope Solo endlessly for her Zika comments. And the jeers for LaVillanie were a new low for Olympic competition. Brazilians have collectively given up on the Olympics as being a chance to show the world that they have arrived and are instead turned on the games, wanting only to cheer for their own and f=ck the rest of the world.
