Nationalism in sports and games
Zalatrix's thread about chess as an olympic event got me thinking about nationalism in sports and games, in general.
The most watched chess match in history was Fisher versus Spasky in 1972.
The match was going to show the Russians they weren't all that. An American hero was going to wipe that smug look off Ivan's face.
Bobby Fisher was a fantastic chess player. He was also a dreadful person, and ended up as a reclusive devotee of exotic anti-semitic theories, and had all his fillings removed to stop the CIA from broadcasting into his head, or some such.
Did the fact that Spasky had a better life, overall, mean the Soviet system was better? No. It means that narcissism and paranoid schizophrenia makes for a sad life.
Was Fisher a sensible symbol of American greatness? Hard to see how... He did re-examine "romantic" king's pawn openings, ostensibly inspired by early American chess genius Paul Morphy, but chess is, in general, not our thing.
It was a big Cold War moment when Van Cliburn won the big Russian piano competition in the early 1960s, but somehow concert piano did not remain emblematic of American greatness any more than chess did after Fisher.
The idea that an individual's performance redounds to the credit of a way of life, a political theory, a national genetic pool is, of course, poisonous.
Nationalism is poisonous.
I do not hate the Olympics. The Olympics is fine.
But the idea that performance in international sporting competition has anything to do with the relative merits of nations is pretty messed up.
The number of medals a nation wins is a function of:
1) Population
2) Overall sporting culture
3) Financial support of sporting culture in general, and olympic competition in specific
The awesome achievements of Olympic athletes are best viewed as personal accomplishments.
