Citius, altius, moral imperit-us

 I love the Winter Olympics.

I love the downhill and the giant slalom and Jean-Claude Killy-Klammer falling down an Alp in a giant cartoon snowball with skis and poles sticking out of it. I love short-track speedskating, aka NASCAR On Ice. I love the bobsled and luge and skeleton and curling's bizarre fascination, and that one guy who used to fall off the ski jump at the beginning of every episode of ABC's Wide World of Sports.

Shoot. I can even tolerate figure skating, despite its goofy, inexplicable scoring and sequin overload.

So it was with some dismay and a few flashbacks that I opened up ESPN's website the other day to read that President Biden is huddling with allies of the United States to figure out a game plan for the 2022 Beijing Winter Games. And by "game plan," I mean "How do we hold China's feet to the fire for its deplorable human rights record?"

Among the options: A boycott.

And here is where the flashbacks come in.

Talk of an Olympic boycott, see, always takes me back to 1980, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan and then-President Carter decided the United States would not be participating in the Summer Games in Moscow that year. Much debate ensued.

Some people wondered about the fairness of a decision that would likely not stop anything happening in Afghanistan, but deprive hundreds of Americans who'd trained for years and sacrificed both physically and financially. In a nation founded on the concept of individual liberty, should the moral imperative of the whole eclipse an individual's historic right to pursue happiness?

I concluded at the time it should not, given that any boycott would be primarily symbolic. I was younger then, of course, and so was the world. The Berlin Wall had not yet come down, the towers still stood and America had not yet elected a black president. And so the weight of symbolism was not yet as apparent.

This time around?

It's different. Unlike the old Soviet Union, China's a business partner, albeit a contentious one. It's also an adversary, and increasingly more than that. The global economy, and the global village knit together by millennial technology, has complicated the once black-and-white dynamic of Us vs. Them.

On the other hand, symbolism still has its uses. And China's human rights record, particularly in regards to Hong Kong, is not something whose whitewashing the United States nor its allies should eagerly abet.

And if our athletes march into Beijing under the Olympic rings and the Olympic torch, and ski and skate and play hockey and make nice under the American flag, that is precisely what they'd be doing. Or so the rationale goes.

On the other hand, politics and what-not.

People are all wrathy these days about politics and sports, and how they shouldn't mix and blah-blah-blah. Currently those of a certain persuasion are mad at Major League Baseball for pulling the All-Star Game out of Georgia, on account of MLB isn't down with the local voter suppression initiatives. They say sports should stay out of politics, and then inject politics into it themselves by threatening to boycott baseball over the MLB's decision.

They don't really want sports out of politics, see. They want sports out of their politics -- unless of course the sports agree with their politics.

Or maybe you think all those giant American flags and military flyovers and Salutes to the Troops at sporting events aren't political statements themselves. 

That's different, of course, because they're political statements of which those of a certain persuasion approve. And in any case, sports and politics have always been part of the same weave, from the moment William Howard Taft became the first President of the United States to toss out the first pitch on Opening Day.

That begat the National Anthem, which begat Hitler using the '36 Olympics to glorify the Third Reich, which begat John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising black-gloved fists into the Mexico City night. And the political undertones of Fischer-vs.-Spassky, U.S.-Soviet medal counts, the Miracle On Ice and the dueling boycotts of Moscow and Los Angeles in 1980 and '84.

So: Boycott or no?

I don't know. It's not 1980 anymore, and in the intervening years we invaded Afghanistan and began killing Afghans ourselves. So I sympathize with the idea of a boycott, but I also understand how moral imperatives can come back to bite you.

I wish I was as sure about it as I was when I was 25, in other words. But I'm 66 now, and surety doesn't come as readily these days.

Stupid time.