Boycott the Olympics in 2028

A Plea to the Countries of the World

Dear Countries of the World,

Please don’t come.

Don’t march your athletes into Los Angeles in 2028 like everything is fine. Don’t dress up submission as diplomacy. Don’t tell yourself that the Olympics are above politics. We’ve seen that delusion before—in Berlin, 1936—when the world showed up to watch Hitler smile for the cameras while his goons beat dissenters in the alleys and built the first blueprints for genocide.

You knew who he was. You knew what he was doing. And you came anyway. For peace. For tradition. For the athletes. For the sponsors.

And he used you.

He used your flags, your athletes, your presence to sell the lie that Nazi Germany was strong and sophisticated and civilized. The trains to Dachau were already running. The Nuremberg Laws were already in place. The terror was already real. But the international community showed up to clap politely, pose for photos, and pretend they didn’t smell the smoke.

Now here we are. Different year. Different continent. Same mistake.

Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. He’s something much stupider and somehow more exhausting: a game show host with a God complex and the nuclear codes. But he shares one crucial instinct—he knows how to use a stage. He knows how to turn the Olympics into a mirror. You show up, and he sees proof that the world still respects him. You attend, and he says it means he was right all along. You stand under his spotlight, and he tells his followers that even the critics came crawling.

Don’t feed the delusion.

He doesn’t deserve your silence. He doesn’t deserve your athletes. He doesn’t deserve your presence on his turf while he rants about “vermin,” brags about deportations, mocks foreign leaders, and drapes himself in Olympic iconography like a wannabe emperor made of spray tan and debt.

You already know what this will look like. The propaganda machine is warming up. The speeches will be unhinged. The coverage will be fawning. The visa system will mysteriously malfunction for certain countries. The press credentials will be denied. The athletes who speak up will be smeared. And Trump will stand in the center of it all, bloated with triumph, convinced that history has forgiven him because you gave him a front-row seat.

Don’t be the sequel to Berlin. Don’t be the ones who came anyway.

Refuse to show up. Refuse to be his backdrop. Refuse to let your presence be twisted into another campaign poster for tyranny.

You owe your people more than gold medals. You owe them memory. You owe them clarity. And right now, you owe them a very loud, very public no.

Don’t let 2028 be the year we proved we learned nothing.

Sincerely,
Closer to the Edge

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