Before I get into why the upcoming Chinese Winter Games are one of the few things I’ve ever advocated for boycotting, I should disclose that even under the best of circumstances I’m no fan of the Olympics. I find the jingoism and manufactured drama of the medal counts nothing as much as tiring.

You can have it. But for me, no thanks. Who gives a hoot where a great athlete comes from? Athletic greatness is an attribute of individual humans, not an indication of national character.

There’s all of that and the fact that the IOC is a lot like the NCAA when it comes to blatant hypocrisy in messaging and outright shame in the exploitation of athletes. The IOC is richer than Croesus, but that doesn’t stop them from squeezing athletes and host cities, at every opportunity, to enrich themselves.

All of that being said, though I’ve often ignored the Olympics because the juice just wasn’t, for me, worth the squeeze, this is the first time I’m agitating for a boycott. If ever there was a case for boycotting an Olympics on account of demonstrably poor behavior from the host nation, in the here and now, it’s China in 2022.

At this point it’s necessary to issue a disclaimer that’s necessary because critics whose stock in trade is the ad hominem attack will jump all over this as an anti-Asian screed. It is not.

I believe that the Chinese people are just like people everywhere else. Mostly the Chinese go to work, worry about family and friends, struggle to make ends meet, have children, raise them the best that they can, then grow old and die just as they are figuring things out. They harvest ephemeral joys and sorrows from the same dust as everyone else.

As a society, the Chinese embody hard work and invention. Their culture is old and very rich. I respect the Chinese people. Humanity is better off for having them in the mix.

My beef is with the Chinese communist government. I don’t think that it’s any stretch at all to claim that they are currently one of the worst actors among leading nations on the international stage.

The Chinese government has, for most of this century, been one of the world’s worst culprits when it comes to copyright infringement and other intellectual property theft. The Chinese government is a ruthless trade and currency manipulator. Their record on human rights occupies whatever is below abysmal. The Chinese government has aggressively countered the tide of open and free societies by imposing feudal forms of oppression on their own population. Their pompous militarization and saber-rattling are a threat to world peace and stability.

Add to all of that the fact that the current COVID pandemic, which has killed millions (and will kill more in the fullness of time), without question, originated in China. The only question is how.

Despite the fact that there are thousands of wet markets all over China, including many much closer to the populations of bats that harbor coronaviruses than the one in Wuhan, the particular coronavirus behind the COVID pandemic is said to have been miraculously conceived in the one wet market that happens to be a few miles from a particular BSL-4 (maximum bio-security) lab; one that studied coronaviruses, one that very likely engaged in what most would consider “gain of function” research on coronaviruses, one with well-documented lapses in bio-security protocols.

To top it all off, this week the Chinese government actually issued a statement threatening foreign athletes with punishment for speech that violates Chinese law.

So you are damned right I’ll be ignoring the Olympics — and I invite you to join me. If you want to put your finger in the eye of a government that sanctions genocide against ethnic minorities, that makes critics vanish, that steals from you, that unleashed a worldwide pandemic and that is flirting with precipitating an equally disastrous worldwide economic disaster, make sure that the upcoming Olympics do not deliver you to its sponsors and advertisers.

Be better than than the NBA, the IOC and others who’ve cowed to the Chinese government because they are getting rich in the process. Foil the Olympics sponsors who are enriching various Communist Party coffers with money and prestige.

Tell those chuckle-heads to bugger off in the way that will bother them the most — low TV ratings.