Olympic Arms

I can openly admit it. I was not necessarily excited about the Olympics coming to London. I now realise that I had fallen prey to the scaremongering of “traffic will eat you up” by authorities, friends, and the smooth voice of Boris Johnson on the bus. On a side note: every person on the bus giggles when he introduces himself as “This is the Mayor of London.” Perhaps he just LOVES his job more than his name. And that’s why I will now introduce myself as “Hello. This is the journalist.”

Anyway – It seems clear now that warnings were exaggerated. So exaggerated in fact that Londoners have stopped going out and retail figures have started to drop. So yes, the Olympics have actually hit the retail economy – negatively.

Then again, even if one was to ignore the traffic warnings, the fact that the army is controlling the security around the Olympic venues has heightened terrorism fears among an already paranoid population.

Now, I fully understand the need for security and I’m not saying it simply should be scrapped. But I am willing to argue that being greeted by soldiers in uniform when going to watch an athletic contest must be increasing fear, not decreasing it. In a similar sense is it understandable that residents of a building with a military rocket launcher on top might be uncomfortable with that idea.

But the point where my excitement about the Olympics kicked into full gear, and the point when I truly questioned our fascination with the armed forces, was at the opening ceremony.

Up until that point I had been happily ignorant of the Olympics. But seeing the excitement among the population to watch the Opening Ceremony made me realise I was about to witness something pretty extraordinary also. Despite it being impossible to understand for my friends who had no knowledge of British history, it was beautifully choreographed and perfectly executed. I really was impressed with its artistic qualities.

And not to mention the fact that thanks to Danny Boyle, we now have the momentous instance of Her Majesty displaying her sense of humour tattooed in our heads as she appeared alongside her favourite secret agent, 007. And jumped out of a helicopter. I have been asked if that was really her.

My one and only problem with the ceremony relates back to our fascination with arms. Or rather our fascination with extreme security paranoia. If the Olympic flag represents peace as claimed in the speech by IOC President Jacques Rogge, why do members of the military hoist it up? One could argue that they are here to ensure our safety and security. But to me, at the end of the day it represents a flaw in our way of thinking: that our security can only be established by spending massive amounts of money on the use of deadly force.

The incident at the Batman premiere in the USA and the subsequent jump in arms sales should be enough to show this method of thinking simply does not work. Yet we have instead linked our misguided perception of guns to peace.