No, didn’t see your post. I admit to knowing nothing about it, so I don’t know how it turned out. I presume you don’t think I am sticking up for the Brazilian government, because I am not, if you have read my posts.
I am castigating the swimmer for putting himself in that situation. And just to be clear, I don’t enjoy his misfortune.
This short anecdote illustrates (for me) the gulf of understanding we as Americans have for the danger and corruption of many foreign countries...I know this is a little on the lighter side, but it does show the point:
My wife and I went to Disney World back in the Nineties, and we only had one day to do it, so we showed up before the lot opened, and were nearly the last people out when it closed. In the parking lot, as we approached our car, we saw three late teenage girls huddled together. It was clear something was wrong, so we walked over and saw they were nearly in tears. They had been left behind by their bus. We asked where they were staying, and offered to give them a ride to the motel, which wasn’t that far from us.
As we exited the parking lot, we encountered sawhorses with signs detouring traffic out of the lot...there were so many of them, it felt like we were being fed into a labyrinth.
I made a joking comment about how some carjackers had probably put them up to funnel all the cars to a location where the cars could be easily taken, and when I said it, I heard a gasp, and saw one of the girl in the rearview mirror cross herself and begin praying.
She was an exchange student from Columbia, and she was nearly hysterical (literally). I calmed her down and assured her I was only trying to make a joke, and after some conversation, she said people claiming to be police did that in Columbia all the time, and people were kidnapped, tortured, and killed at these “detours”. I felt awful, I hadn’t even thought of that, even though in conversation leading up to it, she mentioned she was from Columbia.
The point of this story is, the people she referred to in Columbia might have been thieves, but they might have been police. Once you leave and go to those places, how would you know? You have to conduct yourselves at all times to keep from having to make that distinction.
Why do you know about Lochte tearing a cheap, possibly already damaged, poster down, but you don’t know whether a member of the official Olympic staff lived or died after being shot in the head? Is Lochte’s act of petty vandalism more serious than a human being’s life?