Tom de Boor’s Post

The latest from the Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, with art by yours truly :)

The latest from the Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, with art by yours truly (and DALL-E 3) :)

The latest from the Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, with art by yours truly and my understudy, DALL-E 3 :) https://lnkd.in/ehRJu3eX

The latest from the Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, with art by yours truly :)

The latest from the Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, with art by yours truly :)

The latest from the Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, with art by yours truly :) https://lnkd.in/eKGWsmRY

THE REAL MEDAL COUNT, DAY 8 When they called this weekend a gold rush, they weren't kidding--unless you were an autocracy. Yesterday democracy racked up *164* medals--that's nearly 2.5 times more than any previous day in the Games--while holding the autocrats to single digits in every category, producing a result that looked like the scores of an entire SEC or Big 10 non-conference football slate: 54-5, 50-9, 60-1. When you look at the overall results to date, with the way democrats are devouring dictators, it looks like pretty soon we're going to need a bigger screen. The overall proportion of medals won by democracies, already an outrageous 82.8%, somehow climbed even higher, to *84.8%,* compared to 79.1% at this stage of the Tokyo Games. Things get better with democracy. Meanwhile, even as it starts to look like the world's top democracy will be climbing the Democracy Index soon, the US nearly quintupled China in medals on the day, including doubling the Chinese in gold (that's gotta hurt). I never saw more luxury cars in my life than on the streets of Yaounde, Cameroon, and in both the autocracy and Chinese totals, you can see the costs of a top-heavy elitism that far exceeds anything they accuse the West of: on a day on which 60 bronze medals were awarded, the autocrats claimed *one.* One. And that's where the US ran away from China and put the game away, 15-0. Overall, as impressive as democracies' overperformance vs. 2020(21) has been, America's vs. China has been even more so. By Day 8 of those Games, the US had claimed 54% (54.3) of the medals won by the two nations; this year that number is up to nearly 66% (65.9). There are a bunch of largely obscure medals to be awarded going forward that will likely go to the Chinese, but I'd much rather be us than them at this point in the competition. Still, for me, as someone who lived in Chicago's Ukrainian Village for a decade and got fully into the culture along with the rest of our family (we were there during the Orange Revolution), the most heartwarming story of the day didn't involve our country directly. It was the result of the women's team sabre competition in fencing, won by the Ukrainians, which seems symbolically so appropriate given what our brave brothers and sisters in democracy have had to face and accomplish over the last two-plus years and counting. Olga Kharlan, Alina Komashchuk, Olena Kravatska, and Yuliia Bakastova, I hope you know you are in a lot of hearts today, and not just back home in your own country. PS If you've never seen a real medal count before, the first comment below will tell you everything you need to know to understand how and why it differs from what you see in the MSM.

THE REAL MEDAL COUNT, DAY 5 Autocrats recovered a little from yesterday's debacle--even North Korea chipped in with a pair of synchronized diving medals (yeah, I can see where autocracies would have an advantage in events that require absolute synchrony--so far they've been golden in those), but democracies just kept rolling along, widening the gap. China inched closer to the US by 2, but that gain was wiped out when we discovered we had missed counting several day 3 swimming events (is AI doing the results screens on Google? Seems so--there's a distinct lack of intuition in a number of aspects of the display--would love to know why a machine likes them better), 1 US silver, 3 US bronzes, and 2 Chinese silvers. They've been added to the total medal count. PS We're far enough into this now where we can start making some Games over Games comparisons. We can't do this by totals, because unless AI is hiding even more events from us than we think, it looks like Tokyo was more front-loaded than Paris, but we can make some percentage comparisons, and so far it looks good for the good guys: * In 2020, as of Day 5, of the medals won by the US or China, the US had won 60% (59.6) of them; as of Day 5 in Paris, we're winning 64% of those on the nose. * In 2020, as of Day 5, democracies had won 78% (78.3) of all the medals; as of Day 5 in Paris, the better form of government had captured 83% (82.6) of all those awarded. Autocracy may be on the march, but democracy is running circles around it. And btw, is anyone else wondering whether the big prisoner swap today had anything to do with Russia's ban from the games (eg a distraction from this for Putin and a bid for attention, too)? These events have traditionally been much bigger deals for dictators than we, the people... PPS If this is your first time seeing the Real Medal Count, the first comment below explains how and why our counts differ from the MSMs.

THE REAL MEDAL COUNT, DAY 3 Yesterday was a great day to be a democracy, as they/we ran Division 1 vs Division 3 scores on the autocracies and hybrid regimes in all three categories, going 1-2-3 in event after event. For the US vs China, not so much, as Xi's Xecutioners crept closer by a medal and our defending champion women's volleyball team fell to the Chinese as well, albeit on a tiebreak, so they only got 2 points to our 1 in group play. Thank God for skateboarding, or it could have been worse. If this is your first time xperiencing the Real Medal Count, there's a full description in the first comment below.

With the Olympics underway, it's past time for the Real Medal Count to begin. We first compiled the RMC for Tokyo 2020(21), then Beijing 2022. The ideas behind it are: (1) Since at least 1936, the Games have not just been an athletic competition, but a political one, too; specifically a contest between two systems of government: democracy and autocracy. (2) A medal count should count ALL the medals. Nations should be ranked by the total number of medals won, not just on how many golds they can come up with. Winning teams don't just get one medal to share; every player on a medaling team gets one—so count ALL the medals! (3) Counting all the medals is especially important in a political context. Authoritarians represent their system is better because they can better organize the people--and get the most out of *all* the people--to get things done. If this is true, the talent of their teams should be deeper, and they should be crushing those messy, chaotic, decadent democracies in team sports. Are they? Well, they weren't and didn't in Tokyo or Beijing, but maybe this year the Great Pumpkin will come to their patch. To find out, we actually true up two counts: one matching up the most powerful democracy against the top autocracy (US vs China), and the other pitting all democracies against all autocracies (details on how we decide which countries are in which category are in comments below). The combined results of the first two days are below--we'll be posting updates every day until the Games are over, at which point we'll be combining and comparing the totals with the previous two competitions. Enjoy :)