Simply looking at the three words, one is unlikely to immediately see the common factor that underlie the three concepts represented by the words. Yet, I my own underhanded way, I can come up with fewer other words that so concisely represent the power show an international level, national level for the first two words. When you get food, it touches the individual, the national and the international level.
The presidential elections in the U.S will have very serious consequences for the majority of the world. It is for this reason that the elections are followed by people from around the world. There are very logical reasons for that fact as America has military bases all across the world. It is also a nuclear power and that has serious implications for the whole globe. The olympics, however take place every four years and have a different type of power dynamics but those dynamics are felt by the individual countries and not the whole world. I am quite ambivalent about the whole concept of Olympics and other games. I wonder why it is so easy to reward the fastest athlete but yet we are always stuck with the best of two evils in the real world politics. It's like an accountant who does a great job with monopoly money but a terrible job with real money
Jamaica’s win of the gold in 100m dash, affects few globally. But it does affect the island which spends borrowed money to send it’s athletes to the international games. Many social services have to be suspended for the team to travel abroad for the games. Finally, food is both personal, national and international. Whatever choices that a country makes will affect the individual persons of those countries, weather poor or rich, then affect the international community depending of the severity of the food issues. If you take the potato famine in Ireland, few would have suspected that it would cause such a massive migration of Irish people to the United..
Wealthy and economically challenged countries will meet on uneven ground and the winners will be established an open and transparent way. What a wonderful affair? All the nations of the world come together once every four years and without much corruption, save for some doping issues, the strongest person who lifts the most weight will take home the medal for weight lifting. The person who will throw the javelin the furthest will take the gold medal home, and so on. Each country that wins a medal will fly its national flag and it’s national anthem will be played out loud and the players from each country will cheer faithfully for their respective players representing their countries. Yet when it comes to power the true players and brokers are always shrouded in mystery. The powerless get 1 medals plated with gold every 4 or 5 years. So many of those who travel overseas on money borrowed from the owners of gold go back home empty handed and are welcomed with thunderous applause.
The medal wins the champion a little money and fame but the majority of the people get nothing. The owners of power, who also own the real gold, have no use for gold-plated medals. The owners of gold will make money either way from financing all the players from poor countries which borrow money to cover their budgets. The powerful don't gamble in such cases, they get paid weather they win any medals or lose. Either way you look at it, impoverished countries loose with medals or without. The winners from those weaker countries who win certain categories later earn contract deals that pay them to help sell apparels and shoes for countries they were competing against. In other words, they advance the economic development of the same countries whose players lost in the olympics.
Since these holders of the gold plated medals are heroes in their own countries, the brands they advertise gain popularity even in their own countries. That means that for anyone of the local people trying to get in to the apparel industry, it will be significantly more difficult to navigate a market where even the locals are oriented towards outside products. It makes all the difference if used apparel are allowed in those markets from the powerful countries. The economic losses from such an arrangement can never equal to the few dollars that one champion is awarded by the international companies. That is partly how impoverished countries stay poor. I am not sure that the impoverished countries are actually getting any value for our money and time. Give me power any day and keep your cheap fake medals.
Oh, I might take the medal if it comes with a long enough rope to pull the blinds from those of us in the quagmire of thinking that politics is what happens every two and four years. We vote every day with our time, attention and especially food. Elections are like diplomas, it’s a show of what we have been doing for a particular period.
The powerless show up for graduation just to find out that their names are not list of graduates. In the end, all their hard work mostly benefits the spectators from the powerful countries, whether they won the medals or not.
If we want justice let us vote for real gold and not the lesser of two evils as we are told during every elections. If it is an injustice to issue diplomas to the spectators and not the graduating students, then voting for anything that is less than one's interest is a crime.
None, except American citizens can vote in the presidential elections, even fewer will ever make it to the olympics to compete or even to watch. But all of us eat, that is where we all have some control. The good news is that how we eat on an individual level has a lot of impact of the whole world in terms of health, justice. and the environment. Eating is the only game where all those who eat sustainably get real gold medals for themselves and for us all. The final word from the jury is that when a literate eater wins, national healthcare wins and humanity’s wellbeing wins globally.