As the summer progresses toward July 23, there is no good news, only optimism and warnings as Japan dreads 10s of thousands of invaders descending on Tokyo in what seems like all intent and purposes like a hostile invasion.

The only stories one reads in Japan about the Olympics themselves are those complaining about it, and those defending it, saying it “won’t be that bad,” and regardless of the human cost, “we can’t afford to lose it.”

All of the external bullshit once considered necessary newsworthy components, Japan’s 144-day maniacal revisioning of Nazi-Germany’s Olympic torch relay, the big events, the celebrations? Endless upbeat stories about Japan’s athletes? All that news has disappeared.

If you don’t look at the Tokyo Olympic homepage, you wouldn’t know the torch relay is still going on. News outlets have gotten bored with it, only doing stories when towns, cities and prefectures tell the Olympic organizers they don’t want it on their doorstep.

This week President Joe Biden endorsed Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s plan for a safe Olympics. That plan can be summarized as follows: 1) Have the Olympics. 2) Say they’re going to be safe, despite the fact that only a tiny fraction of Japanese residents have been vaccinated. 3) Deal with the consequences afterward.

I doubt the president’s staff actually looked into the situation, because really endorsing it would be like putting a Good Housekeeping seal for cleanliness on a prison’s gas chamber.

Until February, when there were questions about whether Tokyo would actually hold the Olympics and not close its borders to Olympians, the International Olympic Committee was working overtime to find a safe way to hold them and was actually doing research to develop best practices. But by April, the actionable plans began to be ridiculed as inadequate by epidemiologists and FINA, the international aquatics federation, which wanted to pull all its final Olympic qualifiers out of Tokyo.

As planning progressed, the ability of Japan to hold safe sporting events with crowds was touted as part of the evidence that the games could be done the right way.

While shouting to everyone that will listen that the games will be safe, IOC President Thomas Bach has twice put off scheduled trips to Japan because, well, it’s not safe. “No corners will be cut,” he said as the IOC has now decided that corners can safely be cut because Japan won’t back out.

In parts of Japan this weekend, baseball games were once more held behind closed doors, because well, it has been considered the best practice. But although organizers have technically not ruled out holding events behind closed doors, Suga has reportedly made up his mind that fans will be in the stands.

“The Olympics will be held even if Tokyo is under a state of emergency,” Australian IOC member John Coates said.

It’s like watching “A Bridge Too Far” over and over on a loop. We keep seeing the same blind optimism and foreshadowing over and over until nothing is news anymore. This movie, of course, would be named “Operation Olympic,” which was also the name of the planned first phase of a U.S.-led invasion of southern Kyushu 76 years ago.

Unfortunately for this year, the Japanese government shows no sign of surrendering, of abandoning this monumental disaster, and instead is committed to fighting on, regardless of the cost in human lives.

The best thing that can be said for it is this year’s late summer disaster movie is that there is no guarantee it will in fact be a disaster.

This result just in, the residents and citizens of Japan have been defeated by the national Olympic team.

The victory, not by athletes but by bureaucrats, politicians, monied interests and grifters, was probably never in doubt. But it pulled clearly into view Wednesday night with a report of the latest move by Japan’s government to put the Olympics ahead of the people.

Kyodo News (English) reported that Japan’s already delayed vaccination program could be put further behind schedule so that Olympic athletes can be vaccinated before the most vulnerable members of society, those aged 65 or older.

We knew this was coming. Thirteen months ago, Japan’s government made every effort to make it look like the nation would be a safe haven from the virus, denying testing to all those without the most severe cases of specific symptoms.

At first, Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker numbers had to come from local websites because Japan didn’t publish nationwide figures. It didn’t want to know and didn’t want others to know. People who died without being tested were considered to be not infected.

Japan’s second state of emergency officially ended on Sunday, March 21, but we were told to be wary, and local governments, particularly in Osaka, which has become a hotspot, have begun begging for emergency status.

So why was the state of emergency lifted?

I’m sure there were a number of reasons, but Japan’s Olympic organizers have planned the longest re-enactment of Nazi Germany’s torch relay propaganda stunt in history, and there was no way in hell it was going to be canceled or run out of public view. The 121-day relay kicked off from Fukushima Prefecture on March 25, the fourth day after the state of emergency.

One hundred and twenty-one days. That’s 10 times longer than Hitler’s relay, likely a point of pride for Japan’s vice prime minister Taro Aso, an avowed admirer of der Fuhrer.

With roughly 80 percent of the public against holding the Olympics, the relay of the Olympic flame–known as “seika 聖火, the sacred flame”–it was felt, was a crucial tool in putting the Olympics in a positive light, and we all know the pandemic will be over by July, right?

Yet, even that has not gone without a hitch. On Wednesday, the torch relay was banished from the streets in Osaka Prefecture, with that leg still being held, but away from prying eyes at Expo ’70 Commemorative Park in the Suita, the site of the 1970 Worlds Fair.

In January, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, in solidarity with the people of the world, said it encouraged nations not to put Olympians at the head of the line.

“We always made it clear we are not in favor of athletes jumping the queue. In the first lines must be the high-risk groups, the healthcare workers and the people who keep our society alive. That is the first priority and this is a principle we have established.”

–IOC President Thomas Bach, January 2021

But like tolerating openly sexist remarks from former Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee, Yoshiro Mori, the IOC has shown world-class flexibility in its values regarding vaccines: “If Japan wants its athletes to be vaccinated ahead of its senior citizens for the sake of Olympic gold medals? Well, that’s none of our business, really.”

All this time, Japan and the organizers have stressed the need to get the public on board for holding the Olympics when it is not considered safe for non-residents to enter Japan and watch.

These Olympics have been a con from Day 1. To gain support for them, Japan’s real Olympic team, politicians, grifters and influence peddlars, renamed it the “reconstruction Olympics,” as if it would benefit the three prefectures decimated by the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent nuclear disaster.

Yet the games are all about Tokyo, about spending lots and lots of money in and on Tokyo and to influential businesses, and to secure it after numerous past failures, millions of dollars flowed down suspicious avenues, with the head of the bid committee now being investigated in France for corruption.

But it now seems the idea of getting the taxpayers to understand this scam is no longer a necessary part of the con, and Japan is going to get its Olympics one way or another. So if people have to die before they get vaccinated so Japan can have an Olympics, well, so be it.