Chapter 500: Finding a Scapegoat

Frey, the Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Track and Field Association, stared at Williams, surprised.

“Mr. Williams, did I hear you right? You mean ‘the head coach’? You want to hire a Chinese man to be the head coach of our American track and field team?”

Williams was pleased with Frey’s surprised reaction. He nodded, “Yeah, you heard that correctly.”

“America is the best in track and field. Our team is the Dream Team! Ae you sure we should hire a Chinese man to be our head coach? His country only wins one gold medal in track and field every Olympics.

“I have thought carefully about this,” Williams said. “I was so blind and optimistic about the appointment of Rivers, but it turned out to be a bad decision. Rivers was not qualified enough to be respected by the athletes, and they would respect Li. So far, the only American coaches we can find are lie Rivers.”

“Yeah, the coaches who are qualified are either involved in the performance-enhancing drugs scandal or have turned down our invitation,” said Frey.

“I think other less qualified and less competent coaches would face the same situation as Rivers. If they can’t be accepted by the athletes and lead the whole national team, then they are not capable of being the head coach. So, I think we should find someone who is competent, no matter their nationality.

“Dai Li is qualified. He coaches Aylwin, Alexander, and Ford. They won’t resist their own coach, so they will help Dai Li to get a foothold in the national team.”

Frey nodded, “I agree with you, but Dai Li is Chinese! I’m very uncomfortable a Chinese man as the head coach of our American team. The public opinion won’t be on our side. People might think that our going outside the country to find a head coach shows that we are incompetent as an organization!”

“But that’s true. We do lack qualified talent right now, right?” Williams composed himself. “There’s no shame in owning your flaws in front of the public.”

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“But…”

Frey was about to say something, when Williams waved his hands to interrupt him. “In fact, after Rivers handed in his resignation letter, I was wondering if we handled the scandal badly. Coaches don’t want to work with us now. Is that our fault?

Frey gritted his teeth and said, “This is all on the damn investigative journalist who exposed the performance-enhancing drugs scandal. It cost us a lot of brilliant athletes. Before his report, coaches would be scrambling to become our head coach. Now they all know that this Olympics is going to be the Waterloo of the American track and field team.”

“That’s normal. Why would they get on a sinking ship? We all know this year the team is like the Titanic. When the Olympics begin, it’s going to hit the iceberg. Although we don’t want the ship to sink, we can’t stop it.”

Williams paused and became more serious. “We want to save a ship that’s bound to sink, but we can’t. We should find another solution. We should consider who should take responsibility for the sinking?”

“You mean find a scapegoat? You want to Dai Li to be the scapegoat?” Realization dawned on his face.

“Of course, we need to find a scapegoat. Otherwise we will bear responsibility for the failure! The media will blame the team’s failure at the Olympics on our association. Someone will even force us to resign. You don’t want to see that happen, do you? Don’t you think it’s great to put the responsibility on someone who’s Chinese?” Williams said with a strange smile on his face.

Frey hesitated for a while, lowered his voice and said, “Mr. Williams, I don’t think it’s a good way to solve this in such a racially motivated way. Now everything that involves race is very sensitive. If you can’t handle it properly, you will get yourself into trouble.”

“You misunderstood me. I’m not going to make anything about race. It’s not about race it’s about nationality.” Williams waved his hands and added, “I heard that Dai Li never got American citizenship. He just got the green card, so he’s still a Chinese citizen. We can take advantage of this. Our President, our members of Congress and other politicians are saying all the time that China is stealing American jobs, China is stealing America’s intelligence, China has polluted the earth, China has hampered the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and China has driven up the housing prices in California. In their view, whatever the Chinese do is wrong! And more importantly, the public is also happy to believe what these politicians say!

“Really, it’s our politicians that are incompetent, but they passed the buck to China. It’s very effective, so why don’t we imitate these politicians!” With a conspiratorial smile on his face, Williams continued. “Since the end of the Second World War, our government has been engaging in ideological propaganda and several generations have been brainwashed. They don’t care whether it’s wrong or right, they’re just willing to believe what they want to hear. They to believe their values are real. So why do we insist on the truth when we can give the public an answer that they want.

“So, finding a Chinese scapegoat and making him take responsibility for the failure of an American team is the best solution. The public will want to believe it as well. We just need to say is ‘Look, we failed and it’s all because of the Chinese coach! The public will take out their anger on Dai Li. After one or two years later, when the drugs scandal is forgotten about, everything will be OK for us…”