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Pre-Rio Olympics fanfare in New York contrasts with Brazil's harsh reality

NEW YORK – The disconnect grows wider by the day. On Wednesday, a peppy 100-days-out rally in Times Square, attended by First Lady Michelle Obama, riled the revelers into the usual pre-Olympic patriotic pomp. And on Thursday, several more to-be Olympians gave demonstrations at a second event, put on by Kellogg's, in Union Square.

Women's national soccer teamer Julie Johnston showed off ball tricks and Simone Biles, the reigning three-time world champion in women's gymnastics, flitted about on her beam in the middle of rush hour on a chilly morning. "I can't feel my toes, you guys!" she told the sympathetic crowd of 100 or so, by way of apology for taking a few corrective steps in her routine.

The United States Olympic team had already unveiled its Ralph Lauren-designed Closing Ceremony uniforms the day prior. But the message on Thursday, again, was loud and clear: The Olympics are coming.

But down in Brazil, where the whole thing is actually happening in Rio de Janeiro come August, there is said to be less giddy anticipation – like in these carefully orchestrated and sponsor-driven Midtown shows – than dread and chaos.

The Brazil economy, once one of the fastest-growing in the world, hasn't so much crashed as imploded. It is expected to shrink by about 7.5 percent over 2015 and 2016 – the $11 billion Olympic price tag certainly hasn't helped and continues to draw the ire of locals who point at the shortage of adequate infrastructure. Unemployment has pushed above 10 percent.

Brazil president Dilma Rousseff faces an impeachment trial. (AFP Photo)
Brazil president Dilma Rousseff faces an impeachment trial. (AFP Photo)

President Dilma Rousseff – a protégé of her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, under whose administration Brazil landed the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics – faces an impeachment trial for allegedly cooking the books and essentially misrepresenting Brazil's federal balance sheet. Her vice president, Michel Temer, could be impeached as well.

A section of a scenic bike path that was supposed to be an Olympic legacy project crashed into the sea the other day, killing at least two. On Monday, it was revealed that 11 workers had died building the Olympic facilities, which are behind schedule.

Budgets have been slashed. The bay that will host sailing and wind surfing remains thick with sewage and garbage. Ticket sales are weak.

Four people are murdered daily in Rio, per AFP, as the gangs conduct open warfare with each other and the police in the hills lining the city that they control. The outbreak of the Zika virus may scare off plenty of potential visitors.

Few Olympics in recent memory have come and gone off without issues or concerns. Salt Lake City, Athens, Beijing, Vancouver and Sochi all had problems of one type or another. But the cognitive dissonance in Rio de Janeiro is particularly large. Brazil is a country in disarray and Rio is a city held captive by the ambition from a better time.

Yes, the Games will inflate a bubble, heavily policed and polished to a high shine, and all will probably look peachy and Olympic within it. But as always, the truth will lay away from the village and venues.

Back in 2014, at the FIFA World Cup – the first part of this double whammy that was supposed to herald Brazil's arrival as a fully developed nation on the world scene, before it all came undone and the crippling costs dragged the country down – you got a tangible sense that the country's hosting duties were a burden more than a hard- and expensively-won privilege.

This contrasted starkly with the 2010 World Cup, when the South Africans were delighted that you had come, that you had given them and their country a fair shot after the dark clouds of Apartheid had finally begun to drift away. The Brazilians could take you or leave you. Or so it felt to this visitor, anyway. The Brazilian apathy was particularly startling given soccer's unrivaled cultural significance in that country.

Studies suggest that the biggest benefit to hosting sporting mega-events is boosting the happiness of your people. The Brazilians aren't any happier.

And yet here we are, blithely counting the days until we root on our countrymen and women. Yet on this score, too, a twisted kind of discordance applies. It isn't the athletes' fault that the Rio Games threaten to become a shambles – they didn't select the host city. Let's not take it out on them. And the best way to help Brazil is to pay attention to its event, and contribute to its success, so that perhaps its fiscal hurt won't be in vain. The dysfunction isn't the people's to be punished for.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.