TOKYO—In a dazzling display that featured several artistic renditions of cities being razed by bulldozers, wrecking balls, and controlled burns, the opening ceremony Friday depicted the Olympics’ time-honored tradition of destroying local communities. “Tonight, we watch Japan’s best dancers, singers, and acrobats reenact the construction of several Olympic villages and pay respect to the centuries-long practice of displacing a city’s most vulnerable urban residents,” said NBC news anchor Andrea Joyce, as hundreds of performers dressed as police descended from the roof, pummeled actors with clubs, and loaded them onto a bus while a choir of ecstatic residents held up Olympic flags and sang in the background. “Set designers, costume tailors, and choreographers worked for months to visually reimagine the frenzied scene when the government forcibly evacuated the impoverished neighborhoods of Brazil in 2016, Seoul in 1988, and finally, Tokyo in 2021. Plus, those same dancers that were forcibly removed, then came back later to build the stadiums, and eventually collapsed and died from heat exhaustion. Genius.” At press time, athletes could be seen cheering as the opening ceremony honored the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles by depicting the time-honored tradition of throwing homeless residents in jail.