If whingeing about the Games was an Olympic sport, Britain would be on top of the medal table before things have even started. Ever since the summer Games were awarded to London in 2005, the moaning has been loud, persistent, occasionally spicy and often smug. Of course, like a stopped clock which is right every now and again during the day, there have been moments when the critics have had utterly valid things to say. Yes, the initial Olympics budget was absurdly optimistic, the security rhetoric intentionally excessive, the privileges of the sponsors irritating, and the G4S contract a debacle. We don't need Mitt Romney to point these things out. John Morton, scriptwriter for the BBC2 satire Twenty Twelve, did such a scarily accurate job of turning them into something approaching comedy genius that it wouldn't be entirely surprising to see Siobhan at the opening ceremony. But there is so much else to feel good about as the Olympics begin tonight. And the failings do not invalidate the grander side of the Games. The whingers do not speak for Britain. A period of silence from them would be welcome.

Of course, no one wants to see the Olympics take place in a mood of blind Maoist optimism. But no one should have any truck with some of the reflexive negativity either. Listening to the Olympiphobes, you would get the idea that the country is awash with indifference and even hostility towards the Olympics. Only failure on all fronts will cheer those who complain, as one blogger did, saying that he felt as if he was locked in his basement while strangers partied upstairs. But these moans say more about the moaners than about the actual national mood. And they are in for a shock. In reality, as anyone who has come within 100 yards of the Olympic torch relay in the past few weeks can attest, the flame has helped to ignite a much more positive national mood than the moaners can ever bring themselves to allow. The Games have been prepared on time and under (heavily revised) budget, a terrific achievement. The torch relay has been a slow-burn triumph. London is looking great. A generation of competitors awaits the most exciting challenge of their lives. Thousands of volunteers are ready, too. Even the weather has finally perked up. And now comes the festival itself, and hopefully some patriotic successes to cheer for Britain too. Most people feel good about the Olympics. They are right to do so.

None of this will deter the naysayers. But this week's Guardian-ICM poll ought to be compulsory reading for them. It puts them in their place – which is to say in a minority, at the margins, out of touch and just plain wrong. The poll results are an emphatic justification for the effort to bring the Games to London. The poll found that a mere 13% of the British people want nothing to do with the Games. But the other 87% are to one degree or another up for the festival, with 54% expecting to be regularly engaged with what is happening. The poll also laid several of the pessimists' most cherished assumptions to rest. Interest is in fact almost as high outside London as in it. The argument that the Games are just for men is destroyed by the poll's finding that enthusiasm for the Games is almost exactly as strong among women.

You don't have to be an Olympiphobe to recognise that parts of the modern Olympic project have become detached from its founding ideals. But those ideals remain great ideals – peace, youth, health, excellence, progress, friendship – and the facts that a global US burger company is a sponsor, that some Olympic bureaucrats are corrupt, that some athletes take drugs or that aspects of the Games are pure bombast, while all true and unfortunate, do not invalidate either the ideals or the Games. Some things will, of course, go wrong over the next two and a half weeks. Nothing will ever come up to some people's unattainable standards of perfection. But as the Games begin, London has a smile on its face and the country seems to have a sense that the next 17 days may actually be pretty wonderful. Let's hope so. Let's try to make it so.