America Has Fallen On Its Backside: Top 10 Picks For Most Backsliding, Anti-Democratic Institutions In America
By Robert Kimball Shinkoskey Photos: Wikimedia Commons Here are my Top 10 picks for the most backsliding, anti-democratic institutions in America. 10. Sports programs and professional sports industries. Because sports demand so much time and attention, they distract attention away from serious citizenship activity. At the local school level, while rightly stressing physical fitness, sports programs regularly emphasize winning and domination over other programs, thus preparing young people for a 21st century imperial America on steroids: Canada; Greenland; Venezuela; Iran; Cuba . . . you get the idea. At the college level sports distracts from liberal education and offers big money to barely educated students. The professional level of sporting pushes gambling and makes billionaires out of centi-millionaires. Gambling is the quickest way to throw away a hard-earned paycheck and corrupt any sport. Sports billionaires just naturally lose a taste for anything other than money and thus corrupt anything else they touch. 9. Hollywood. Movie and TV programming is largely fantasy-based at a time when hard-nosed reality is needed. We should not pretend the world is exciting, progressive, and filled with drama, romance, and adventure. It isn’t. It is full of boredom, divorce, and social isolation and we need to learn how to transcend all that bad stuff. We don’t do that by constantly entertaining ourselves. 8. Schools, colleges, and universities. These institutions no longer direct our attention to civics, history, and law, the main educational endeavors that can positively groom the next generations for success and a return to democracy. Higher level educational institutions get a little bit into these areas, but only for portions of the student body. 7. The Media. TV and newspaper journalists give full faith and credit to the sweet-sounding words of public influencers on the right and the left without providing any critical historical or legal context for their remarks. They are unfamiliar with the most basic and well-documented finding of political science—“power corrupts.” They therefore regularly fail to bring up key democratic mandates like term-limits on politicians and constitutional curbs on executive branch functions. They just want a share of the corrupt power and money. 6. The Judiciary. Judges today are selling law and justice to the highest bidder, which is almost always the wealthy elite class who just buy whatever they need or want. 5. Congress. Congress fights, and very meekly, for status as a co-equal branch of government with the executive branch. Congress has totally lost respect for itself and knowledge of its historical role. The Constitution says Congress is far and away the supreme branch of government and the final decider of all things democracy-related in America. Yep, never heard of that before, have you? That is because you have never read the document. 4. The Christian Church. The denominations of the church think their mission is entirely spiritual and ritualistic, and certainly not civil. This demonstrates they know little of the real, historical personality that is Jesus of Nazareth. That is because they don’t teach the history of western civilization, the history of the church, the culture of first century Palestine, or the political science of Moses, the prophets, and Jesus. 3. Corporations. Corporate advertising creates an entirely artificial world of dancing, laughter, and happiness when real people can hardly walk, rarely laugh, and are anxious and depressed. Companies ask us to believe that there are no other problems to be solved in the world other than those problems their products and services solve. 2. Public health. The oligarchic class that controls the federal government today has a vital interest in undermining the health of the people, in order to establish themselves as the sole privileged class in America. A healthy people relatively free of communicable disease, cancer, heart disease, stroke, and addiction are able to pursue and find education, jobs, self-respect, homes, physical, moral, ethical, and spiritual strength, and demand state and local self-determination. Not anymore. 1. The President. The President has anointed himself as the anti-democracy king of everything that moves in America. He steals elections through gerrymandering, a wide assortment of financial bribes right before election time, and interference in local elections by means of flamboyant endorsements of some and self-interested, disingenuous condemnations of others. He intimidates non-conforming speech, press, and religion; causes chaos in the federal government by unilaterally ending Congressionally authorized programs, and chaos in the private and international sectors by means of unlawful tariffs. He works day and night to establish an entirely white supremacist, aristocratic society using full-time hate and deportatio
Black News 
By Robert Kimball Shinkoskey
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Here are my Top 10 picks for the most backsliding, anti-democratic institutions in America.
10. Sports programs and professional sports industries.
Because sports demand so much time and attention, they distract attention away from serious citizenship activity. At the local school level, while rightly stressing physical fitness, sports programs regularly emphasize winning and domination over other programs, thus preparing young people for a 21st century imperial America on steroids: Canada; Greenland; Venezuela; Iran; Cuba . . . you get the idea. At the college level sports distracts from liberal education and offers big money to barely educated students. The professional level of sporting pushes gambling and makes billionaires out of centi-millionaires. Gambling is the quickest way to throw away a hard-earned paycheck and corrupt any sport. Sports billionaires just naturally lose a taste for anything other than money and thus corrupt anything else they touch.
9. Hollywood.
Movie and TV programming is largely fantasy-based at a time when hard-nosed reality is needed. We should not pretend the world is exciting, progressive, and filled with drama, romance, and adventure. It isn’t. It is full of boredom, divorce, and social isolation and we need to learn how to transcend all that bad stuff. We don’t do that by constantly entertaining ourselves.
8. Schools, colleges, and universities.
These institutions no longer direct our attention to civics, history, and law, the main educational endeavors that can positively groom the next generations for success and a return to democracy. Higher level educational institutions get a little bit into these areas, but only for portions of the student body.
7. The Media.
TV and newspaper journalists give full faith and credit to the sweet-sounding words of public influencers on the right and the left without providing any critical historical or legal context for their remarks. They are unfamiliar with the most basic and well-documented finding of political science—“power corrupts.” They therefore regularly fail to bring up key democratic mandates like term-limits on politicians and constitutional curbs on executive branch functions. They just want a share of the corrupt power and money.
6. The Judiciary.
Judges today are selling law and justice to the highest bidder, which is almost always the wealthy elite class who just buy whatever they need or want.
5. Congress.
Congress fights, and very meekly, for status as a co-equal branch of government with the executive branch. Congress has totally lost respect for itself and knowledge of its historical role. The Constitution says Congress is far and away the supreme branch of government and the final decider of all things democracy-related in America. Yep, never heard of that before, have you? That is because you have never read the document.
4. The Christian Church.
The denominations of the church think their mission is entirely spiritual and ritualistic, and certainly not civil. This demonstrates they know little of the real, historical personality that is Jesus of Nazareth. That is because they don’t teach the history of western civilization, the history of the church, the culture of first century Palestine, or the political science of Moses, the prophets, and Jesus.
3. Corporations.
Corporate advertising creates an entirely artificial world of dancing, laughter, and happiness when real people can hardly walk, rarely laugh, and are anxious and depressed. Companies ask us to believe that there are no other problems to be solved in the world other than those problems their products and services solve.
2. Public health.
The oligarchic class that controls the federal government today has a vital interest in undermining the health of the people, in order to establish themselves as the sole privileged class in America. A healthy people relatively free of communicable disease, cancer, heart disease, stroke, and addiction are able to pursue and find education, jobs, self-respect, homes, physical, moral, ethical, and spiritual strength, and demand state and local self-determination. Not anymore.
1. The President.
The President has anointed himself as the anti-democracy king of everything that moves in America. He steals elections through gerrymandering, a wide assortment of financial bribes right before election time, and interference in local elections by means of flamboyant endorsements of some and self-interested, disingenuous condemnations of others. He intimidates non-conforming speech, press, and religion; causes chaos in the federal government by unilaterally ending Congressionally authorized programs, and chaos in the private and international sectors by means of unlawful tariffs. He works day and night to establish an entirely white supremacist, aristocratic society using full-time hate and deportation campaigns, all the while insisting he is the savior of America and all mankind.
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on democracy, religion, and the American presidency.
