Commentary: Olympics: Getting it wrong

One commentator offered this sage comment in summary of Olympian hopes and dreams: “In the Olympics, if you get it wrong you have to wait a long time to get it right.”

The same is true of our sacred system of government. Historically, once nations turned to authoritarianism, whether on the left or the right, it took many decades if not centuries to right the ship and return control of the government back to the people. Most often those initially democratic nations were never able to get back on track, electing emperors, conquerors, dictators or despots to represent them forevermore.

America is currently giving up on people’s government in politics and law by fashioning special privileges and immunities for our self-proclaimed God-blessed partisan leaders. We are also giving up on social and economic equality, as our corporations settle into unchallenged monopolies in restraint of trade and our billionaire class moves to enact special citizenship privileges for the wealthy and powerful.

Political monopoly is the conjoined twin of economic monopoly, and both are inevitably reflected in culture and sports. America’s Olympic experience in 2024 amply demonstrates this.

Television coverage of the Paris games was steeped beyond belief in what I like to call “celebrity worship,” a form of hero-worship America accords daily to those who have special skills we love to see on display, but who contribute little to our traditional principles and activities of republican government. Those who do practice democracy are marginalized and forgotten.

In Paris, America the Brash elevated our trash-talking athletes on the track, field and basketball court, for example, to the level of, well, elite gods ruling the universe from their pedestals on Mount Olympus. One Olympic ad touting the aggressive mentality of our athletes asked, “Am I a bad person? I’m simple-minded … delusional … maniacal … does that make me a bad person?” Well, it makes you a celebrity American exploiter-athlete, just like your corporate sponsor.

The closing ceremony of the games featured this exploitative mentality in spades. All the heroes of the games were paraded out to help transition the Paris spectacle to the one in Los Angeles in 2028. Hyping Los Angeles-28 before the curtain even fell on Paris-24 is the corporate equivalent of a president who wins an election on Nov. 5 and then kicks off his second term campaign on Nov. 6. The greed and ambition for power are just too evident to ignore.

“Visit California” ads blared out across the ceremony’s commercial breaks. Every athlete employed to promote LA in 2028 played their mercilessly scripted, mechanical role perfectly. However, one wonders if LA has sufficient time to sweep its homeless population out of town by then. Where will they be hidden? Catalina Island? More of those $700,000 public housing units for lucky street-dwellers? Refurbished state mental hospitals? Cozy boxes six feet under?

America today is as much a disappointment in the world as some of our corporations and athletes show themselves to be. For example, we have underperformed in Palestine for decades, and in Gaza we are currently playing the role of the evil genius puppeteer destroying the lives of innocent civilians, subverting religious freedom and enriching the accounts of the military-industrial sector. The country is slowly figuring this out, as it once did at the time of the Vietnam War, but too late for tens of thousands of hapless victims of American greed and cruelty.

Yes, America is a bad person. The nations of the world have figured it out, but our own people are still clueless.

Robert Kimball Shinkoskey of Woods Cross, Utah, is the author of books on democracy, religion and the American presidency.