Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross

In 2024, national hypocrisy went mainstream in America. Here are 12 examples.

1. We protested denied healthcare claims with revolutionary fervor but paid little attention to a myriad of preventative measures that could keep us out of the hospital in the first place. In fact, we actively ignored easy wellness measures like walking with family, colleagues or friends and instead chose to spend our discretionary time on our phones, video gaming and social media.

2. We commuted the death penalty for heinous adult murderers at home but continued to greenlight the lethal bombing of innocent Muslim women and children in the Middle East. This required that we compartmentalize many foreigners as unimportant, ignoring the religious freedom we say we love so much.

3. We organized a vaccine hate campaign aimed at consigning public health to the dustbin of history, while legitimate scientists called vaccine “the greatest contribution of any health intervention to mortality reduction and years of full health gained.”

4. We spent ourselves into a deep hole at Christmastime, and then attended a Christmas mass or sermon where Jesus reminded us to spend only what we earn, provide urgent loans to neighboring citizens at zero or minimal interest and forgive our debtors. We sat idly by while banks pillaged the working poor with triple digit payday and title loan interest rates and the middle class with high double-digit credit card interest rates.

5. We legislated to fix our physical infrastructure like roads and bridges, but left the lifeless political infrastructure outlined in our Constitution to the vultures to pick at. We likely have never read and certainly have never studied the foundational law that our ancestors crafted with blood, sweat and tears. Our leaders don’t teach us what is in it, and we don’t have enough initiative to explore it on our own.

6. We continued to tout freedom of the press, while newspaper and television advertisers, monopolistic owners and hyper-partisan editorial boards regularly set aside divergent views in favor of tawdry propaganda statements. Media organizations no longer facilitate details and analysis, but actively censor truth.

7. We elected a politician who prevents Congress from enacting legislation, when our Constitution clearly requires the executive department to implement the will of the people or else work through a veto process. “Executive” department means the department that executes the will of the legislature, not undermines it.

8. We insisted that we are the leading democratic nation, all the while showboating an anti-democratic culture of ignorance, greed and violence for the world to emulate. We are not leading all nations, we are corrupting all nations.

9. We glorified individualized branding, personal freedom and the pursuit of money while insisting we care about shared values like community health, civil liberty and the pursuit of social happiness. In fact, we don’t care about anything other than our own pleasure. The success, pleasure and happiness of others rarely enters into our minds or guides our hands.

10. We swallowed our media’s reporting that we are fighting a defensive war in the Middle East and that Hamas is using civilians as human shields. In actuality, Judaism is waging an anti-democratic offensive crusade against Islam and is using American Christian politicians as human shields to justify their atrocities. All we care about is that it is not our own children crushed under the rubble. Other people’s children be damned.

11. We allowed a felon and civil law wrongdoer to hold high national office while maintaining the fiction that Lady Justice is still blind here in America. Today she sees immunity for the high and mighty.

12. All year long we fancied ourselves an empowered citizenry because we flaunted our own laws, tattooed our bodies with personal mottos, exhibited daring fashion choices and chose our own addictions, but we failed to ever consent to the policies that govern us, which requires going to civic meetings, speaking up and helping to shape laws. We are guilty of scamming our families, scamming our ancestors, scamming our neighbors, scamming our employers and scamming our government because we settle for “pretend” personal power either because no one ever taught us how to exercise real personal power, or else real power is just too hard for us to achieve.

Our people, our culture, our laws and our traditions are truly no longer the envy of the Western world. Instead, our citizens have become oppressors in their own neighborhoods and hypocritical actors wherever America goes in the world.