At this time is a posh vacation certainly. One desires to have fun America’s independence and braveness and creativeness at launching an amazing experiment in democracy 258 years in the past.
However the actuality is that many are grieving at present moderately than celebrating. A brand new ballot discovered that “nationwide delight is declining in America” and solely about 4 out of 10 US adults of Era Z (born from 1997 to 2012) expressed a excessive stage of delight in being American at present.*
A lot of the American authorities has been hijacked by forces totally opposite to democracy—such because the senators who voted for an immoral price range invoice this week. What forces? What’s going on is just not the work of 1 one that, regardless of 44 felony convictions obtained himself elected president. A mountain of enablers, together with senators and congresspeople who lie supine for a president with 34 felonies on his file, are both promoting their souls or have fully misplaced religion with the American experiment in democracy. Politicians who signify cynicism and sourness and uncaring moderately than democracy.
Former president Obama known as the reducing of our USAID program a “travesty and a tragedy.” Former president George Bush asks, “Is it in our nationwide pursuits that 25 million individuals who would have died now dwell? I feel it’s and so do you.” A examine in a single medical journal decided that gutting USAID will result in 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030. It additionally reminded us that USAID has already prevented the deaths of greater than 91 million folks, lots of them kids.**
To bitter on democracy and preach it as MAGA does, and to erase caring as integral to the American experiment dwelling and overseas, bespeaks the loss of life of a rustic with any values to emulate.
Thom Hartmann not too long ago reported on how the “Alligator Alcatraz” that Trump and Florida governor Ron de Santis visited this week is “a political jail engineered not merely to detain however to humiliate and broadcast terror.” An “open-air image that our democracy is dying.” Cruelty personified. “It’s efficiency” — a “weird effort to indicate who may be extra merciless.”
It has a precedent as a result of Dachau in Nazi Germany additionally began as a detention middle, which was additionally marketed by the federal government: “Step out of line, and that is the place you go.” It too was devoted to denaturalizing residents, that’s, stripping them of their citizenship. Stripping folks of their citizenship is a civil, not prison process, so one is just not entitled to have a lawyer.***
The brand new GOP price range invoice supplies over $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement and detention, together with $45 billion towards new detention jails. The vice-president known as throwing 16 million Individuals off medical health insurance and shutting down tons of of rural hospitals “miniscule” — and I assume it’s, in comparison with locking up immigrants.
Maybe this drop of delight in America and the gross goings-on in home and international actions would possibly serve a bigger objective. Would possibly it fire-up resistance to what’s going on in America at present? Can it ignite fires of ethical outrage that may start a brand new solidarity and new management of politicians who can encourage folks on the grassroots to work for a greater democracy?
The election of Zohran Mamdani in NYC looks like a harbinger of a attainable future that we are able to have fun on a future July 4th.
* Linley Sanders and Amelia Thomson-Deveaux, “Nationwide Pleasure is Declining In America. And It’s Splitting by Social gathering Strains,” Los Angeles Occasions, July 2, 2025.
** Leith Kimmins, “Obama and Bush Unite in Uncommon Transfer In opposition to Trump,” The Every day Beast, July 1, 2025.
*** Thom Hartmann, “Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Only a Jail. It’s a Mirror. And It’s Asking Us: Who Are We, Actually?” The Hartmann Report, July 2, 2025.
See Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul & Society.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth.
And Fox, Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Banner Picture: A tattered American flag hanging on a fence. Picture by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash.
Queries for Contemplation
What are your ideas and emotions on this 4th of July, 2025? How do they evaluate to your ideas and emotions 10 or 20 or 30 years in the past? Do you see Alligator Alcatraz as a mirror asking us who we’re and what we wish to be? And as a template for the $45 billion simply appropriated by the senate towards erecting new detention jails? How alarming is that?
Really helpful Studying
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Remodeling Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling creator Matthew Fox gives a brand new theology of evil that essentially adjustments the normal notion of fine and evil and factors the way in which to a extra enlightened therapy of ourselves, each other, and all of nature. In evaluating the Japanese custom of the 7 chakras to the Western custom of the 7 capital sins, Fox permits us to assume creatively about our capability for private and institutional evil and what we are able to do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a greater imaginative and prescient and depth of notion far past the grasp of anyone single science. A breath-taking evaluation.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, creator of Quantum Theology: Religious Implications of the New Physics
Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had all the time shied away from utilizing the time period “Anti-Christ” as a result of it was so usually used to unfold management and concern. Nonetheless, given at present’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables on this guide using the archetype for the reason for justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a second, for analyzing the archetype of the Antichrist, it’s now…Learn this guide with an open thoughts. Good and evil are actual forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, creator of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For instant entry to Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white pictures, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To obtain a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for instant obtain.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the which means and apply of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the long run that guarantees private, social, and world therapeutic, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, main the way in which towards a gentler and extra ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate exercise.
“Nicely value our deepest consideration…Places compassion into its correct focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the therapeutic and liberation present in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of each non secular and political persuasion to unite in a brand new imaginative and prescient via which we study to honor the earth and the individuals who inhabit it because the present of a very good and simply Creator.
“A watershed theological work that provides a typical floor for non secular seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Follow.
“I’m studying Liberating Items for the Individuals of the Earth by Matt Fox. He’s one which fills my coronary heart and thoughts for brand new life regardless of a lot that’s violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out an entire new course for Christianity—a course that’s actually very historic and really grounded in Jewish pondering (the truth that Jesus was a Jew is commonly uncared for by Christian theology): the 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an prolonged and deeply developed means.
“Unique Blessing makes accessible to the Christian world and to the human group a radical treatment for all darkish and derogatory views of the pure world wherever these could have originated.” –Thomas Berry, creator, The Dream of the Earth; The Nice Work; co-author, The Universe Story
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