It’s a unhappy and harmful day when the president of the US groups up with massive firms to kill humor and satire within the nation. However clearly that is occurring as we converse, first with Stephen Colbert at CBS and now with Jimmy Kimmel at ABC.
Such goings-on are a canary within the coal mine of American democracy. A rustic that goes after those that get us to chuckle on the highly effective, is a rustic the place solely the highly effective get to rule.
We’re informed that in Russia’s temporary flirt with democracy beneath Gorbachev after which Yeltsin, humor got here ahead within the political sphere—maybe for the primary time ever. However when Putin took over, considered one of his first acts was to cancel a well-liked puppet present that dared to mock Putin (amongst others). And we all know what got here subsequent.
Those that yearn to be strongmen are not often gifted with a humorousness—and by no means towards themselves. They hate being laughed at. So it was with Putin, so it’s with the present presidential staff. America with out night comedy exhibits, goes to be a dour and flat place.
However discover how swiftly the capitalist energy brokers lusting to personal as a lot media as they’ll, responded when Trump’s puppet at FCC known as for Kimmel’s head.
Mussolini outlined fascism as “the wedding of presidency and firms.” That marriage is tightening every day in right now’s America. It is going to be a wedding sans humor—until it’s the humor of beating up on others. Sadistic humor will flourish, reminiscent of one finds within the very title of their favourite focus camp dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
When Pope Francis dared to put in writing about “savage capitalism,” he was denounced by the right-wing billionaire class in America, Catholics included. However the World South the place he got here from, is intimate with that actuality. Now increasingly Individuals are feeling it up shut and private.
Savage capitalism is all about a number of winners and lots of losers in a system that exhibits no mercy and no justice. It’s in poor health comfy with something like legal guidelines and a judicial system that’s honest, and never rigged on behalf of billionaire energy brokers.
Pope Leo XIV identified in a current interview that Elon Musk is on his option to being the primary trillionaire ever, and the way that doesn’t augur nicely for anyone’s future. And that how 60 years in the past, CEOs had been paid 4 to six occasions what their employees had been paid—right now it’s 600 occasions.
Billionaire MAGA donor Larry Ellison is taking on CBS (who cancelled Stephen Colbert’s present), and has chosen Bari Weiss to run CBS Information. Weiss, a “free speech” crusader who’s in mattress with the far proper, waged the large campaign over “cancel tradition.” Sure, cancel tradition crusaders are busy canceling humorists, and can now run the brand new CBS Information.
60 Minutes is in for a rugged experience. Extra MAGA speaking factors on the way in which—transfer over, Fox Information.
It’s superb what cash will purchase. Savage capitalism is greed with no guard rails. And no pretense to the now outdated thought (killed beneath Reagan) that the airwaves belong to all of us.
Or that all of us ought to pay taxes—even billionaires and their firms. Right now we hear billionaires bragging out loud that they pay no taxes. Taxes are for suckers, that’s the remainder of us.
With NPR and PBS dismantled and ABC and CBS compromised, the MAGA media megaphone can be louder than ever. And laughter is banished within the evenings.
The headlines for this new and dumber and sadder America? “The whole lot For Sale to the Highest Bidder!” “Democracy finished and completed.” “Autocracy is the following new factor.” “Venture 2025 at the doorstep.”
Welcome to an America the place our solely gods are Greed and Grievance.
See Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the World.
And Fox, Unique Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul & Society.
And Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Imaginative and prescient for a New Technology.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ.
To learn the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click on HERE.
Banner Picture: Laughter, Criminalized: Cosplayers of partners-in-crime “Harley Quinn” and “The Joker” from DC Comics, on the Large Wow Comedian Fest, 2013. Photograph by Annette Wamser. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you see a brand new faith that worships Greed and Grievance rising in America and its media? In politics and economics? What can we do to prepare and resist?
Beneficial Studying
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the that means and observe of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the longer term 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.
“Properly 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 by way of which we be taught to honor the earth and the individuals who inhabit it because the reward of a very good and simply Creator.
“A watershed theological work that gives a typical floor for non secular seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Observe.
“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 despite 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 route for Christianity—a route that’s in truth very historical and really grounded in Jewish considering (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 manner.
“Unique Blessing makes out there to the Christian world and to the human neighborhood a radical treatment for all darkish and derogatory views of the pure world wherever these might have originated.” –Thomas Berry, writer, The Dream of the Earth; The Nice Work; co-author, The Universe Story
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling writer Matthew Fox gives a brand new theology of evil that essentially adjustments the standard notion of fine and evil and factors the way in which to a extra enlightened remedy 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 anybody single science. A breath-taking evaluation.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, writer of Quantum Theology: Religious Implications of the New Physics
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Imaginative and prescient for a New Technology
Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to make use of our skills in service of compassion and justice and to maneuver past our damaged techniques–financial, political, instructional, and non secular–discovering a spirituality that not solely helps us to get alongside, but in addition encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, reworking them and within the course of constructing a extra sacred and simply world. Incorporating the phrases of younger activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the e book supplies a framework that’s intentionally interfaith and speaks to our profound craving for a life with religious objective and for a greater world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a strong, inspiring, and very important name to embodied consciousness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and writer of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Girl, and the Battle to Save the Redwoods
Trump & The MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had at all times shied away from utilizing the time period “Anti-Christ” as a result of it was so typically used to unfold management and concern. Nevertheless, given right now’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables on this e book 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 e book with an open thoughts. Good and evil are actual forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, writer of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For quick 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 photos, 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 quick obtain.
.svg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}