We are meditating on the recent historical situation that has rendered Trump and fascism’s election possible.
One of the wisest responses to this election came, as expected, from Thom Hartmann. In an essay called “The Billionaires won: The 50-Year War on Democracy That Built Trump’s Oligarchy and Killed the American Dream,” he tells the history of how “bought politicians, and a court on their side” seized control of American democracy over the past 50 years.
He tells the story how Louis Powell, back in 1971, laid out a plan “to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations” and thereby “replace democracy with oligarchy.” And they were successful. “Tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions.” (And, I might add, set us on the dangerous path of ever more global warming.)
It seems everything in America is for sale—the supreme court, lawmakers, even a Catholic church that winner Leonardo Leo bought in Maine and in which he inserted his wife as choir leader, etc. And, of course, the air waves. As Hartmann puts it: With enough money and enough advertising—particularly if you are willing to lie—you can sell anybody pretty much anything. Even a convicted felon, rapist, and friend and agent of America’s enemies.
The result? “We have oligarchs running our media, social media, and buying our elections, with the Supreme Court, with Citizens United, even legalized foreign interference in our political process.” The notion that “money is the same thing as free speech” embedded in the Citizens United decision was itself a lie. Thomas Jefferson warned in 1816, “It has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.”
Now America has a severe problem of big money controlling our political system. And last night it hit its peak, putting an open fascist in charge of our government.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, spent well over a hundred million dollars getting Trump elected while spreading his lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories on his X (formerly twitter) media site.
Hartmann insists however that “this is not the end….Hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal” and calls on America to “speak out and fight for a democracy uncorrupted by the morbidly rich.”*
From our Comments section in yesterday’s DM, I offer these examples of people speaking out:
It’s such a sad day. And it’s so frightening how Trump embodies the Antichrist: today he promised a new “golden age” which is exactly Antichrist’s talk. I fear that our local Italian fascists are mild compared to Trump, but they will reinforce each other for sure. The pull by fascists to divide Europe will be strong. Such a sad day. (Italian citizen, friend and theologian)
This is the darkest day in my life as an American. Please tell us all, how do we survive the next four years with this man who wants to destroy American democracy? I thought of our founders, the writers of our precious Constitution. I wonder if they are crying at what has become of our blessed America. All the beautiful animals you named, they are at peril of being wiped out forever. Please tell us Matthew, how do we go forward when this man will try to overthrow the very foundation of our country? (Rosalie)
Spiritually, I feel so sad, and with the thought, ‘Why have you abandoned us?’ However, my faith does not allow me to despair and God’s Spirit of Love-Light-Life sometimes works in mysterious ways beyond our human comprehension. The prayer from Pope Francis at the end of today’s DM can help console our grief and Faith. (Damian)
Me, I refuse to do what I did in 2016—be in stunned shock for weeks. I’m sick of being in a state of existential dread. 8 am Wednesday morning, I’m already looking for women’s self-defense classes, and I haven’t even had my coffee yet. It’s time for li’l’ol’ 65-year-old cancer-surviving me to finally learn how to fight back against bullies. (Rosanna)
See Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
And Fox, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved.
And Fox, Original Blessing, pp. 250-306.
And Fox, Religion USA: Religion and Culture by way of Time Magazine.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election.
Banner image: “Despair.” Image by Amydeanne, on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Queries for Contemplation
What are your feelings as you process the election three days after the fact? Can you agree that “this is not the end….Hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal”?
Recommended Reading
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved
The Pope’s War offers a provocative look at three decades of corruption in the Catholic Church, focusing on Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The final section in the book focuses on birthing a truly catholic Christianity.
“This book should be read by everybody, not only for its ferocious courage, but also for its vision for what needs to be saved from the destructive forces that threaten authentic Christianity.” ~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope.
“In the gripping The Pope’s War, Matthew Fox takes an unwavering look at the layers of corruption in the Catholic Church, holding moral truth against power.” — Jason Berry, author of Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story
Religion USA: Religion and Culture By Way of Time Magazine
The purpose of this book is to descend from the majestic heights of the critique of religion, to the level of religion’s interaction with life in its multiple colors and dimensions, that is in culture …. Modern man, far from being without religion, is bombarded by religions claiming his ultimate allegiance and priorities — in his TV, his movies, his records, as well as in his press …. Our method of analysis takes these claims to religion seriously, beginning where everyday man begins, in the confusion of the multiple tongues bestowed on him at the secular Pentecost by the knowledge explosion and the media expansion.
“This uniquely American study … [analyzes] the role of religion in a culture. It contains a mine of information for sociologists of religion, as the same time that it opens up a whole new direction for theology.” —Professor Jacques Audinet, Institut Catholique de Paris
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement 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 images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
20 thoughts on “Reflections & Responses to Election 2024”
As a Canadian, I am still reeling from the fact that my neighbours to the south have chosen hate,fear and fascism over democracy, reason, and love.My heart is rent for creation, for the animals we share this earth with, for women,for grieving Americans who did not choose this,for Ukraine,for NATO,Europe,for Gaza, for human rights, labour rights, civil rights, for all people of colour, for LBGTQ+ rights, for freedom of thought, speech and libraries, for public education,for children, for my family,friends,for public healthcare and safety,for science,for truth,for history,for law, for life itself, the air, oceans, forests, mountains, rivers,and wetlands.All of these things are now on the chopping block.Everything I love.
The “Christian Taliban” has come, led by its apricot anti-Christ clown spewing his firehose of toxic lies out of the orange chasm he calls a mouth, and they hate all those good things in the name of God (they are just getting started in Canada).Together with other religious extremists and authoritarians the world over, all so smugly holy, self-righteous and ablaze with the lust for power, are all hell bent on creating hell on earth.They are multiple anti-Christs all grotesquely smiling and talking about God’s will.It makes me want to vomit. I am deeply frightened, but in a way hard to explain, more determined than ever to join the fight with everyone who is standing up anywhere for kindness, reason and goodness for people, animals and the earth.
Right on, you say it well, says me living in Calgary, where our premier is mouthing and following the T playbook.
Dear Vivian,
Yes. My heart is also rent. …for all those that you listed. (Thank you.)
I sure appreciate hearing condolence from a Canadian “for grieving Americans who did not choose this” (Thank you.)
Ever since July 1, 2024 (when the “supreme” court made the president a king), I have been thinking that I should write a letter to everyone I know who does not live in the United States of America, and pre-emptively apologize for what could happen on November 5.
And now I just feel like throwing up.
THANK YOU, Matthew Fox, for helping me understand what is (and has been) happening all around me.
From Washington and Lee University School of Law:
“On August 23, 1971, less than two months before he was nominated to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. mailed a confidential memorandum to his friend Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chair of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
I was born in August 1972. So this “Master Plan” (as investigative journalist David Sirota calls it) has been in the works since one year before I was born.
And yet I only first heard of The Powell Memo a few days ago, when Matthew Fox wrote about it in his DM.
Your words of Wisdom Matthew and all that you do has gotten me through many difficult times since the 1980s. I know they will at this moment in time too. I know that it is vital for me to turn my resentment into love, to heal the division I am feeling in my heart towards the other. That will energize to take loving action and not continue the division in all areas of my life as well as the world.
Besides the Divine Essence holding me, Calvin & Hobbes helped me survive the first 4 years and they will do the same the next 4 years. Laughter has always been my balm in Gilead. When I no longer feel safe as a gay, 78 year old man, I will have to decide when to leave this third world country.
What makes anyone think that this is ‘the bottom’? President Trump is about to ‘dig a hole’ so deep and so wide that it will be beyond any logic-based comprehension. Get ready for it. Prepare for it. This will be akin to WWIII but where very few weapons will be fired among nations. This will be a civil unrest across the world, as it has never been experienced before. Tighten up ‘your chinstraps’ and hold close to your faith in Christ and the Holy Mother. — BB.
I have to say that this sounds like sour grapes. Kamala Harris raised and spent $1,000,000,000; way more than Donald Trump. People from all demographics turned away from the Democrats and voted for the Republican candidate in record numbers. Both sides have billionaire backers. None of us like to lose, especially when we have invested so much into the spectacle. Crikey, I’ve passionately supported Newcastle United for the past 55 years and we’ve won absolutely nothing! Losing is hard, especially when the stakes are high (we came close a few times) but, ultimately, we lost to a better team and perhaps a few dodgy calls from the referee; but both sides can claim that. The sky is not falling, and besides – and far more importantly – politics is not the solution and never has been. If anything is to be called out, it is the failure of the church. We are Spiritual Beings first and foremost, not political animals. Read “Maya Mire – A Spiritual Journey into Cosmic Truth and the Dawning of a New World” available on Amazon. It explains a lot of what is really going on.
I am still feeling sad but maintaining my Faith that God’s Spirit of LOVE~LIGHT~LIFE – Truth, Peace, Justice, Healing, Forgiveness, Strength, Transformation, Creativity, Compassion, Beauty, Joy, Diverse ONENESS… Is Always Present within, through, among Us and Our Eternal Souls in our daily human lives in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT in All Spiritual Dimensions within OUR LOVING EVOLVING ETERNAL COSMOS….
I am reading Brian McLaren’s, Life After Doom. We are beyond the tipping point. We will be going through the Pascal Mystery. Many of us will be killed. Many will die. Maybe some humans will survive. I look to Chile during Pinochet, Indigenous peoples here and elsewhere, hoping to find clues for survival. It looks like a remnant of humans may survive. It’s community. It’s not individuals that come out on the other side of death as some kind of resurrection.
Around midnight, David and I were awakened by Malia, our kitty. After that I lay in half wakefulness for what seemed like so many hours that when Malia woke us again, I wondered why the sky wasn’t yet lit. I actually had the thought that maybe the sun wouldn’t rise at all. Today, my disappointment in my fellow citizens no longer crowds out the reality of the NOW as I contemplate whether or not I can make it through four more years of chaos, division, hatred, nasty talk, vilification of the one who is different, that those in the administration will be setting the worst possible example for the nation’s children, the furtherance of unchecked climate change–all this even IF the orange menace and his minions don’t replace democracy with fascism. Beyond canvassing and carrying signs and posting on Facebook, my primary form of activism for decades has been writing and helping produce plays for the stage. Now that we enter the future that writers of project 2025 told us they’d inaugurate, I surrender ever more to God–asking if this is where my energies are best spent. If it is, I ask God to guide me that way. Meanwhile, I’m going back to writing plays. If God wishes me to do something different, God will direct me that way.
https://youtu.be/QrPQfNjeHlo?si=GtnCbf7Pb4oae1lY
For me, Michael Franti captures my despair and hope
I refuse to let someone like Trump take over my thoughts and my country. He may have won an election but he has not won my country. I will work over the next yeas of my life to make sure that all people in this country have their rights upheld. I will not be silent about immigrants who need a safe place to live. I will not be silent when women lose freedom of choice. I will not be silent when Trump makes fun of people with disabilities. I have a voice that can be heard and we all need to continue to fight for our freedoms. We have a voice, we need to continue to use it. Margaret Dilgen
Thank you, Margaret Dilgen!! Sooooooo very well expressed! Sooooo true your words and thoughts! Thank you! Margie Miller
Jesus said his followers must be gentle as doves and sly as serpents. Balance helps the spiritual life, recognizing the anti-Christ has great power, but the Spirit has infinite grace–for us to apply in our world. Richard Rohr and others say that salvation is corporate, not individual. So let people of good will join together in existing organizations to resist the forces of Agent Orange and his ilk. Judy Cannato says that fields of compassion can carry cosmic weight. Let’s concentrate with our spiritual kin from here to the Amazon tribes for our endangered Mother Earth. Many who could have voted turned away from customary voting. They are the dough who need our good yeast. A recent comment on a political talk show said that we need less Starbucks and more Dunkin Donuts, i.e., bring the conversation to the ordinary people, not the highly educated “elite.” Downscale is where we must go “whether we like it or not.” And remember, in Christ we can do things that Jesus couldn’t in his day.
Amen and amen.
How will I go forward during this time? By grounding in the Truth of my being, and not allowing the shouts, cries and machinations of others to influence me. I meditate on Hildegard’s prayer:
“I, God, am in your midst.
Whoever knows me can never fall,
Not in that heights,
Not in the depths,
Nor in the breaths,
For I am love,
Which the vast expanses of evil
Can never still.
Amen 🧡
November 9, 2024
As I read these comments I am listening for the seventh time to
JOHN RUTTER’S REQUIEM music.
I encourage all who read your Daily Meditations to listen to this beautiful piece of music that touches our souls at our deepest levels.
Thanks to to all these dear people who commented, I no longer feel alone in this struggle to hold fast to our God is this crazy uncertain time. Yes, let us bear witnesss that truth and kindness and love are and have been our everlasting call.
A female mystic, like a black female president. is a unicorn, an impossibility in small men’s minds.
But we persist.
Through Spirit, God’s granted me a Graced gift of the One “high supreme” Mystical Revelation, the secret (long hidden from “commoners” and especially from “mere women”)- – Source and Divine Supreme Inspiration, the fountain of Existence in the One, the Truth of Mystical Monotheism at the deepest core of Judeo-Christian theology. It was, and forever IS, nothing less than a direct Imperative, a “Highest Order of Knowledge” and a “Sacred Template”, from and IN the One Source —
— of Equality for every human,
— of dignity for even the lowest,
— of nurturing and healing, for everyone, for our earth, for its plants and animals with whom we share the earth and universe,
— and of Love.
Always Love, the most challenging commandment of all.
Equality in the Spirit, and on earth as it is in heaven, was a commandment from the Spirit and of Jesus. We do not get to “tweak” that to “protect” fragile male egos. When men make theology in their own ego-image, they damage themselves and everyone around them.
It’s time to bring back the Truths from the Mystical Source that Jesus tried to share.
With my (virtual) pen, I’ve tried to point the way to our forgotten Mystical heritage.
We need this, especially now.
For right now I just want to express my profound gratitude for your DM’s and personal reflections, founded upon the opportunity to comment and otherwise participate with spiritual kin. I feel need for this community like never before. 🙏 ❤️ 🥲
Note regarding The Powell Memorandum.
In the first article, his name is spelled incorrectly in the first paragraph (Louis) but is subsequently spelled correctly. (Lewis F. Powell, Jr)
https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-billionaires-won-the-50-year-841
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/powell-memo-project-2025-plutocracy/
https://www.lifestyledemocracy.com/do-we-live-in-a-plutocratic-oligarchy-why-it-matters-for-democracy/
https://www.levernews.com/masterplan/