Governor Pritzker Speaks Truth to All Americans

Thanks are due to Rachel Maddow who, in opening her show last night, showed clips from Illinois governor JB Pritzker’s state of the state speech yesterday. 

I reproduce here the closing of his speech which feels to me to be a profound and unvarnished reading of the “signs of our times.”

Governor Pritzker is Jewish and he began this way.  I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly.  But I know the history intimately—and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust.  Here’s what I’ve learned—the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed—a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

Distrust, hate and blame have certainly characterized our politics in America of late.  January 6, 2020 will never be erased from our memories—nor should it.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight.  It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

Someone to blame.  Resentment has been baked into MAGA politics for a long time.  It sizzles on every page of Project 2025. 

Governor Pritzker:

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now.  A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac –and suggests—without facts or findings—that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash.  Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks—arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too ‘female’ and ‘nonwhite.’  The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I have just one question: What comes next?  After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities—once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends—after that, when the problems we stared with are still there staring us in the face—what comes next?

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question.  And if we don’t want to repeat history—then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it….

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible….My oath is to the constitution of our state and of our country.  We don’t have kings in America—and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. 

That very day Trump called himself a “king” and the White House distributed a picture of him in kingly attire.

I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions—but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazi one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.  All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Here he relays the story of Nazis who marched in Chicago in 1978.   Twenty showed up but 2000 people came to protest and resist them.  The march fizzled in ten minutes.  It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance.  Democracy requires your courage.  So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the ‘tragic spirit of despair’ overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Thank you.

See Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.

And Matthew Fox, “Spiritual Warriors” in Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 77-104.

And Fox, “Spiritual Warriorhood,” in Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Faith Traditions, pp. 404-422.

And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.

And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

Banner Image: “Hitler Trump.” Photo collage by JFXGillis on Flickr.

Queries for Contemplation

Do you think Governor Pritzker was overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon?  Do you agree that Democracy requires one’s courage in preference to fear, silence and compliance?  And that courage is an attribute of the spiritual warrior in all of us?

Recommended Reading

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.

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths

Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit

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

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice

In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register