MAGA vs. the Common Good: An Amazingly Synchronistic Moment

Our last two daily meditations have been devoted to Thomas Aquinas’s powerful and substantive teachings on the common good.  He is given credit after all to bringing that concept, first articulated by Aristotle, into western consciousness and jurisprudence. 

I find great meaning and even solace in his teachings at this time of chaos and rupture in western politics when powerful and monied forces of authoritarianism are bent on displacing the very concept of the common good. 

I was amazed therefore to come across yesterday a discussion on the same topic by Michael Ian Black. The context was quite different from those who read our daily meditations. It was a “Viral ‘Debate” between liberal commentator Sam Seder and twenty young MAGA conservatives.* 

Black reported that his blood pressure fizzled and popped, and he had to eventually turn the “debate” off because he holds a conservative bias and vision of America which still believes that representative democracy remains the best form of government yet devised.  He embraces the preamble of our Constitution: “We, the People, in order to build a more perfect union…”  He comments that “It’s a remarkable word with which to establish a nation: ‘We.’”

And then came the ringer for me that was so pertinent to our last two DMs.  The “notion, the promise of a common good, is the fundamental divide between my vision and that of the current administration.” 

He points out that time and again…the young conservatives platformed in the video expressed a lack of faith in that pluralistic society.  They have no faith in our institutions. They have no faith in science.  They have no faith in Americans who do share their religious beliefs to determine the best course of action for their own lives. 

Fact-checking of their many claims found that their claims “were almost all incorrect” but never mind because “the MAGA worldview is not informed by facts but by feelings.  They feel that Social Security is a disaster despite the fact that, as Sam pointed out, it keeps 2/3 of our senior citizens out of poverty.”  The fact that vaccines work or climate change is happening and is man-made does not matter.  A “wholesale dismissal of data” predominates because, “as Stephen Colbert once famously said, “Reality has a liberal bias.”

These MAGA voters, he concludes “are flatly wrong about almost everything.”  The key is that “it doesn’t matter if you’re wrong so long as you are confidently wrong.  And oh boy are they confident.”

One debater said it out loud.  “The liberal world order needs to be overthrown completely, and Christian nationalism is a good alternative.”

Black concludes that it may not be possible to reach these people who probably feel the same about him, “although the difference between us is I have reality on my side.” 

He says that “We, the People” rests on a foundation I used to believe was unshakeable.”  Black believed we were capable of “identifying that which binds us, otherwise known as the common good.”  MAGA “rejects this” and in doing so, “rejects America.”

* Michael Ian Black, “The Viral ‘Debate’ Video That Proves Most MAGA Voters Are a Lost Cause.” The Daily Beast, March 12, 2025.

See Matthew Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 124f., 416f., 396-398, 408f., 415, 419.

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

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

And Fox, “Warriors for Ecological and Economic Justice: Meister Eckhart Meets Dorothy Stang, Karl Marx, David Korten, Serge Latouche, Anita Roddick, and Howard Thurman,” in Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times, pp. 221-230.

And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion.

And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.

Banner Image: ” ‘The Other America’ – The United States is once again in danger — but guided and inspired by the leaders of our past, those of us who still believe in Tolerance, Freedom and Democracy are not afraid!” Image by Daniel Arrhakis on Flickr.

Queries for Contemplation

What are your feelings on hearing about this debate with young MAGA voters and Sam Seder?  And on seeing how central the concept of “the common good” was to the understanding offered by Black about America, its past and its future?

Recommended Reading

Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him.  He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French).  He  gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way. 
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake

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.

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

Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time

While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward

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

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth

Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox.  He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.