Humor Repressed, Savage Capitalism Alive & Well in the Media

It is a sad and dangerous day when the president of the US teams up with large corporations to kill humor and satire in the country. But clearly this is happening as we speak, first with Stephen Colbert at CBS and now with Jimmy Kimmel at ABC.

Such goings-on are a canary in the coal mine of American democracy. A country that goes after those who get us to laugh at the powerful, is a country where only the powerful get to rule.

We are told that in Russia’s brief flirt with democracy under Gorbachev and then Yeltsin, humor came forward in the political sphere—perhaps for the first time ever. But when Putin took over, one of his first acts was to cancel a popular puppet show that dared to mock Putin (among others). And we know what came next.

Those who yearn to be strongmen are rarely gifted with a sense of humor—and never toward themselves. They hate being laughed at. So it was with Putin, so it is with the current presidential team. America without evening comedy shows, is going to be a dour and flat place.

But notice how swiftly the capitalist power brokers lusting to own as much media as they can, responded when Trump’s puppet at FCC called for Kimmel’s head.

Mussolini defined fascism as “the marriage of government and corporations.” That marriage is tightening daily in today’s America. It will be a marriage sans humor—unless it is the humor of beating up on others. Sadistic humor will flourish, such as one finds in the very name of their favorite concentration camp dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

When Pope Francis dared to write about “savage capitalism,” he was denounced by the right-wing billionaire class in America, Catholics included. But the Global South where he came from, is intimate with that reality. Now more and more Americans are feeling it up close and personal.

Savage capitalism is all about a few winners and many losers in a system that shows no mercy and no justice. It is ill at ease with anything like laws and a judicial system that is fair, and not rigged on behalf of  billionaire power brokers.

Pope Leo XIV pointed out in a recent interview that Elon Musk is on his way to being the first trillionaire ever, and how that does not augur well for anybody’s future. And that how 60 years ago, CEOs were paid 4 to 6 times what their workers were paid—today it is 600 times.

Billionaire MAGA donor Larry Ellison is taking over CBS (who cancelled Stephen Colbert’s show), and has chosen Bari Weiss to run CBS News. Weiss, a “free speech” crusader who is in bed with the far right, waged the big crusade over “cancel culture.” Yes, cancel culture crusaders are busy canceling humorists, and will now run the new CBS News.

60 Minutes is in for a rugged ride. More MAGA talking points on the way—move over, Fox News.

It’s amazing what money will buy. Savage capitalism is greed with no guard rails. And no pretense to the now outdated idea (killed under Reagan) that the airwaves belong to all of us.

Or that we all should pay taxes—even billionaires and their corporations. Today we hear billionaires bragging out loud that they pay no taxes. Taxes are for suckers, that is the rest of us.

With NPR and PBS dismantled and ABC and CBS compromised, the MAGA media megaphone will be louder than ever. And laughter is banished in the evenings.

The headlines for this new and dumber and sadder America? “Everything For Sale to the Highest Bidder!” “Democracy done and finished.” “Autocracy is the next new thing.” “Project 2025 at your doorstep.”

Welcome to an America where our only gods are Greed and Grievance.

See Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.

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

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

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

And Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation.

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

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner Image: Laughter, Criminalized: Cosplayers of partners-in-crime “Harley Quinn” and “The Joker” from DC Comics, at the Big Wow Comic Fest, 2013. Photo by Annette Wamser. Wikimedia Commons. 

Queries for Contemplation

Do you see a new religion that worships Greed and Grievance emerging in America and its media? In politics and economics? What can we do to organize and resist?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

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.

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

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

Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

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.