Beyond Kings—and Beyond Führers Too?

This past week was a revealing one for American politics culminating in seven million Americans marching in protest of MAGA and its sins.

The Speaker of the House, third in line for the presidency, who proudly tells everyone he is a Christian when he seems to mean a christian nationalist, calls the Americans protesting yesterday people “who hate America.” I was among them and truly, what we hate is what America is becoming under his “leadership”—the authoritarianism/fascism/Nazism emerging in the halls of Congress and other high places.

John Roberts’s SCOTUS set us up for a government of billionaires, by billionaires, and for billionaires by their obscene Citizens United decision in 2010. That decision was in the news this week with the release of a memoir by former Justice Anthony Kennedy—who actually wrote it. He dreamed up the idea that corporations are people and entitled to the same rights as humans.

Donations to political campaigns, “including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” and therefore can be without limit. The Lever reports that the ruling unleashed a flood of money into politics: between the 2008 and 2012 elections, outside campaign spending nearly doubled from $547 million to $1.3 billion; by 2024, it reached $4.5 billion.*

Today, 80% of Americans believe campaign corruption is destroying America; and 84% believe special interest groups and lobbyists wield too much power. This includes Republicans, independents and Democrats.

Kennedy laments that “democracy as we know it is in danger,” yet leaves unsaid his role in Citizens United as well as in his “delivering financial favors to legislators on behalf of his clients” when working as a lobbyist under then Governor Ronald Reagan in Sacramento.

Also this past week, SCOTUS is threatening to erase even the tiny bit remaining from the civil rights laws passed at the expense of martyrs like MLK, Jr. and others 54 years ago. SCOTUS has green-lighted gerrymandering, as is happening in Texas and other places at a breathless pace.

We also learned last week that a Republican congressperson had a picture of an American flag with a swastika in it hanging on his congressional office wall.

Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House has closed Congress for 28 days and is doing everything he can to postpone a new democratically-elected representative from Arizona to take the oath of office. The issue being her vote will guarantee the release all of the Epstein Files. To do so may embarrass the president and some other people in high places, just as it has this week stripped Prince Andrew of his many titles.

Also this week “Young” Republicans (actually ages 18-40) were caught on tape saying things like “I love Hitler,” espousing anti-semitism, and calling people of color the “n” word. And ICE continues to attack immigrants violently on the streets of democratic-led cities and has imprisoned over 170 American citizens in their violent roundups.

Thomas Paine, writing at the time of America’s birth, declared that our only king is “the Law.” This week the president declared, “I am not a king”—eerily similar to President Nixon’s declaration that “I am not a crook.”

Corporate titans line up to pay him homage and gain favors, such as at a recent gathering at the White House to raise millions for his soon-to-be golden ballroom. (Why does he want a ballroom? He can barely walk to his esteemed golf cart with his ankles so swollen; and I don’t get the impression Melania wants to dance with him anyway.)

The Department of Homeland Security posted “Remigrate” on X promoting self-deportation. Far-right politicians in Austria and Germany (AfD party) use exactly that word “to refer to the mass deportations of non-white immigrants,” notes an expert. It bespeaks the language “of white supremacy,” and is “a clear escalation in the language around issues of migration.”**  

Nothing to see here. Nothing to protest against, right?

* Veronica Riccobene and David Sirota, “Anthony Kennedy is Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This,” The Lever, October 14, 2025.

** Connor Greene, “Trump’s Department of Homeland Security Embraces a Word With Ties to White Nationalism,” Time, October 16, 2025.

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

Banner Image: “Rejecting Tyrants is an American Tradition:” A sign seen at the “No Kings” rally in New York City, June 14, 2025. Photo by Rhododendrites. Wikimedia Commons.

Queries for Contemplation

How would you characterize those seven million Americans who marched on Sunday? Were you among them and if so, what did you learn? Do you believe that unlimited money spent on elections does give rise to corruption and appearances of corruption?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.

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

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.