In yesterday’s DM and video, we considered the very dubious historic watershed of the first trillionaire in human history. We also called for a re-do of the church’s definition of itself as the “mystical body of Christ” to include the “mystical/prophetic body of Christ” because all of us are called to be both mystics and prophets.
What does all this mean for the continued demise of democracy? The same person who 20 months ago, on the eve of the 2024 election, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into MAGA’s election bid to assure that Trump and a Republican Congress would rule is now a trillionaire.
How has that investment gone? For the poorest people of the world? For holding climate change in check? For the average American trying to make it? For the freedom of the press? For the support of science? For the future of the Earth? For America’s reputation abroad?
What does it mean when the Superrich Millionaires, billionaires, and now trillionaires can buy politicians and entire political parties? And with the so-called Supreme Court of the land leading them on and cheerleading out front, assuring us that corporations are “people” with the rights of individual citizens? And in the Citizens United decision, blowing the doors wide open, inviting in untold amounts of dark money to flood campaign treasure chests?
We have seen what happens to the media when billionaires like the Ellison family (and the Murdoch clan before them) can take over CBS and very shortly CNN to gut critical thinking and critical reporting and fire comedians who get us to laugh at those in power and satirize their sins.
We cannot shut our eyes to the effort to kill all public news broadcasting, whether PBS or NPR. And attempts to squelch the arts, replace them with propaganda, and try to hijack the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Corruption ruled the day in Sunday’s birthday party for Trump in the form of a UFC cage match on the White House lawn, where sponsors used the hallowed symbols as a backdrop to make money.
As one political commentator put it, that event was “as corrupt a MAGA event as there could be.” It amounted to a “state-sponsored promotion of the mixed martial arts organization, with Paramount also benefiting.”*
The government, i.e., American taxpayers, paid for the event to the tune of $60 million. It is against the law for federal landmarks such as the White House to be used for private profit, yet corporations, including Monster Energy drink, Bud Light, Polymarket, MiracleGro, and UFC, eagerly peddled their wares all with the White House in the background.
Said one observer: What Trump is giving the United States for its 250th birthday is humiliation, because this is humiliating. If any other country did what Trump is doing, it would spur immediate ridicule.* Ridicule and embarrassment now mark the USA in the eyes of the world.
The cage match of Sunday was America’s equivalent to the coliseum gladiators, with bread and circuses offered up to the masses for the purpose of distraction by the sadistic emperors of ancient Rome. The idolatry of violence on full display.
What an amazing moment to be remembering our 250th anniversary as a nation. How far we have wandered from the ideals of the founding fathers who set up (an admittedly flawed) democracy as a beacon to the nations of the world.
Can we get our nation back? Can democracy resurrect and throw off the rule of autocracy? Can we become a nation of, by and for the people?
The 2026 election will surely be decisive in answering that question.
*William Vaillancourt, “Why Trump’s 80th Birthday Bash Is So Fully Corrupt,” The Daily Beast, June 12, 2026.
Banner Image: Commercial carnival on the White House South Lawn. Photo by Victoria Pickering on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you sense that ridicule and embarrassment are now part of the American image around the world? Do you agree that the Roman emperors who sponsored gladiators and circuses as distractions had nothing on the presidency of today?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors To Awaken the Sacred Masculine
Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
3 thoughts on “On Distractions, Gladiators & Corruption on the White House Lawn”
Besides a foul-smelling mix of ridicule and embarrassment as core ingredients, this grotesque birthday cake recipe included a sprinkle of infamy, a pinch of humiliation and a dash or two of disrepute. Many had warned that the fake pastry chef should not go anywhere near the kitchen, but many in the hiring committee did not show up on hiring day. History will keep a picture of the June 14 White House on the flip side of a photograph of the January 6 Capitol. Salts should be immediately prescribed to Lady Liberty to prevent fainting. Recovery, if recovery there is, will be slow and painful.
How low have we fallen!
May God have mercy on us.
If you are a fan of Spielberg’s movie trilogy – Back to the Future, then you will understand when I say that Trump has Biffed the White House and Biffed America. Biff was the ignorant thug bully in the movies and in one of the movies, due to to going back in time and amending the timeline, gets control of the heroes’ hometown. Trump is Biff with money. Grotesque, fetid, brutal, cruel, utterly immoral, neanderthal, ignorant, vulgar and ridiculous. And yes, the world is laughing, (I am Canadian) but also horrified. It is indeed, tragic, American bread and circuses and barbarism, what Prof. Timothy Snyder calls sado-populism where the common people accept cruel spectacle and the enjoyment of others suffering more than them ( immigrants, anyone of colour for example) instead of actual functioning government that helps everyone, while the oligarchs and Biff/Trump robs them all blind.
Only you guys can save your democracy.