In Saturday’s DM, I pointed out some silver linings inherent in the rampant run into fascism that is coming to a head in MAGA America today, beginning with learning lessons of solidarity.
The galloping into fascism is in fact a project devised over fifty years ago by then corporate lawyer Lewis Powell. Democratic senatorial candidate James Talarico from Texas is currently speaking about Powell’s doctrine, when he says the current affordability crisis “isn’t something that happened over the last five years….[it] has been 50 years in the making.”
Powell, writing in 1971 on behalf of the US Chamber of Commerce, set out “a blueprint for how corporations could amass political power, reverse the gains of the Great Society and the New Deal, and rig the system for themselves.” Its strategy consisted of uniting corporate special interests, insert corporate perspectives in the media, appoint sympathetic justices to the court, and buy politicians in both political parties. “And it worked. Republicans and some Democrats sold the false gospel of trickle-down economics.”
Powell proposed naming the interests of corporate America as “individual freedom.” Any legislation related to “consumerism” or the “environment” must be opposed. Corporate interests poured billions of dollars into supporting their candidates, resulting in congress passing massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporations while leaving working families without healthcare, childcare, essentials, and massive debt.
“Trickle-down economics is not a theory, it is theft,” says Talarico. The economy and politics (and SCOTUS I would add) are rigged by and for wealthy donors. The influence of Silicon Valley, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and other CEOs of the 1% of Americans making so many decisions for the rest of us.
Solutions Talarico offers include the following: raising the minimum wage, closing billionaire tax loopholes, passing universal childcare, permanently expanding the child tax credit, banning super political action committees, and providing down payment assistance for first-time home buyers.*
Other reforms ought to include expanding the number of Supreme Court judges to 13, and demanding an enforceable ethics standard to SCOTUS as well as term limits.
Another silver lining staring us in the face is a renewed debate about the future of the planet. An article titled “Trump administration moves to block public from enforcing environmental protection laws” points out how in the 1970s a bilateral congress passed environmental laws to protect clean air and water, including empowering people and advocacy groups to sue companies that violated them, or federal agencies that failed to enforce them. Over 2,000 lawsuits including a majority of environmental cases are citizen-brought cases that included halting construction dams protecting endangered species, ending the injection of wastewater into groundwaters, taking on petrochemical facilities and more.
But now Trump and his DOJ are putting forth a law that takes this right away from citizens, and leaves it entirely in the hands of the executive branch. The case at hand involves Musk’s AI.**
The silver lining I see here is a renewed debate about the peoples’ role in defending Mother Earth when governments, under pressure from corporate billionaires, fail to act.
This in turn leads to the bigger question becoming more visible: How we relate to the sacredness of creation itself, the Earth with its water and soil and forests and air and other species, all of which makes for our very survival and delight at living. Our survival begins with our rediscovering of our interdependence with the more-than-human community that birthed us, cares for us, and delights us.
This crisis too can lead to the cleaning up of our politics, economics and Earth. The struggle itself builds community and solidarity. It is therefore a silver lining and good news.
To be continued.
* Julia Conley, Talarico Explains Infamous ‘Powell Memo’ to Texas Voters, Common Dreams, August 6, 2026.
** Sarah J. Morath, Trump Administration moves to Block Public from Enforcing Environmental Protection Laws, The Conversation, August 3, 2026.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: Pristine waters from Lake Huron are pumped to Michigan homes via pipeline through Detroit, thanks to a hard-fought settlement in the Flint water crisis. View of Lake Huron from Port Dolomite, MI. Photo by NarparMI. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you recognize how the evil in killing citizen challenges to environmental degradation and the trickle-down economics of Powell and Co. can shed light on and open the door to a fuller realization of our place in the sacred cosmos and not taking our Mother Earth for granted?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faith Traditions.
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations.
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings in Creation Spirituality.
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action.
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3 thoughts on “Silver Linings in America’s March to Fascism, continued”
Our dereliction of duty toward the Earth community is a feature of the North American colonization and has always had its champions like Lewis Powell. In chapter 11 of The Great Work, titled The Corporation Story, Thomas Berry explains how “The corporations, in their ambivalent commitment to financial profit while making progress in human affairs and providing comfort and security for people, are among the principal instruments for devastating the planet.” In a 1889 essay that came to be referred to as The Gospel of Wealth, Andrew Carnegie praised the accumulation of extreme wealth by some individuals in order to carry out great enterprises on behalf of the community, thus equating trickle-down economics and philanthropy. Thomas Berry also writes that “the number of lawyers hired by single corporations to defend themselves against any limitation of their perceived rights to exploit the natural world is evidence of the strange principles of jurisprudence that allow the devastation of the planet to proceed,” and that “The older tension in human affairs between conservative and liberal based on social orientation is being replaced with the tension between developers and ecologists based on orientation toward the natural world. This new tension is becoming the primary tension in human affairs.” The current economy is in a state equivalent to the super cooling of water and its champions would be well advised to read the story of the horses of Lake Ladoga.
YES! Thank you Matthew for today’s prophetic and enlightening meditation on the Spirit of Social Justice being Alive within Us and among the youth and social justice organizations/movements in the US and around the world. Our Faith is that we’re All a part of Our Sacred Mother Earth and Our ongoing evolution as Sacred Humanity and Co-Creators with-in Our Sacred Cosmos, including and collaborating with All physical/nonphysical spiritual dimensions/beings (lorian.org).
The relentless greed and malignant persistence of elites and corporations in seeking total free rein in using up, exploiting and destroying the planet and her creatures, and reversing all the gains of working class progress, (including democracy itself) in pursuit of outrageous wealth for themselves is mind boggling. And now they are joined by “Christian” nationalists who support and cheer them on in God’s name. They might want to read the bibles they pretend to revere, where in Revelation 11:18 it says God will destroy all those who destroy the earth.