In a recent DM, GG reported how Carl Jung warned of the antichrist as an archetype that can take over a society and that is how Hitler succeeded in getting majorities of people to follow him without conscience.
This underscores the spiritual dimension of evil. Evil appeals to depths of ourselves—hurt, trauma and outrage that, if unattended, easily gets projected onto others as scapegoats and objects of hatred “worthy” even of sadistic measures. Self-hatred, unattended, produces unbridled hatred of others.
Steven Miller operating his sadistic “Alligator Alcatraz” project from the White House with the complicity of the Florida governor is a fine example of that.
Thus, the importance of shadow work—to look at one’s own shadow so that it does not operate out of the realm of our reason and conscience and jump into action when demagogues come along appealing to our unexamined hurt and resentments.
This week the MAGA congress voted to gut public funding of PBS television and NPR radio. Why? Because their news broadcasts upset their leader in the White House.
What are we losing by this vote? For the last 22 years, PBS had been voted “the most trusted institution in America.”* Americans honor its consistent delivery of news, public affairs, and educational programming. So we are losing the most trusted institution in America.
Among the most popular shows in PBS have been the following: Julia Child’s The French Chef (1963-1973); Antiques Roadshow (1997-today); Finding Your Roots (2012-today); The Joy of Painting (1983-1994); The Civil War by Ken Burns (1990), and his other documentaries including Baseball, Jazz, The War, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, Prohibition, Thomas Jefferson, and others; Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980-1981); Frontline (1983-today); Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968-2001); Masterpiece (1971-today) including Downton Abbey, Les Miserables, All Creatures Great and Small, and much more; and Sesame Street (1969-today).
Are all these shows, and potentially others to come of equal quality and interest and meaning, to be dispensed with because the dear leader has thin skin and can’t tolerate real news?
America already spends less money on public media than any Western nation. The just-approved funding cuts will slash $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), removing all federal support for NPR, PBS and their member stations.
In an editorial entitled “This Is Why America Needs Public Media,” the New York Times compares the public media to the US Postal Service and to public libraries, because without public funding small communities would not have mail service or libraries.**
Furthermore, as more and more local newspapers and TV stations fold around the country, public radio “can be the sole source of information” and especially when electricity goes out in severe storms—which are multiplying due to climate change storms and floods, etc. “Nearly one in five NPR member stations could close down without federal funding.” ** Listening in the Midwest, South and West will be the hardest hit.
A “dangerous trend straining civic health” is occurring with local journalism having declined 75% since 2022. Sesame Street helps children learn to read and to count—is this MAGA’s goal, to dumb down our children and our country altogether? And replace public news with MAGA news?
This obscene wipeout of federal funds for public PBS and NPR is a sure way to ensure it. It opens the door to still more propaganda media financed by crazed billionaire investors such as Fox News to fill in the vacuum. What a fine investment in fascism—which Mussolini defined as “the marriage of government and corporations”! For fascism to succeed, one needs a dumber and ever less critical society.
Thank you, Congress. Welcome, Americans, to Project 2025 and an even dumber nation.
*”PBS: Most Trusted Institution for 22 Years.” PBS Western Reserve.
** NYT Editorial Board, “This Is Why America Needs Public Media,” New York Times, July 16, 2025
See Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Religion USA: Religion & Culture by Way of Time Magazine.
Banner Image: Lois Reitzes, outgoing host and cultural reporter/announcer for Atlanta-area public radio station WABE, participates in an Atlanta Easter parade, 2025. Photo by Thomas Cizauskas on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
What does it mean that the MAGA congress has pulled the funding from the “most trusted institution in America”? What are the implications of that? What programs that you watch or listen to are meaningful enough to you that you will translate your moral outrage into effective action and link up with others to resist?
Recommended Reading
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
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
Religion USA: Religion and Culture By Way of Time Magazine
The purpose of this book is to descend from the majestic heights of the critique of religion, to the level of religion’s interaction with life in its multiple colors and dimensions, that is in culture …. Modern man, far from being without religion, is bombarded by religions claiming his ultimate allegiance and priorities — in his TV, his movies, his records, as well as in his press …. Our method of analysis takes these claims to religion seriously, beginning where everyday man begins, in the confusion of the multiple tongues bestowed on him at the secular Pentecost by the knowledge explosion and the media expansion.
“This uniquely American study … [analyzes] the role of religion in a culture. It contains a mine of information for sociologists of religion, as the same time that it opens up a whole new direction for theology.” —Professor Jacques Audinet, Institut Catholique de Paris
