Pledging Allegiance

Chaos, for astrologers, is as meaningful as any other organic phase.

It shows up in times of transition, accompanying waning planetary cycles, such as the four up in the sky right now — all of them wheezing to their respective finish lines (covered in this webinar).

Pluto in particular (in Capricorn 2008-23) is doing its job well, eviscerating all standards of normalcy in national life.

And what’s our job, as astro-citizens? It is to hold things in perspective. We may do other things, too, but our main job is to hold onto the big picture. ⁽¹⁾

The biggest picture, the one looming behind all the global crises and hourly political scandals, is the one described by the cycle of Pluto. It tells us that the governing institutions of the world are being purged.

[Kavanaugh expresses] petulance…with notes of fury and bullying… a model of American conservative masculinity … tied to the loutish, aggressive frat-boy persona that Kavanaugh is purportedly seeking to dissociate himself from. — Alexandra Schwartz

The toxic attitudes (Pluto) that have shored them up, including patriarchy (Capricorn), are being exposed, for the purpose of our beginning a new era with a clean slate.

Fading patriarchy

I don’t think, in twenty years’ time, that anyone … will think it was OK. It’s as laughable as taking your children to a public execution. — Jane Garvey, “Woman’s Hour”

It’s especially important during crazy times to play the long game. This is precisely what is not happening with the politicians and talking heads now hauling out the old boys-will-be-boys apologia for men like Roy Moore, Les Moonves and Brett Kavanaugh. With their sights set on professional security, these advocates seem to be unconcerned about being on the right side of history.

Shame is one of the last weapons of the fading patriarchy. But unlike the other means that have been used to keep women down, this one is entirely within our control to defeat. — Guy Kawasaki

But it’s not just about picking one side or the other in the latest culture-war skirmish. We need to pledge our allegiance not to partisan points of view – which are, by definition, temporary and shortsighted — but to the long evolutionary process of which this hot mess is only a phase.

Mango Unchained ⁽²⁾

It’s karma time in the USA, where a head of state (Capricorn) is undermining (Pluto) America’s sense of being a country based on rule of law.

But we need to remember that well before this grotesque presidency, America’s smug self-image as the greatest civilization in history had started to crumble.

Capricorn is the sign of civilization. It was after Pluto’s ingress in 2008 that questioning picked up steam: How could a country with off-the-charts gun violence, prohibitively priced healthcare, and out-of-control income disparity describe itself as civilized?

Trump’s awfulness didn’t begin this national breakdown, it has merely shocked us out of our complacency. “He has energized public debate about the kind of country we should be”(Glen Greenwald).

Secular religion

Remember when you were introduced to the concept of patriotism, somewhere around fourth grade?

I remember it being presented as a noble thing. I did distrust the ominously emotive charge that was attached to it, as with religion; as well as the exaltation of our specific country above all others. But as a child on the lookout for viable models of adulthood, I liked the fact that patriotism presupposed a familiarity with our system of government and its history.

It seemed like it could serve as a grown-up version of respectful allegiance: a secular belief in something. Patriotism, unlike religion, seemed to be based on solid criteria and informed experience.

How remote this youthful impression seems, here in the fevered muddle of 2018.

Flag Pins

Even the emotive charge of patriotism has faded, at least among those who claim it as a job description. For our hideously cynical lawmakers, it’s just a flag pin on the lapel; a perfunctory cliché to lard their speeches with.

As for the voters, don’t you wonder what goes through the minds of the old-school patriots who support these cravenly disingenuous politicians? What criteria are our good fellow citizens applying, that allows them to accept self-serving misanthropes like Grassley, McConnell and Cruz as patriotic?

How are they defining allegiance to country?

Cheating

Certainly not in practical terms – as in, a willingness to pay taxes. These voters know that the rule, not the exception, among wealthy office-holders is to stash their profits offshore. Some of them applaud the guy in the White House who’s too smart, he says, to pay taxes.

When sleaze bags like Paul Manafort et al get busted for out-and-out criminality, we feel gratified, relieved that the system works. But it’s the legalized cheating that is the greater issue.

If the country is to undergo a rebirth after this breakdown, we need to address the kind of cheating that is standard practice in big business, with the help of whole legal departments; the kind of cheating in the financial industry that caused — and will cause again — the Wall Street meltdown; the kind of cheating that happens in politics via voter suppression, gerrymandering, corporate campaign funding and claiming victory after losing the popular vote.

It is these types of cheating, so common that they have become normative, that reveal a system in decay.

Winning

We are not able to, and will never, find win-win solutions with a win-lose mind. — Leslie Temple-Thurston, The Marriage of Spirit

Political corruption has been around forever, of course; as has the division of the world into winners and losers. A winner-take-all economic system, which ensures a steady stream of losers, has been around at least as long as capitalism.

But in this time of fading cycles, the crudeness and stupidity of winner-take-all has become more blatant. It has even become more or less official, thanks to the moral primitive in the White House, who makes no bones about dividing the world down into winners and losers.

Trump has no time for the dry justifications with which experts and academics try to disguise the ugly injustices of the system. He has unmasked the brutal machismo beneath America’s dominant paradigm.

He has similarly dispensed with the oily posturings of political performances. There’s a tuba playing a solo where his brain should be, somebody said; but this is why his base loves him. He does not smooth over his power games with nationalistic bullshit. Under Trump, patriotism no longer serves as a fig leaf.

McCain mutiny

The Republican Party used to stand for fiscal responsibility, states’ rights, free trade and a hard line against Russian aggression. Now it just stands for Trump. – Robert Reich

For many Americans, the death of John McCain was the death of old-school patriotism. As a politician, he was neither consistent nor a maverick; his much-touted expressions of genuine ethics were as rare as his departures from convention. But it wasn’t his voting record that made him a hero last month. It was his dying at a moment when the country was desperate for a hero. ⁽³⁾

It was not the man but the symbol that leapt up onto a pedestal immediately after his death (see Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant essay ). He was elevated by a craving in the mass mind, especially strong in those Americans who’d grown up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance each morning before class.

His passing jolted awake a populace that’s been stumbling along in a disheartened haze. It clarified what’s been lost: an old-fashioned national pride. McCain’s old-world patriotism may have been as empty as the promises on an army recruitment poster, but it felt a good sight healthier than what’s going on now.

New civil war

Old forms are fading fast, but the healthy new ones have not yet revealed themselves. Instead there’s a restive emptiness. And all over the world, populist demagogues are exploiting the human need to feed the emptiness with a generalized rage against the Other Side.

For many Americans, a positive allegiance has been replaced with a negative allegiance. Their devotion to their country has morphed into a rabid hatred of their political opponents. But this binary reductionism — a primitive expression of Gemini, the USA Mars (which conjoins Trump’s Sun) — is not new.

Consider the reactive polarization that prevailed here during the Cold War. Then, the reviled Other was the USSR. Now, the Other is the other side of our own political establishment.

The dynamic is the same, but the patriotic logic has been turned inside out. Since the Reagan administration, the strategy of former flag-wavers has been to denounce government – i.e. the federal government – as the problem. Now, when southern politicians go all noble and teary-eyed to get votes, it probably isn’t the stars and stripes they’re wrapping themselves in, but the flag of the Confederacy.

The demographic that cried the loudest for the blood of Russian sympathizers 50 years ago is now the one turning up at Trump rallies wearing T-shirts that say “Better red than Democrat.”

To counter the GOP’s Russophilia, Bill Maher wryly advises the Democrats to merge with China. They’re the future, he says; a much better sponsor than Russia, “a mobbed-up has-been state run by petrocrats in purple satin shirts.”

Great experiment

Apart from late night comedy, the conventional media right now is suffocatingly short-sighted. Careening breathlessly from hour to hour, it has lost all bearings in history, logic and common sense.

For those Americans interested in identifying what, if anything, is worth saving of the great American experiment in democracy, we have to back up from the fray. We’ll have to give up certain of our fiercely-held attachments.

We’ll have to request a deferment from the new American Civil War: the one between Trump’s base and the rest of us.

25th Amendment

We’ll have to question the way the liberal establishment rushes to embrace anybody in public life, no matter how smarmy or vicious (e.g. Jeff Bezos), just because he was targeted by Trump. We’ll refuse to glorify war criminal George Bush just because he has a telegenic moment with Michelle Obama.

We’ll abstain from applauding when Democrats score cheap points, besting (momentarily) the GOP’s own cheap points. We’ll question the wisdom of back-pedaling away from the truth, as is happening with Rod Rosenstein’s utterly sound invocation of the 25th Amendment (“he was only being sarcastic”).

Anita Hill redux

Who will write the account of this bizarre episode of US history? We should not leave it up to the Democrats to identify the staggering courage of Christine Blasey Ford, or the “grotesque display of patriarchal resentment” (Doreen St Felix) of Brett Kavanaugh. We the people, individual women and men, need to tell the tale. Not as members of one party or another, but as human beings.

This is trickier than it should be, given the raucous haste with which we are pigeonholed in the media conversation as being on one side or the other (and worse, we may pigeon-hole ourselves). In war time, independence of thought is deemed dangerous by both sides.

At the same time, we must not be intimidated into silence by charges of partisanship, on the part of those who cannot perceive an opinion in any other terms. Far worse than being called the parroter of a party line would be failing to name a truth that’s right in front of our face.

Everyone, of whatever affiliation, should be speaking out against the sociopath in the White House.

Collective karma

But there are many layers of meaning to this dark drama. The deeper we dig into the symbolism of the U.S. Pluto Return, the more we will come to see Donald Trump as something other than a singular evil. We will find ourselves considering the collective karma that gave rise to this preposterous man.

It is not just the Saturn figures (authority) that should concern us, but the Plutonian ones (hidden power): the eminence gris around Trump, who were here before he arrived and will be here after he’s gone.

Notes

1. Our life purpose and skill set, laid out in our birth chart, will suggest what we could do. I discuss this question in my webinar “Sacred Activism” at Astrology University.

2. Trevor Noah’s insult for the poisonous buffoon in the White House.

3. In Soul-Sick Nation I discuss McCain’s chart in the context of the USA’s.