Pluto is slowing down for its station opposed to the midpoint of the US Venus and Jupiter, and the rot at the core of the American system is blossoming in the summer heat. The nation’s values (Venus) are being stripped raw. A twisted morality (Jupiter) is being exposed.

As individuals, we can’t afford to lose our minds amidst the madness, nor lose sight of our own moral compass. To stay engaged yet sane and humane, we must observe collective psychopathy while keeping a distance from it. One way to do this is to see current events as myths being played out (discussed in detail in my latest lecture).

Art mirrors life, and life mirrors art. Watching our world happen as if it were a story being told, we learn from the symbols couched in events; just as we do when we take in the truths of a parable or legend. In the news headlines, we find themes from great works of fiction; such as Lewis Carroll’s enduring parody Through the Looking Glass, written 130 years ago without ever going out of print.

Political cartoonists have made hay out of the fact that the current Tea Party movement bears the same name as the psychotic shindig in Wonderland. As America’s cultural landscape gets more and more grotesque, more and more parallels are appearing between Carroll’s fictional characters and our own real-time crackpots.

We’ve got candidates like Mitt Romney, whose changes of position mirror the way the Mad Hatter and the March Hare arbitrarily jump up and switch places around the tea table. We’ve got Fox News bullies verbally abusing their opponents in the same way the Hatter insults Alice with over-“personal remarks”. We’ve got empty-headed blowhards like Rick Perry, whose challenges to Obama mirror the Hatter’s unanswerable riddles — to which he does not have an answer himself. We’ve got demagogues like Sarah Palin who, when challenged, can only stonewall with mean-spirited sarcasm; just as the Hatter mocks Alice when she asks him a commonsense question.

In the story, you will recall, this behavior eventually drove Alice away. Will the American public, too, finally get sick of the insanity, and get up and leave the table?

A first step in doing so would be refusing to buy into the jerry-rigged duopoly that drives American politics. All Americans know, on some level of consciousness, that no social change can come of the farcically hyped-up contests between the two major parties, both choreographed by the same cabals. It is understood that the system is set up to silence any contenders outside of a few hand-picked Tweedledums and Tweedledees.

During a recent debate about the country’s tailspin into financial chaos, it was interesting to see outsider Ron Paul play the role of Alice. He was the only speaker who mentioned military spending, and he was met with eye-rolling dismissal by the other Republicans. They actually smirked when he proposed reconsidering the wisdom of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – which a new study says could end up costing $4.4 trillion.

Let’s write that in numerals: $4,400,000,000,000.

When Mars slammed into the Cardinal Cross and ignited the US chart in early August, Democrats and Republicans approved their much-touted “compromise” which, while cutting services for the unemployed, the poor, the elderly and schoolchildren, leaves tax breaks for the very wealthy intact and the war budget untouched.

The USA’s penchant for stupefyingly selfish leaders and fatally ignorant citizens will only get more absurd as the Uranus-Pluto square plays itself out. During its peak years (2012-2016), the corruptions of America’s political and financial institutions will be laid bare for all to see. It’s essential that we avoid outrage fatigue; anger and incredulity can take us only so far. It’s time to ground ourselves in the larger meaning of cultural breakdown.

Sky watchers achieve this perspective by isolating the cosmic lessons encoded in astrological archetypes. Another way is to track what’s happening through the lens of apposite fiction and myth.

We may find it not only appropriate, but healing, to respond with a dark Carrollian laugh to these latest incarnations of Wonderland lunatics.