What’s happening in the USA makes no sense as a rite of democracy. But it fits this historical moment like a hand in a glove.
This most unpresidential of presidential campaigns is a blatant — if distorted — display of the biggest transit in the sky. For several months now, the square from Neptune (erasure) has been undermining the American self-image (Saturn in the Sibly 1st house). A mutable T-square between Jupiter, Neptune and Saturn, in effect since last summer,(1) is expressing itself in the candidates’ febrile, obfuscating generalizations (Jupiter), outright lies (Neptune) and righteous blaming (Saturn in Sadge).(2)
By November, Jupiter will have moved on, leaving the stage to Saturn and Neptune. This will isolate, pitted against each other, two irrefutable cosmic principles: hard-ass, bare-bones realness (Saturn) and chimerical, baseless illusion (Neptune). In the absence of awareness, the conflict between them makes for a grotesque charade.
We find the most science-fiction-like scenarios turning out to be true (such as, say, the fact that the 62 richest families on Earth own as much as half the global population); while the most straight-shootin’, telling-it-like-it-is pronouncements are 
revealed to be as fake as an orange tan and comb-over.
Lost its brand
It has been a hard slog for Uncle Sam. Weighted down with the responsibility of projecting a solid national image (Saturn on the Ascendant), all his attempts to take the initiative – with Putin, immigrants, ISIS, a dysfunctional Congress — are coming to naught (Neptune).
Contrast our reputation during the great American Century, now over and done. We were the world’s cowboy hero. Galloping in to clean up the town (Sagittarius rising), we always knew what to do. This was the reason for Ronald Reagan’s counterfactual appeal: he was the perfect match for this national brand.
Now in the twenty-teens, that picture is as faded as a B-movie poster from the ’50s. America has lost its brand. Its sense of itself (Ascendant) is unraveling.
Outsiders
Bearing witness to this unraveling are Trump and Sanders, each running on an anti-establishment ticket. Their extraordinary success is the result of a massive loss of credibility in the official narrative. The public is fatally disenchanted (Saturn is the dis- [to take away]; Neptune is the enchantment).
And Uranus’ square to the US Sun cluster is still raging, fueling a firestorm of populism. As George Packer has pointed out, populism can ignite reform or reaction, idealism or scapegoating. Both the Sanders crowd (younger, better-educated, urban) and those stumping for Trump (small-town, less-educated white males) feel their country has been taken away from them.
Sanders is telling us the cold hard facts (Saturn), but for the latter group, this is too much reality. They prefer the gaseous siren call of Trump (Neptune).
Trump is, of course, a trust-fund lad; not, as he claims, a self-made man. But he is definitely a self-made brand. And he is offering himself up as the new brand to a country that has lost its old one.
Dying Empire
Trump appeals to the reptile brain of pissed-off Americans for whom blatant fabrications (Neptune) do not require consequences (Saturn). His bombastic claims get proven false again and again, but it doesn’t seem to matter.(3)
But his singularity is overrated. As many have noted, he is only saying out loud what the rest of the GOP says in code.
Neither is his ascendancy really such a surprise. This type of demagogue shows up like clockwork in global empires that are struggling to keep their heads above water. Many commentators have noticed the similarity between Trump’s campaign and those of chaotic, fractured states like Germany and Italy between the wars — a comparison made manifest by Trump’s own inadvertent reference to Mussolini on Twitter. (4)
Over the past five thousand years of patriarchal history, puerile alpha-dog posturing is one of the most consistent symptoms of civilizations in decay.(5)
Notes
Title from Tom Engelhardt, who sees it as “…part bread-and-circuses spectacle, part celebrity obsession, and part 
media money machine.”
1 Part of a cycle that started in the late 1980s, the Saturn-Neptune square is hovering around exactitude again, late April through July. I discuss its personal, global and spiritual significance in my webinar “Crisis of Faith.”
2 Discussed in detail in Keeping Score.
3 As comedian John Oliver says, “You can hold his feet to the fire, but ..he’ll just stand there on his stumps, bragging about his fireproof foot skin.”
4 On NYTimes.com 12/05/2015, we find these defining characteristics of fascism: “A cult of action, a celebration of aggressive masculinity, a fear of difference and outsiders, an intense nationalism and a resentment at national humiliation.”
5 The USA will have a Pluto Return in 2022. See “Right Use of Power,” The Mountain Astrologer Feb/ March 2014.
