The planetary formations up in the sky right now are rare and profound, and they’re hitting the USA right between the eyes. There’s a collective destiny at work here.
And per the law of synchronicity, the American group soul has conjured up a circumstance perfectly suited to the life-or-death symbolism of a Pluto-Saturn conjunction: that of a civil war.
Like the one we had in the 1860s, this one is a culture war. The carnage will be less literal this time, but no less psychically fraught.
The first casualty, when war comes, is truth. — Hiram Johnson (1866-1945)
Many of us will feel the urge to rush onto the battlefield to minister to the truth before it succumbs to its wounds.
This effort needs to start now.
So come on, let’s pull on our Red Cross pinafores.
Battle lines drawn
As usual with civil wars, there are mini-wars within the larger one. In our face right now is the Democratic Party’s internal struggle over the question of impeachment.
It’s a conflict between strategy (Pelosi) and ideology (the Squad).
Pelosi, whose strategic savvy has steered her party through many a storm, is approaching the defeat of Trump from the limited 
vantage point of Capitol Hill. While not unsound, her grindingly cautious stance on impeachment comes from her investment in preserving the pre-Trump status quo.
Meanwhile, just about everyone outside the Beltway is approaching it from a far broader perspective.
Moral questions
Peaking for the third and last time in September, the transiting square between Neptune and Jupiter, which creates a Grand Cross in the US chart, makes it clear that 
2019 is about profound moral — even existential — questioning.
It’s about Uncle Sam’s willingness or unwillingness to identify and correct a grotesque “democracy malfunction,” as the Chinese call Trump.
The question of whether or not to call this deplorable presidency to legal account through impeachment is not What would be the political fallout if we did so, but rather, What are the ethical implications of not doing so?
Pelosi can try all she wants to put a lid on passionate debates about principle, but it won’t work. They are the whole point of this collective moment.
Pluto Return
The transits confirm what all America-watchers know: that something like death is occurring in the body politic (U.S. Pluto Return). We can’t know yet whether this process will lead to a national rebirth.
What we can know is that Pelosi’s efforts to preserve traditional protocols in a time of systemic breakdown is an exercise in futility.
A healthy democratic body would have rejected Trump the same way a healthy body rejects a virus. – Ezra Levin
A similar conflict raged during the 1860s, as historian Rick Perlstein has observed. During the lead-up to that earlier Civil War, the political establishment of the Union side wanted to prevent escalation at all costs. They passionately condemned the abolitionists, who we now see as the heroes.
As we watch the Omar-AOC-Pressley-Tlaib contingent come up against Pelosi, we might ask ourselves how history will view this contest.
We might think about how we would answer a question from, say, our grandchildren or great-grandchildren-to-be, if they asked us about this civil war: who we championed, where we stood.
Keeping a distance
But we must be careful as we follow the daily dispatches from the battlefields.
We know that the global albatross now in the White House is perversely fortified, like a sociopathic toddler, by media attention, which he manipulates with idiot-savant mastery.
To react to every idea that springs Athena-like from his collapsing pumpkin of a head, (1) and freak out about each new farcical horror streaming out of Washington, would dissipate our energy and risk psychic contagion.
As the campaigns pick up heat and speed, we will need to discipline ourselves.
Mad as hell
Better we should focus not on Trump, but on Trumpism.
This is a cohort that includes the down-ticket Republicans who stand by their man through every atrocity of behavior and idiocy of tweet, no matter how personally and professionally debasing their affiliation with him proves to be.
If Donald Trump has one fundamental commitment, it is to his own preservation, a celebration of personal well-being that he has elevated to a world view – the very world view that made men and women want to work for him [and ride his political coattails]. There is little reason for them to adopt a more selfless creed now. — Evan Osnos
Eris’ revenge
Liberal democracy won’t be rescued simply by getting rid of one toxic fame glutton. It is more useful to look at this as a mass malady.
Astrologers link the current wave of populism to the long-running conjunction of Uranus and Eris, the dwarf 
planet that says I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
Eris is associated with the vengeful furies of myth. She plays a key role in the gathering storm of 2020 transits (see “Seeing the Big Picture,” The Mountain Astrologer Dec’18/ Jan’19 issue). We can see her influence in the worldwide trends of which Trump is only a local example.
Trump’s presidency reflects a deeper malaise – rising inequality caused by mismanaged globalization… and destabilizing technological change. Unless these structural issues are addressed, nostrum-peddling demagoguery will find a receptive audience. – review of People, Power, and Profits by Joseph Stiglitz
The emboldened despots of Hungary, India, Brazil and Turkey are riding the same wave as Trump. They, too, are steering their countries towards fascism, through the weaponization of national belonging, among other classic dictatorial moves.
They, too, 
were elected by their countrymen. And although their elections were probably rigged, as ours was, that doesn’t mean we can discount the hefty chunks of the populaces whose prejudices hoisted these demagogues into power.
[Nativist thinkers harbor] a right-wing fantasy of home… that shouts about decency but doesn’t exhibit any, that praises aspiration but only certain sorts. The people who teach your children and bandage your wounds, drive your trains or clean your floors, are described as aliens and forgers and scum. – London Review of Books
Today’s autocrats maintain a significant fan base, despite their 
abrogation of civil rights, imprisonment of reporters and political opponents, their ethnic slurs and boasts of sexual assault.
From Brett Kavanaugh’s successful Supreme Court appointment to the proud misogyny and homophobia of Brazil’s Bolsonaro, these appalling specimens of humanity are supported by millions of ordinary people.
A pox on the vox populi
Democracy, which many of us associate with human rights and modern civil decency, is not the same as populism. This has been made clear over the past few years, during which the mass confusions of waning planetary cycles are testing our integrity, our sanity and our ability to stay afloat. 
Yascha Mounk is a political theorist whose latest book is titled, with biting irony, The People vs. Democracy. He argues that in the face of uneven growth and a multicultural world, friction (or worse) between democracy and populism is more or less inevitable.
[Trump]’s a poor person’s idea of a rich person.– Fran Liebowitz
Across the anglo-sphere, the governed and their governments have become estranged. Over the last three decades — a Saturn-Pluto cycle — Brexiteers have cultivated a hatred of Brussels, the seat of the E.U., as bitter as that of American right-wingers for Washington. (2)
The vox populi holds that these political bodies are composed of self-serving elites whose ideas are out of touch with regular people. But as always, the truth is more complex than partisan battle cries.
Beyond binary
What if we were to look at the situation from a perspective other than binary thinking?
We might decide that it is possible to agree with this view — that the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels are an opaque and over-powerful cartel — without denying the need for a European Union or the ideals that inspired it.
We might find it possible to acknowledge that most American politicians are corrupt old cynics from entrenched political dynasties without calling for the annihilation of democratic institutions and principles (see Uncivil Liberties).
We’d probably find it possible to critique snobbery and classism without condemning, across the board, anybody with an advanced degree.
The people’s voice
The “people’s voice” is not known for nuance. This is especially true during this year’s Jupiter-Neptune square, whose shadow is the mob mind and lowest-common-denominator thinking. An either/or mentality is trending. As is trending itself.
But as individuals, we have total choice, and in this time of fatal peril we cannot afford to give it up.
We owe it to our era to engage with it. We owe it to ourselves to cultivate a subtlety of intelligence. Without an appreciation of complexity, we won’t be able to understand either this historical moment or our own personal karma within it.
Notes
1) Sam Bee, queen of Trump insults.
2) But there are signs of a backlash to the populist backlash — not in the West but in Central Europe. In this region which came relatively late to democracy, liberal candidates are scoring surprising successes.
