Feeling a little nauseous right now? Welcome to TrumpLand, the world’s least amusing amusement park. The featured ride for April has been the sickening-soar-&-dip.
So far this month, the Orange One has shifted from imposing punishing tariffs on penguin-inhabited islands to backpedaling on most of them, presumably right after his insider-trading pals pulled their money out.
At this writing — it could change at any moment — he’s asserting his big-boy credentials via a sudden trade war with China.
Tater Dick
On the domestic front, Trump has us juggling constitutional crises like hackysack balls.
We’re not on the way to dictatorship. We’re on the ship, with ol’ tater dick. – Stephen Colbert
There have been plenty of other bloviating tyrants throughout history, many of them similarly suffering from cognitive decline. All of these guys seem to have 
had masculinity issues.
Kaiser Wilhelm comes to mind, with his stunted arm and deep insecurities; Mussolini, that big hulking baby, with his jangling medals and military parades (it looks like we’re about to get one of those, too).
But at least these oligarchs could stand up at a podium and emit sounds that cohered into speech patterns. Ours is a malapropping doofus who wanders through inexplicable digressions about groceries being “an old-fashioned word.”
Before Off-Brand Orbán’s speech this week, the word “groceries” …had not appeared in the English language since Shakespeare’s The Most Lamentable Tragedie of Dan, the Night Manager at Piggly Wiggly. — Shower Cap blog
Bear wrangler
Gemini (the trickster) is a multi-tasker, the quickest-thinking sign in the zodiac. But when its skills are deployed by a malevolent idiot, you get the Offal in the Oval. In three months’ time, this guy has found it possible to
set the global economy reeling, …tank consumer confidence, scupper the Kennedy Center and tart up the Oval Office, turning it into Caesars Palace on the Potomac. – Maureen Dowd
Hopping from one issue to another like a flea on a hot plate, he is cosmically typecast to personify the distractibility of our society. He understands and matches
our collective ADHD, creating nonstop dramas to feed it.
Like a circus bear wrangler, he has us trained to dance to his tune. He’s no longer restrained by the Washington old guard, as he was in his first term. Neither is he inhibited by the other two branches of government, the judicial and legislative, which aren’t acting very co-equal right now.
The fourth estate, too, is abdicating its civic duty. One would’ve hoped that the press, at least, would push back. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so disappointed if I hadn’t seen all those movies where the anti-corruption hero ends up achieving justice — when all else fails — by leaking the story to a journalist with integrity.
Squirrel!
Alas, in real life, most of the media seems stunned, breathlessly reacting to each new Trumpian outrage. Rather than giving thoughtful analysis to, for example, 
his failure to fix the economy “on day one” – has ever a campaign promise been so obviously and ludicrously unfulfilled? — the corporate news dropped the issue like a hot potato.
As soon as the Trump squirrel whistle sounded — Invade Greenland! Re-name the Gulf of Mexico! Three presidential terms! — reporters whipped to attention like dogs spotting a squirrel, with the viewing public chasing along behind it.
Clearly the squirrel chase serves Big Media, keeping its ratings high. Indeed, the news industry may be the only corporate complex that thrives on chaos like this. That is, until they displease the capo and he censors them.
But imagine graduating from journalism school and getting spat out into the Trump era. The poor suckers were trained to treat with reverent seriousness any and all ideas that come down from the lofty heights of the Oval Office. Now they have to cope with this guy, reporting on his “policies” while knowing full well that he’s just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
You can see the news anchors struggling to maintain a neutral, solemn voice as they tell their viewers about this clown’s campaign to get himself nominated for a Nobel, or hoist his mug up on Mt Rushmore. Gold cards for citizenship? Absolutely, Mr President, we’ll lead with it on the 6 pm news.
Don’t you imagine he must be expecting, at every moment, that people will stop falling for it? Or perhaps he looks into his gilt-framed mirror each night and muses, Wow, maybe I am Jesus.
Pot calling the kettle
We expect politicians to traffic in hypocrisy, it’s their stock-in-trade. But Trumpian hypocrisy inhabits a whole new territory.
Take his pose as Mr Red-White-&-Blue. Granted, wearing a flag pin is a base-line requirement if you want to run for office. Patriotism, an impulse as emotionally extravagant as it is impervious to definition, is held as a sign of moral upstandingness in most places in the world.
Especially in MAGA Land, which seems to have made a religion out of their identification with the USA, with a fervor that leaves in the dust other impulses, such as charity to their fellow humans. But the fact that Trump’s fans manage to see their man as a patriot suggests a truly extraordinary suspension of disbelief.
Perhaps they fondly remember the time the old showman quite literally wrapped himself in the flag, in the smarmiest onstage embrace in political history. They have clearly found a way to reconcile this flag-smooching with the fact that — oh, just for instance — their guy ducked out of the ceremony for the US soldiers who died in Lithuania, opting instead to attend a golf tournament.
The one hosted by the Saudi prince who dismembered that journalist with a bone saw.
Mr Meritocracy
As for his claim that he’s replacing DEI with good old-fashioned meritocracy, it’s enough to make you snort out your coffee. Maybe you caught that Howard Stern show in 2006, when Mr Meritocracy appeared with Ivanka and Don Jr.:
The Trump siblings’ insistence that they got into Wharton on their merits inspired Stern to give them a grade school-level pop quiz.
“What’s 17 times 6?” he asked.
After some nervous laughter, Don Jr. replied “96? 94?”
His father interjected, “It’s 11 12. It’s 112.”
“Wrong!” Stern said, adding, “It’s 102!”
Donald Trump repeated “112.” – Dowd
You wonder what torturous logic must be operating in the skanky depths of his own mind, to align what he says with what he does. How deeply irony-blind must someone be, to fire government employees for “just playing golf instead of working”, when he himself
… played golf on nine of his first 30 days of work while you’re making payments on an egg salad sandwich,” – Jimmy Kimmel
Whatever is going on here goes beyond mere pot-calling-the-kettle-black. This is a guy whose good buddies include Kanye “I-love-Hitler” West and holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes, claiming that he’s de-funding universities for being antisemitic.
In psychotherapy, when a patient accuses someone of doing exactly what they themselves are doing, it’s called projection. What do we, as a group consciousness, do when a psychopathology like this is going on at the highest levels?
Gemini gone wrong
Astrologers have had a field day with Trump’s chart. His craziness with the tariffs has been linked to a Gemini Sun that has been cranked up to a parody of fickleness by transiting Jupiter and Saturn. But this is a distortion of Geminian flexibility.
Here’s a guy who understands himself so little that he can declare “These polices will never change” while changing them daily. If you have no ethical center, it’s easy enough to adapt instantaneously to each new stance. You never identified with any of them in the first place.
Trump never really retreats; he repositions. – Benjamin Wallis-Wells
Mars gone rogue
If a person is unconscious enough, a planet can’t even do its job. Mars (ego), for instance, is supposed to express as healthy self-assertion. But Trump’s Mars, untethered from common sense or integrity, is mere muscle flexing. In this season of his Mars Return (exact in June), his gestures are like flailing fists, unconnected to his brain.
Trump’s tariffs make no sense as an economic policy, but they are familiar to anyone who’s spent time around organized crime. — Corey Doctorow
To critics who question what economic strategy he’s following as he gamifies the tariffs, he says he doesn’t need rules; exemptions will be decided “instinctively.” In response to the Supreme Court ordering him to rescind his deportation of a US citizen to a foreign gulag, Mr Tough Guy seems to be saying, Oh yeah? Make me.
Astro Paradox
There’s a fascinating astrological paradox here. Trump’s Mars rules the chart (on the Ascendant) at the same time that it’s occluded (in the 12th house). He’s an example
of how a Mars can be loud and prominent –– it was dawning when he was born — without being strong.
Performative masculinity is the first part of him that we see, and the primary way he sees himself (Ascendant). Arrogance (negative Leo) is his self-image and his calling card. But as long as his Mars stays unintegrated, it is a rudderless force.
Mars’s job is to further our interests, not sabotage them. A well-functioning Mars wouldn’t threaten Social Security, the third rail of American politics. It would not make enemies out of friendly countries, or alienate his best domestic allies, the plutocrats.
Trump’s policies are not good for business. …since the vast majority of American wealth is held by a tiny minority of very rich people, any program that vaporizes an appreciable fraction of American wealth will make a lot of rich people a lot poorer. – Hamilton Nolan
A one-man recession
A confident Mars would not preen for the cameras with aggressive tone-deafness, boasting about a golf game while the Dow is tanking. This is the planet of self-promotion, but Trump’s Mars does so without backing from the rest of his chart.
His desire to throw himself a birthday military parade — an extravaganza set to cost $92 million dollars — is not surprising, given his identification (Ascendant) with the god of war (Mars). But to float this ludicrous idea right now, while the country is reeling from economic chaos, suggests a compulsion.
If his neuroses weren’t doing so much damage, they would be just monumentally sad. Even in his doctor’s report, he couldn’t stop himself from plugging his golf wins.
His boasts about opponents – indeed, whole countries — bending the knee to “kiss his ass” sound like they came from an abused child.
Not in our stars
But lest we forget, neurosis is not the effect of any astrological cause.
When the captain is drunk, it’s not the shipbuilder’s fault if the craft is steered onto the rocks. Trump’s malignant narcissism is not due to his Mars, nor are his hypocrisies due to Geminian changeability. Nor is his Leo Ascendant to blame for his hilarious tantrum over an unflattering portrait.
Nor is it Uranus’s fault that he’s a chaos agent. Underneath Trump’s shifty, vacuous demeanor are forces beyond his conscious control. He lacks the self-knowledge to use them, so they use him instead.
Uranus is associated with the Norse gods of thunder and lightning. Absent self-awareness, when it’s conjunct the Sun, as it is in Trump’s case, it takes over the chart.
Trump sees himself as Lord of the Sky, reveling in his ability to demolish the global economy with tariff thunderbolts, then congratulating himself when his 90-day pause cranks the market up again.—Tina Brown
In the right hands, Uranian disruption can be stunningly creative. When dysfunctional, is like a hurricane blowing into town, leaving everything in splinters. This is the planet that helps us understand why Trump’s default is to declare emergencies — with trade, immigration, federal protocols.
Uranus governs the concept of
freedom, but Trump’s “Liberation Day” is like a suddenly liberated balloon, explosively emptying as it careens around the room.
The Manosphere
Despite or because of his personal problems, Trump has become a figure of resurgent patriarchy.
Well, somebody had to do it. Recent decades have seen a surge of feminist awareness about toxic masculinity, provoking some serious recoil from a certain type of male.
These dudes have found their standard-bearer in Trump, an expert at resentment and grievance.
[R]evenge… is the only thing that Trump will pursue even without the prospect of remuneration. — Leon Wieseltier
The anti-woman backlash that has arisen in MAGA country has been passionate, often virulent (e.g. “Your body, My Choice”) and increasingly violent. Throwing red meat to the mob, a bumper crop of bad-boy podcasters has arisen, to reassure the disaffected young Trump-o-philes that the reason their lives suck is because of immigrants and uppity women.
In a fury to reclaim male supremacy, a strange mash-up of reactionary impulses has congealed on the Right.
Fox News [is] arguing that Trump’s collapse of the global economy could actually help fix America’s “crisis in masculinity.” — Ryan Broderick
Then there’s Trump’s suggestion that reinvesting in the fossil fuel industry will fix our masculinity problem.
Soon we shall see the overdue return of manly jobs, manly diseases like black lung and manly life expectancies like 44. – Shower Cap blog
Maga Man
But MAGA Man is a complicated beast. The lads who were left behind by the American Dream are brothers under the skin with a very different demographic, one to whom the Dream has been very generous indeed: the tech-bros.
These guys, too, have masculinity issues, but they also have major bucks.
Trump 2.0 is intoxicated – and liberated by – the astronomical wealth of the Silicon Valley crowd and the moral weightlessness that goes with it. Inhaling their wealth and power like secondhand smoke. – Brown, op cit
Today Bezos, Zuckerberg, Theil and Musk are paragons of success — capitalism-wise, if not self-awareness-wise. But in youth, these guys were bullied nerds. And it 
shows.
Elmo Musk, the guy who designs rockets in the shape of phalluses and who pays women to have his babies, deserves his own special chapter in the DSM. After failing to literally buy the election in Wisconsin, he appeared before the cameras looking personally offended. The richest man in the world accused “the Left” of being unfair to him. He seemed genuinely hurt.
Also on the manosphere bandwagon are celebrity he-men like Mel Gibson (who has nine children; Musk has fourteen), who crowed after Trump’s election that “Now Daddy’s home, and he’s got his belt.”
Misogyny makes for a big tent.
Normalization
As Trump’s mental health deteriorates, we need to start paying closer attention to our own.
The Scylla and Charybdis of the Trump phenomenon is that he drives part of his opposition to obsession and derangement and another part into apathy and impotence…. — Brett Stephens
It helps to remember that our distress is part of something big. This is a collective crisis. We’re living in a country where institutions have broken down (Pluto Return) and public opinion is fragmented into a cacophony of mutually-antagonistic online realities (Saturn-Neptune).
The time has come to keep abreast of what’s happening. Traumatized by the election three months ago, many of us retreated into hiding from the news, but ostrich-in-the-sand time is over. Now we have to pay attention.
At the same time, we have to be careful not to be gaslit by the news. When CNN shows us footage of this guy’s off-the-rails speeches, delivered in that cagey maybe-I’m-serious-maybe-I’m-not tone of his, the newsreaders may act like he’s not full of shit. Their job is to pretend this is normal.
But we don’t have to pretend.
If they try to normalize, let us try to denormalize. – Rebecca Solnit
To be continued.
