In the world’s most enduring stories, moral certainty is the secret sauce. We take comfort in a nice, clear dividing line between Right & Wrong. David vs. Goliath, white hats vs. black hats, Ivan Drago vs. Rocky Balboa. And the God-vs.-Satan story, which has kept Big Religion afloat for millennia. It’s especially gratifying to root […]

As the new year began, a lot of people were watching a movie about the annihilation of Earth. “Don’t Look Up” is a wake-up call movie, that’s clear. What isn’t so clear is how wake-up-able its audience is. Life as parody It must be galling to make satirical art in a society where every headline […]

Every generation has its traumas. My parents had World War II. My peers and I had Viet Nam and Watergate. Our children — the generation now in charge  — arrived when wars had gone digital and stateless. Their worldview was framed by 9/11. Foreign-policy-wise, those two burning skyscrapers set the template for the American epoch […]

  Joe Biden found himself unable, for whatever reasons, to keep up the tradition of kicking the bloody can down the road to some future president. Under the Full Moon of August, he struggled to explain the origins of the occupation of Afghanistan (it’s being called a “war,” but that doesn’t seem the mot juste […]

Feeling a tad used up?  Working too hard, and too thanklessly? You may be one of the waitresses or teachers who are making economists so nervous right now, by deciding to not return to your pre-pandemic job. Or a worker in any industry who has come to realize the extent of your emotional drain. Over […]

Are we ready to plunge back in? Covid is surging in Asia and South America, but in the USA people are champing at the bit to venture forth, lose our house flab and get our muscles back. Will this include our mental and moral muscles? We’ll need them, given our state of disunion. From astrology’s […]

They’re coming at us right out of the gate, as 2021 begins: cosmic echoes of 2020. In astrology, the calendar year doesn’t have a singular beginning. Cycles overlap, bleeding one into another. New lessons begin against the backdrop of old ones. The cosmos is saying: You want to know what’s going to happen? Assimilate what you’ve just […]

Whether he wins or loses, we’re not off the hook. First of all, Election Day won’t be just a day long, thanks to the GOP’s blood-curdlingly cynical campaign against non-existent “voter fraud,” their attacks on the post office and polling stations, and Trump’s Oh-yeah?-Make-me! approach to leaving the White House if he loses. These stunts […]

The writing has been on the astrological wall for years. It tells us that systems of governance are breaking down so they can be cleaned up, reshuffled and made over. It’s a natural process, and a healthy one. But we’re probably feeling like dust motes in a windstorm. When we’re in the thick of a […]

Spike Lee is on fire. He has two new releases out, one short and one long, just in the past month. Both films place American racism in historical context. Both are redolent with anguished  humanity. Their timing is so spot-on, given the firestorm unleashed by the killing of George Floyd, that people are calling it […]