It’s a drippy day, this last day of
2018, here in the outskirts of the US capital.
My wife just waded through the puddles, taking her grandmother to the
doctor. Outside my window is a pastiche of browns and
greys.
I’ve been reading Katharine Graham’s autobiography,
which is also the history of the Washington Post, and it covers all the news
that shook our bones during the last half of the twentieth century. I just got to the part where Richard Nixon
resigns.
One thing I’m really noticing is how
long it took to tighten the net around Nixon.
There were three long years between the Watergate burglary and his
resignation. And these were hard times for the Post, since the White House used
every weapon possible to weaken and threaten them. Of course, this aversion to transparency is a
sign of a corrupt administration, as we see nowadays.
Trump’s level of corruption is worse,
and he’s not as smart, but he has plenty of enablers. I don’t think there was ever a Nixon cult,
but there are a bunch of people who see Trump as a their golden-haired Messiah.
And there are many in power who think he
can be persuaded to advance their agendas – as indeed, he already has.
So how long will it take for the
Trumpster Fire to be extinguished? The
aspects throughout 2019 give a meandering air to the year. Both Jupiter and Saturn make recurring
aspects to Neptune, and Neptune is all about illusions and confusion. So there could
be a certain amount of circling around, going nowhere, or bumping up against errors
and contradictions. Economically, 2019 looks
like a year of cyclical rises and falls, each with its predictable chorus of
elation and despair.
However, I am also looking at the first
solar eclipse of the year, on January 5, to see how the first half of the year
will go, and it looks quite serious. Mercury,
Saturn, the sun, the moon, and Pluto are all in Capricorn, with the latter four
quite close together. These planets
gathered in Capricorn are like a board-room of robotic executives, or perhaps a
phalanx of nuns with heavy rulers. The
focus is on cutbacks, austerity, limitation, and discipline. We already see this in the government
shut-down, now in its 10th day.
There is an underlying grumbling in the land, as thousands of people try
to get by without paychecks.
Comparing the eclipse chart to the chart
for the US, we mark a cardinal cross, a tense configuration. That Capricorn stellium opposes the sun in the
US chart, and squares its Saturn. The US
chart has a sun/Saturn square, and in a person, this could signal a sense of
inferiority. This country has a tendency
to posture, to praise ourselves, and to feel defensive about our actual advantages. There’s a constant battle between our ideals and
our appetites.
In order for the US to develop, we need a
healthier and more realistic sense of who we are. And this is one of the things that this first
solar eclipse could do. It’s not an easy
passage. It’s humbling and restrictive. It
could also presage some crumbling of essential services and infrastructures, perhaps
because of climate change.
And it could intensify the wars we
already know. Even though DT is now
making noises about pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan, there is no reason to
think he’ll follow through, and an international offensive could be his way of
trying to divert attention from his legal troubles. War is always a bedfellow of poverty, except for the masters of war that Bob Dylan once wrote about. (“You fasten
all the triggers for the others to fire/Then you sit back and watch when the
death count gets higher.”)
A heavy Capricorn stellium like this,
complete with Saturn and Pluto, tends to slow things down, so everything will
play out in a heavy, inevitable way.
When it comes to dealing with this corrupt administration, I’m not
expecting a quick resolution. However
there is also a powerful element of transformation here. Minds are being changed, patterns are being
altered, and there is some crumbling of long-existing structures. A lot of it is happening underground, like
termites gnawing away at old rotted wood.
Eventually, I do think DT will be
impeached, will resign, and will leave the country for some sunnier clime,
where he can play golf all day without fear of being airlifted to a prison
cell. But when? When?
Things do change right at the end of
2019, and this is when some of those termite-ridden structures could fall. There could be a resounding crash of some
kind when Saturn and Pluto come together in Capricorn. It looks like a time of economic and
philosophical reckoning. In fact, I’m
getting a day of judgment kind of vibe, looking at these charts. It’s very unlikely that DT could hang onto
power through this, but that might not be the first thing on any of our
minds.
Throughout 2018, we’ve faced a lot of
moral thresholds. And there will be many
more in 2019, many opportunities for us to deal with some intrinsic identity
questions, as a nation. What do we
really need – for ourselves, for our families, for our cities and fields and
mountains? And what do we need,
spiritually? What can we learn from
other countries, from places that don’t have our hubris? Because they will be the ones to help pick us
up after the fall. And listening first
could mean a softer landing.
