I didn’t write a column last month because
I was sad. My family suffered a loss
when our matriarch died, our oldest member.
Tití was a few months short of a hundred years old, almost a century of
history wrapped up in one small self-possessed woman. She was a native of Venezuela, but lived and
travelled all over the world.
Now Venezuela is going through a
terrible and tumultuous time. It’s
painful to see so many progressive people in my circle upholding Maduro and
claiming that yesterday’s events were orchestrated by the CIA. Today, as I write this, the streets are once
again full of people.
I know that the U.S.’s imperialist hunger
has been the villain in countless other stories. My wife and I just saw the documentary “Harvest
of Empire: A History of Latinos in America”, and much of the history given was
familiar to me. The US doesn’t have
clean hands in Venezuelan history, either, since it supported several dictators
in the past. But Chávez was his own
worst enemy, as is Maduro, and the US didn’t wreck the Venezuelan economy. In
fact, the US was the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil until March of this year.
What I know is that Tití worked hard all
her life, and if the Venezuelan economy had worked, she would have ended up
with a pension and health care in her old age.
Instead, she had no security at all, except for her relatives in other
countries. We have other friends and
relatives in Venezuela who spend their days trying to find food and medicine, and
their nights in the dark, with only intermittent electricity.
Wondering what the outcome will be, I checked out Nicolás Maduro’s chart, and
there’s a mix of aspects. On the one
hand, Neptune’s inconjunct to his Mars indicates confusion and strife. But Uranus is sextiling his Jupiter, so there
are also lucky breaks, and perhaps there was a last-minute rescue, as some
people have reported. Juan Guaidó’s
chart is not looking particularly good right now, with Saturn and the south
node opposing his Mars. This looks more
like jail than victory. I think it’s true that the military is very
divided, and they are the ones who have most of the power at this moment.
So I don’t have much good news about
Venezuela, and I’m just praying that people are able to stay safe, and to
survive. This is a time of change, but I’m
not sure that Guaidó will be able to lead this charge into the future. His chart has the look of a hero, with a lot
of fire, and a Jupiter/Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius. But, in real life, I don’t put a lot of faith
in heroes.
In so many parts of the world, things
are breaking apart. It seems every
country is fiercely divided between an authoritarian power bloc (which for some
reason calls itself populist) and a more progressive movement. The middle ground has vanished. Brexit is a case in point, a sledgehammer poised
to demolish the status quo, with people scrambling to figure out how to contain
the damage.
I see this in my own life, as several well-established
lesbian organizations are splintering.
Suddenly women are sharply divided about what the word “lesbian” means, and
old friendships are turning hostile over this.
No matter how distraught people are, nothing stops this movement toward
dissolution. It has to play itself
out.
Here in the US, the old boy’s club that’s
upheld Trump’s presidency is also breaking up.
I’ve been looking for the aspects that show the Fall of Trump since he
was elected, and now I’m finally seeing them – not in the next month, but in
the next eight months. These are slow
aspects. I assume this has to do with
all the investigations, but it could also be about his health, or some
combination of the two.
All of us humans are dealing with an
intense karmic aspect right now, as Saturn conjuncts the lunar south node and
moves towards the conjunction of Pluto.
It won’t be till January 2020 that Saturn joins Pluto, but we’re seeing
the first cracks these days. I expect
this Saturn/Pluto conjunction to be a significant meeting, a crossroads time
for many of these old, strained institutions.
Saturn turns us around, so that we see
and understand the results of our past actions, and that’s why they call it the
Great Teacher. How much do we have to
learn? What are the consequences that we
need to own? What parts of our history
will explain us to ourselves? When we turn around and look honestly at the past,
we see into the blind spots we never knew we had.
The end of the Trump regime won’t fix
anything, but it will release a lot of tense energy, energy that’s been bound
up in containing him, justifying him, lying about him, or attacking him. (I do admire Nancy Pelosi’s cool head as she’s
dealt with the toxic mess in the executive branch.)
And then afterwards, we’ll have to look
our own extinction in the eye, and see if we can head it off. Perhaps at last we’ll be ready to deal with
some basic survival issues. In 2023, Pluto
enters Aquarius, and this seems to me to give the best chance for us to come
together and devise new ways to live as a world, scarred but united.
Until then, let’s all try to stay out of
the way as the rubble falls.
