Fallout from the Uranus-Pluto Square and Saturn-Neptune Square: I Am Ready to Blow a Gasket over the Damn Election

I'm back after a three-month hiatus...has anyone missed my misanthropic, profane astrobabble?

It's just been too damned depressing to post lately. Everything out of everyone's mouths has been about the US election. I know how crucial it is, believe me. I am just sick of it, all of it. The Saturn-Neptune square may finally be over, but this aspect of collective mental illness (specifically, insanity) continues to reverberate, especially when planets in mutable signs (i.e., Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces) trigger Saturn and Neptune.

But on a Sun-Pluto square, a stressful power-tripper of an aspect, the pain has gotten so intense that I have got to get on my virtual soapbox. You've been warned. If you want to read your Sun Sign horoscope or learn what color lipstick you should wear according to your Venus sign, please go to another astrology site -- at least for today.

(Deep breath, long exhale.)

I figured that the greatest danger of a dictator/demagogue's being elected US president was four years ago, at the dawn of the Uranus-Pluto square (2012-15). After all, look at what happened in Germany during the last Uranus-Pluto square (1931-35). However, although Mitt Romney is many mean, nasty, horrible things, he's not quite a Hitler type.

And Obama held on to the presidency, the economy officially took a turn for the better, the Affordable Health Care Act took hold (at least in most states), and the world did not come to an end, as the doomsday crowd fond of taking the Mayan calendar out of context kept predicting.

Not that everything was roses and sunshine. Examples of the cruelty, brutality, fanaticism, and poor impulse control that define a Uranus-Pluto square included Syria, the Ukraine, the rise of ISIS, and Edward Snowden (who might have been a real hero had he only exposed the US government's Big Brother surveillance on its citizens instead of also revealing the secret-sauce technology that kept tabs on terrorist activity).

Still, it came as a surprise to me that it was not until this election cycle got under way, with the Uranus-Pluto square finally in our rear-view window, that the next Hitler emerged from the shadows, on our very shores.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here is a quote from a new book by Volker Ullrick, Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939: "Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners ... He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds' fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order." High-ranking officials around the world refused to take Hitler seriously, calling him a "clown."

Remind you of anyone?

The Uranus-Pluto square of 2012-15 was what made possible the extreme disenchantment, and extremism in general, that defines a sizeable and still-growing percentage of voting-age Americans. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and some of the concerns and criticisms of even the most bigoted, hateful members of our citizenry are valid. For example, with all the employment numbers pointing up, how many unemployed, working-age people are no longer even counted because they no longer receive unemployment benefits? What kinds of jobs are being created? Why is the term "working poor" part of the "new normal"? How does minuscule gains in income truly help a person get a leg over the runaway cost of living? And what good is "Obamacare" if you can't really use it, due to a ridiculously narrow provider network and sky-high deductible?

Under the Uranus-Pluto square, growing numbers of fed-up people became less interested in trying to fix The System, The Powers That Be, Politics, etc. and more enthusiastic about the prospect of just blowing the whole thing up, even if they did not survive the fallout from the explosion. Not surprisingly, another signature of the Uranus-Pluto square is nihilism.

Throw in the delusional, downright idiotic nature of the Saturn-Neptune square, which began on Thanksgiving 2015 and lasted till September 10 of this year, and it is frighteningly obvious that the collective has reached a new low. And the US media cannot wash its grimy hands of the phenomenon of DT (short for "distemper" or "delirium tremors"), for the media gladly gave him tons of free publicity while pointedly marginalizing Bernie Sanders, a true public servant, as a cranky, eccentric grampa -- and a horse-race election always brings in more subscribers and money than a shutout.

I was plenty nervous about the election of 2000, with Mercury stationing retrograde on that Election Day. I am plenty nervous about this one, as well -- not only will the Moon be changing signs, so early returns may not reflect the ultimate reality, but the Moon itself will end up in Pisces, a sign that calls reality itself into question. Mars will be in the last degree of Capricorn, just past US Pluto; in the days leading up to the election, this may not manifest in literal assassination, but character assassination. Authority in general, and government in particular, is ruled by the sign Capricorn. As a cardinal earth sign, Capricorn will fight to hold its ground so it can ascend, but Mars is not known to be gentle and reasonable.

I hope I will be proved wrong in my fear that even if the much, much, much lesser of two evils wins, and even if it is by a landslide (a possible read of Mars on the cusp of Aquarius), and the US Supreme Court is saved from turning into the next Third Reich, this will not be a sweet victory by any means -- just a four-year breather until a smarter, saner demagogue appears on the political scene.

The Lunatic Is in the Hall: Another Manifestation of the Uranus-Pluto Square

Friday, December 14, 2012, 9:40 a.m., Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, in the state that rhymes with "etiquette."

Unless you happened to be in a coma yesterday, or in a media blackout zone, you know the grisly, tragic, senseless details of what happened -- if not why.

Looking at the chart of the kindergarten massacre is giving me very little solace, for a number of reasons. Sometimes one just cannot bring order out of chaos -- sometimes it does not do a damned bit of good. Millions of people went about their mornings with three Capricorn planets -- Pluto, the Moon, and Mars -- transiting the local real-time 12th House, and survived.

However, with 29 degrees of Capricorn is on the Ascendant, the chart's ruler is Saturn in Scorpio in the 9th House, forming a very close, approaching sextile its despositor Pluto in the 12th. I do think that if there ever was the perfect time to discuss gun control laws, that time is now -- as well the fact that increasing numbers of mentally ill individuals (mostly young men, if we can stand to be politically incorrect enough to engage in such profiling) have been allowed to slip through the cracks of our society because mental health in this nation has taken a backseat to just about everything. And it's not just the NRA and the government that must be held accountable. All of us have blood on our hands, whether or not we own guns. It's the "I have mine, screw the rest of you" isolationist attitude that is rewarded as American individualism. It's the glamorization and normalization of violence. Hell, I feel guilty for having become addicted to The Sopranos earlier this year.

Prayers are not enough. Tears are not enough. The hubristic philosophy of America being so exceptional, so strong, and so unified in times of crisis is not enough. This year alone in the United States, there have been far too many incidents of mass violence in places that, like schools, are not recognized as war zones: at the movies, in a shopping mall.

I am not so naive as to believe that if only the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution were amended to make it illegal to buy Glocks, AK-47s, and semi-automatics with mile-long magazines (which our Founding Fathers were unfamiliar with because they had not yet been invented), these weapons would not find their way into the hands of criminals and mentally ill people. There is, after all, a black market for everything. Yet in Australia, after a 1996 massacre in Port Arthur left 35 dead, the inventory of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns was greatly reduced, gun registration was made universal, an improved licensing system was introduced, and gun storage demands improved. This has resulted in a country where innocent people just going about their lives are far less likely to be shot to death. I absolutely believe in self-defense, but the idea of arming kindergarten teachers with guns to protect themselves and their students is just not the answer. Nor do I think that throwing mentally ill people into jail or ignoring them instead of getting them real help solves anything.

Gun control (and neutering the political influence of the previously relatively sane NRA) is far from the only solution. We are in the midst of a Uranus-Pluto square that will last until March 17, 2015. Similar to the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the mid-1960s, and the last Uranus-Pluto square of early 1930s, explosive violence is a crucial issue. How effectively and compassionately a nation takes care of its own people of all ages, all income brackets, all degrees of wellness both physical and mental, is an indicator of how healthy that nation happens to be. Under the stress of a prolonged Uranus-Pluto square, a time of extreme economic uncertainty, societal upheaval, and erratic weather patterns (e.g., Hurricane Sandy), it is clear that more people than ever before are cracking up. The pressure is just too great to keep everyone sane. This is not an excuse; this is a warning that is already coming to pass.

I do not think this is the America its Founding Fathers had in mind. They would indeed be mystified that most of us mourn for a few hours or days at the latest killing rampage, and then go on without pressing for real change. And I am not preaching from some high horse. My own life is in such disarray that my main focus is to fix it, and myself -- not the nation's considerable ills.