The price we’ve paid

Hey you White House
Haha, charade you are
— Pink Floyd (“Pigs: Three Different Ones”)

Dear Friend and Reader:

So we’re two days from the end of the Bush era, which I trace back to the election of 1980. We’re almost at the Saturn return of that election, which was the beginning of the Neocon uprising, the Bush dynasty or whatever you want to call it. In terms of a human lifetime, a Saturn cycle is a long time. Most of us see two Saturn returns; we’ll probably live past age 58; but we don’t generally see three of them. So when something lasts for a Saturn cycle, it’s been around long enough to seem permanent.

I cast the chart for Election Day 1980 to check on that Saturn, and the chart is an eyeful. Saturn is in Libra; it returns there at the end of the year and the official return of Saturn to the election ’80 position is in early 2010. Saturn is making a return in between ’10 and ’12 and Pluto is about to square the whole Libra alignment and Uranus is about to oppose it. By “about to” I mean over the next decade, but we see some real movement in the next four years: the juggernaut breaks; we will need to work to ensure that everything else doesn’t break along with it.

What an impressive chart: there is the once-per-20-year conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in early Libra. Venus is exactly conjunct Saturn — exact to the degree, a kind of defining element in this chart, and a picture of how cruelty was turned into persuasive charm — and even the Moon showed up. The Moon is moving through that little space between Juptier and Saturn. Well wasn’t that a lucky day.

Vesta was rising. The idea of sacrifice was evoked. In Leo: the message was “Give yourself and your ideals up for something greater than you.” Mars is conjunct Neptune in Sagittarius: an incendiary God Bomb, thrown at the people. All made to look so pretty; Libra bestows that. Remember that fraud is considered a self-concealing crime. It is specifically designed to hide itself, so a long statute of limitations is necessary. We will perhaps need some time to figure out what has been done to us and our succeeding generations.

For readers wondering how you chart a national election, which takes place many places and at many times, I use one technique: the traditional American “first town that votes” is Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, and they vote at midnight. So I cast all national election charts for 12:01 am, Dixville Notch, Election Day. Other towns do this, but in honor of the tradition I use this particular community in New Hampshire. No method in astrology is perfect, but consistency of method helps; at least if you’re talking to the public in articles, you have a coherent way to present your data, you can compare charts from different eras and you can check over your work years later.

Looking at that chart, my eyes were drawn down to Libra, and to that pile of planetary energy illuminating the 2nd house. The first thing that my mind returned was: Gee whiz, it’s all about the money. When you see a chart where nearly every planet is in the 2nd house, that’s the clue that a lot of money is at stake.

Any capitalist knows that without astrology. Remember, most of us are not capitalists; at our most ambitious, most of us are components in the system. We are not the plutocrats. We are not the Carlyle Group or Halliburton.

Yet it will be Wee People who are expected pay the bill — I like to think of Leona Helmsley’s virtual last words about taxes being for the little peeps. That’s the least of our worries — the missing wallet and the credit cards and this identity theft that we’ve endured: the identity theft of the United States of America. It matters that our national wealth has been stolen, and I would like to see a movement of corporate accountability so that the companies involved in the crime are the ones who make restitution, not the people from whom the wealth was stolen.

But that is money. The real price we’ve paid has been in blood and grief; it’s been in the future, since we are leaving our children not with accumulated wealth and resources, but with accumulated debt. It’s been in credibility, with ourselves. Do we really trust our leaders with the power that we give them, or do we just expect our whole culture to fuck up all the time, signing off on the crimes of the people we hold as our bosses? We have lived through, and will continue to live through, a risk of who knows what peril to the environment, as we basically had a 28-year delay from when we knew what was up with climate change, and when we cleared the way to doing something about it. Have you considered how much denial has been lavished on this issue? Making war, instead of making solutions?

When I look back at these 28 years and play it like a stop-motion movie, I am left with a feeling, more than anything.

My own memory of this Saturn cycle includes the Bush/Reagan’s use of the Iranian hostages to win the election, and selling arms to the Iranians and the contras in what became known as the Iran-contra scandal. Bush walks into office and soon we’re at war with Iraq, taking up yet more permanent residence in the Middle East (Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to name two places).

Eight years of Bill Clinton were an improvement, except that despite the Executive Branch being in the hands of the liberal Republican Clinton, there was lots else going on in American politics and the US government. I mean, Newt was an era unto himself. Karl Rove and friends, I am sure, viewed Clinton as a setback and as an opportunity both; the impeachment was one of the most brilliant political organizing platforms devised in American history. Sinister for sure; but no less ingenious.

Then we embarked on a the journey of Bush the Second: which takes us from losing the electoral vote and stealing Florida — no modern election should take a month to get the results — straight into the Sept. 11/Enron/Worldcom/Arthur Anderson scandal. Remember the Aug. 6 PDB. I look at this confluence as one event: the sign of the times, with politics and religion and economics all in one gestalt. There was a collapse in the last year of our particular Bush and there was a collapse in his first year, too: in both cases, massive loss of infrastructure with a corresponding loss of life. Remember that economic disaster is about human life because the economy’s primary job is to support humans in their bid for food and shelter.

We don’t really understand how low we’ve sunk in these Bush II years. Remember Kenny Boy and President Cheney; remember the Diebold scandal and Wally O’Dell delivering Ohio’s electoral votes. Remember the Plame scandal and somebody committing treason in the name of West Texas politics. Remember Talon News Service and its “editor,” gay hooker/journalist/provocateur Jeff Gannon/James Dale Guckert.

The feeling I am left with is deep and stinking cynicism: on behalf of everyone who thought, and who was made to think, well the world is just too fucked up. That there’s nothing you can really do about it. These people are so powerful they’re going to do anything they want and nobody is going to hold them accountable. To me, the painful motion was not the awareness of the crimes being committed; it was how the whole thing was presented to us as if there was no point even caring about it.

And that, if they extracted it from you even for a moment, was the price known as your soul. I say it’s time to take it back.

— Eric Francis