Note: Eric Francis will be back later in the day. This column is by Fe Bongolan. Additional astrology blogging is happening at the Cosmic Confidential Diary, part of the 2010 annual edition of Planet Waves. Cosmic Confidential offers excellent affordable year-ahead reports by Eric Francis, prepared for all the signs. Visit Cosmic Confidential here.
Dear Friend and Reader:
I am concerned. It may not be a surprise in this day and age of our country’s polarized political discourse that in this Washington Post article, it was reported that a Gallup Poll found Glenn Beck one of the ten most admired people in America. Even more admired than the Pope.
For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Beck, he hosts a nightly news-opinion show, The Glenn Beck Program on the Fox News network, where he rants against Democrats in Congress (he’s a self-proclaimed libertarian), promulgates theories that the Obama administration is fascist AND Marxist (two ideologically opposed ends of the political spectrum), and the federal government in general is out to take your dollars and your gun. Beck is the spark behind the national Teabagger Protest Movemment and the 9-12 movement. He could be described as the network pitchman for alleged left-wing conspiracy theories.
With an audience share of three million a night, no amount of sponsor pressure by the group Color of Change to take ads off Beck’s show for racist remarks — could make Beck or his network stand down. Beck’s over-the-top rants, devoid of any rationale based on fact, promote violent revolt that leaks dangerously into the public discourse. He gives permission to people to react without thought to consequences or conscience. He is a useful idiot for his network and their agenda, which isn’t focused on news as reality, but opinion. Beck is a conspiracy theorist “entertainer,” making an influential impact on American culture and politics, and could be in line to become the next “Oprah.”
But we aren’t shocked we have come to this point. The key sentence in the Post’s article was: “Is Glenn Beck bad for America?”…or “Is Glenn Beck America?” In a word, yes — to the latter.
According to a recent article titled “Addicted to Nonsense” by Chris Hedges, the bigger the problems and sense of impotence in a society, the greater the need for celebrity as a distraction from responsibility for those problems. With our current national status: a near decade of job loss institutionalized into the economy and two wars further bankrupting us — the need for distraction is greater than ever.
We tend to worship our celebrities — people who provide voice to our greatest fears and desires. This has been hard-wired into our national consciousness. Look at the popularity of Oprah, Jerry Springer, Sarah Palin, and now Glenn Beck. However, Beck and his network take his celebrity perilously to the next step. He talks openly about calling for armed and violent revolt in a country already prone to violence. This dangerously skirts the edges of a cliff that would be hard for any society to recover from. This makes celebrity as a political tool through a useful idiot like Beck a very volatile mix. It also makes him a lot like Sarah Palin, both of them sharing the same sign with Beck born a day before her. So their rise in popularity is parallel.
The admiration of Beck and other useful idiots who sell bad products or bad ideas signals our neglect to take responsibility for our own behavior: our own over-consumption and greed. We’ve chosen through distraction to avoid dealing with the real and root causes and individuals responsible for our current situation. Glenn Beck’s upward status as one of our most admired persons is the face and symptom of our national denial. That makes him useful to more than his network.
The Gallup poll is an alarm on the temperature of the national psyche. The problems the country faces after decades of denial and roll back of protective laws are huge. But the problem also goes deeper than our denial. We were brought to this place of needing celebrity because we’re made to feel inadequate to a picture of what our lives should be like versus what they really are. That’s been the problem in the first place, and exactly the hole we need to climb out of.
With more of us dealing with the reality of our challenges instead of denying them — the challenges that are climatic, economic and spiritual, there may be a chance to surpass the need for a political celebrity such as a Glenn Beck to be our conduit to false political empowerment. We hope.
Watching useful idiots such as Palin and Beck climb, we always, inevitably watch their fall, which will come. But some damage may ensue in the meantime. Maybe we could mitigate that, starting with being our own heroes. Perhaps if we gave ourselves the chance, we could render the useful idiots of our culture useless. Focus on solutions instead of divisive reaction. However, in the short term, in order to turn our personal power “on”, we need to begin by putting our finger on the remote button to power “off.” All we have to do is look around. There really are better things to do with our time.
Yours & truly,
Fe Bongolan
San Francisco
This article is a balm:
Fighting Extremism With Civility
Posted on Nov 29, 2009
By E.J. Dionne
The most surprising and disappointing aspect of our politics is how little pushback there has been against the vile, extremist rhetoric that has characterized such a large part of the anti-Obama movement.
President Obama’s administration has largely ignored those accusing him of “fascism” and “communism,” presumably believing that restraint in defense of dignity is no vice.
Republican politicians, worried about future primary fights, have been reluctant to pick a fight with a radical right that seems to be the most energized section of their party. Their “moderation” has consisted of a non-benign neglect of the extremists, and of accusing the president merely of “socialism.”
And so it is that the first genuinely ringing call for moderation has come from a man who is effectively without a party, and whose own demeanor and career define temperance.
Jim Leach spent 30 years as a Republican member of Congress who went his own way. If this meant standing almost alone against his caucus, he was content to do so.
But he was never bombastic about it, as befits an extravagantly understated guy. The characteristic Leach look is a comfortable sweater worn under a tweed jacket, in season and out. That’s about as fashionable as the persona of old Mr. Chips, the warmhearted and mildly Victorian headmaster who was the hero of James Hilton’s 1934 novel.
Leach lost his Iowa seat in the 2006 Democratic tide, but he emerged relieved rather than bitter. He turned to academia, not the lobbying trade favored by so many other defeated politicians, and in 2008 engaged in the ultimate act of a maverick (a real one) by becoming a Republican for Obama. The new president in turn appointed Leach chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
It was in this role that Leach offered his critique of extremism in a speech at the National Press Club titled “Bridging Cultures” a few days before Thanksgiving. It deserves far more attention than it has received.
“Little is more important for the world’s leading democracy in this change-intensive century,” Leach argued, “than establishing an ethos of thoughtfulness and decency of expression in the public square.
“If we don’t try to understand and respect others, how can we expect them to respect us, our values and our way of life?”
But our own political practice belies anything remotely like “civility,” a word that Leach has as much a right to use as anyone in public life.
“It is particularly difficult not to be concerned about American public manners and the discordant rhetoric of our politics,” he declared. “Words reflect emotion as well as meaning. They clarify—or cloud—thought and energize action, sometimes bringing out the better angels in our nature, sometimes lesser instincts.”
But what are we doing in this great democracy? “Public officials,” Leach observed, “are being labeled ‘fascist’ or ‘communist.’ And more bizarrely, significant public figures have toyed with hints of history-blind radicalism—the notion of ‘secession.’ ” This last is a reference to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to ride to re-election by invoking a concept that we thought had been discredited in 1865.
Leach has no problem with a vigorous debate, but he’s right that much of what passes for argument right now is mere calumny.
“There is, after all, a difference between holding a particular tax or spending or health care view,” he said, “and asserting that an American who supports another approach or is a member of a different political party is an advocate of an ‘ism’ of hate that encompasses gulags and concentration camps. One framework of thought defines rival ideas; the other, enemies.”
As a result, “citizens of various philosophical persuasions are reflecting increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for modern-day democratic governance.”
Leach still has a lot of the old moderate Republican in him, and he is critical of a political system that, by creating so many safe one-party seats, has produced strong incentives for politicians “to remain firmly positioned far from the center.” He adds: “Institutional polarization is the inevitable result.” That’s true, too.
Leach’s speech is the kickoff for a 50-state “civility tour,” and my hunch is that this very civil man may have to put up with a lot of incivility along the way. It’s strange that a call to consider respecting each other more might become a controversial endeavor. This is precisely why Leach’s witness to moderation requires an immoderate dose of courage.
And btw:
The terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan weren’t hatched in Michelle’s organic garden:
FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN’S BLOG:
Did Cheney Understand We Were At War?
Dick Cheney is the former vice-president whose national security expertise was central to his appeal in 2000 as Bush’s running mate. Yet within nine months, Cheney presided over the worst attack on American soil in US history, failed to capture its perpetrators, failed to bring any of its plotters to justice, made convicting them much harder because he secretly and illegally authorized their brutal torture, and recruited a new and young wave of Jihadists by the exposure of the barbarism at Gitmo, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Camp Nama and the various black torture sites he helped set up across the globe. For good measure, Cheney also lost the war in Afghanistan and his closest confidant Don Rumsfeld lost the war in Iraq (the success of the subsequent “surge” will be tested this year as troops withdraw). Under Cheney, for good measure, both Iran and North Korea made huge strides toward getting nukes.
Not only did Cheney allow bin Laden to escape in Tora Bora, he also helped radicalize many actually innocent prisoners (three quarters of those thrown into the torture camp at Gitmo were innocent of any charges), and then set many of these radicalized new Jihadists free to wreak further terror on the US and the world.
In fact, an Obama administration official has asserted that all the former Gitmo prisoners who have become Jihadists upon release were set free by Bush and Cheney. Just as Cheney had bin Laden in his grasp and allowed his fathomless incompetence to lose him, he has actually helped create and then unleash Jihadists across the world.
How this utter failure gets to pontificate on terror after his disastrous record is beyond me.
Um, sorry, Mystes, to have to point out that Obama has chosen not to reverse, let alone stop, the course of Bush’s war. And now he’s escalating our involvement in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and yes, Yemen. These are Obama’s wars now.
Correction:
Yemen has been on the Al-Qaeda list for years and there has been bombing there since Bush. These wars are inherited.
And why didn’t Bush find Osama?
So what to do? My point is that targeting the darlings of the conservatives to a group of presumably liberal readers who ADORE Obama (and I’m still not convinced that this isn’t celebrity-worship) doesn’t diffuse the distraction but keeps it polarized.
Tamara:
You still misinterpret what I’m saying. Sarah and beck are buffoons who keep us distracted from what needs to happen. There is an agenda behind that that isn’t them. There’s nothing left wing about this. This has been happening for years.
Distraction has been the name of the game for a long time before Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin entered the arena. Bread and circus, right? Liberal or conservative, we rely on voted officials to do our civic work for us and media figures to analyze information we should be processing ourselves.
Media figures nowadays do not analyze. Media figures like Beck opine. There is a big difference, and it continues to be dangerous if its used or considered “news” or “analysis”. The problem is here, that the use of celebrity by interests who need us to be distracted is replacing actual serious thought to issues and lives are at stake.
What’s “useful” is to believe that we can rely on one person to helm our country, be it Glenn Beck or Sarah, George Bush or Barak Obama.
Here you are absolutely wrong.
What is useful to believe is that you can disengage from applying a pure leadership role to one only and recognize your role and responsibility in a participatory democracy. Which means inform yourself with facts instead of soundbites that make you comfortable, distinguish what is called a “fact” or “news” from an opinion, and wake the hell up.
Beck and Palin are useful to distraction machines because they mimic the idea of activism, but have no sense or idea of what they are saying. They are puppets.
Um, sorry, Mystes, to have to point out that Obama has chosen not to reverse, let alone stop, the course of Bush’s war. And now he’s escalating our involvement in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and yes, Yemen. These are Obama’s wars now.
Fe, I agree the political affiliations of those who, as your write, “have decimated the social network for their gain, have raped the environment to the brink for the most vulnerable on the planet, and to this day, are responsible for the looting of the treasury” are a complexing swirl of Republicans and Democrats. So what to do? My point is that targeting the darlings of the conservatives to a group of presumably liberal readers who ADORE Obama (and I’m still not convinced that this isn’t celebrity-worship) doesn’t diffuse the distraction but keeps it polarized.
Distraction has been the name of the game for a long time before Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin entered the arena. Bread and circus, right? Liberal or conservative, we rely on voted officials to do our civic work for us and media figures to analyze information we should be processing ourselves. What’s “useful” is to believe that we can rely on one person to helm our country, be it Glenn Beck or Sarah, George Bush or Barak Obama.
Hi Tamara:
I am in love with President Obama. I can’t help it. Sometimes, when he talks, he makes me cry like a brokenhearted sixteen year old girl. I’m serious, he reminds me of a couple of boyfriends I’ve had over the years who brought me to melting sobs because I wanted what they said to be true so bad. I can totally see a different type of me, without a superprominent Saturn, a bit younger, possibly on meds, talking to a poster of Barack Obama on my wall, telling him my problems, urging him on in a fevered schoolgirl whisper to hurry up and change the world.
That idealization is no doubt complete fantasy, wish fulfillment and hero worship, and I am pretty sure I have a bad case of it. It’s nuts really, see, I’m admitting this to you. I see right through myself and I’ve resolved not to support him blindly just because you know, me and Barack got it goin on.
But I just want to point out: Barack Obama is not a celebrity. He is the President of the United States. Unlike a celebrity, he has an inherent responsibility for the things he says and does, because what he says and does have real consequences in the real world. Additionally the words he says actually match my personal reality. They seem to also match an external reality that most people I know can contact and manipulate. So that makes him a prominent decision maker in a place I actually live.
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin on the other hand, are celebrities. Additionally: they appear to be having their adventures in an alternate reality. They could be comatose in a lucite coffin of nutrigel, while their astral bodies carom around in some hologram labeled respectively; Journalism, and Politics. Hero worship aside, that would be the difference there.
“To disparage one group and feel cemented in the moral righteousness of one’s own without any need for self-examination, let alone civic action, is not helpful.”
Tamara:
The moral righteousness you perceive from this article is your perception alone and misinterprets what I am saying.
People like Beck and Palin are useful idiots to the interests that keep people in the dark, and who have kept people in the dark for decades. That includes a plutocracy that has minted itself off of gains made the last twenty odd years, who have decimated the social network for their gain, have raped the environment to the brink for the most vulnerable on the planet, and to this day, are responsible for the looting of the treasury. They have affected all our lives, no matter the political affiliation.
Both Glenn and Sarah are buffoons, but they are dangerous buffoons. I feel compassion for the people who believe the irresponsibleness that comes from them. But get clear on this. THEY are the idiots who distract people from realistically facing what’s going on.
We are close to the brink economically, geopolitically, and environmentally, we need all of us to be working together instead of distracted and violently opposed to each other. Its wasting time. We need to be focused on what we need to do as a community, a nation and a planet. To stray off course by the distraction is what’s not helpful.
Tamara writes: Today, Obama is responsible for more deaths in the first year of his administration than George Bush was responsible for in his first year.
In absolute terms, the number may be accurate as Obama inherited GWB’s twin fronts. But
a) that’s not counting the 3000+ Bush allowed to die in Manhattan
and
b) Obama is responsible for the casualties in Afpak and Iraq just as a man is responsible if he marrys a woman who’s been raped by a former husband. The current spouse will carry the burden. But to accuse *him* of rape is hmmm, how shall I put this? irresponsible.
Perhaps even defamatory.
I think it’s a mistake not to include Obama in your list of worshipped celebrities. You discuss how celebrity worship enables the public to ignore their own responsibilities in civic engagement. How much of the talk surrounding Obama partakes in exactly this kind of distancing? Just consider the discussions on this site: comments like “I know in my heart he’s a decent man” or “Obama is a man of peace.” Presumably, since there’s zero-action in the war protest arena right now, that means they can rest easy since there is an peace-loving beatnik (cf. Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon) at the helm.
Moreover, a false division between politicians like Obama and Palin is harmful for arriving at effective solutions. Every liberal snickered at the Palin book-signing youtube video: “Boy, those Palin supporters are dumb!” But how many Obama supporters are fully aware of the disjunction between his actions and his words? To disparage one group and feel cemented in the moral righteousness of one’s own without any need for self-examination, let alone civic action, is not helpful. Today, Obama is responsible for more deaths in the first year of his administration than George Bush was responsible for in his first year. That’s a fact all of us have to deal with, and it is pretty scary.
ginblossom,
Thanks for the reminder of how something that seems merely repugnant can turn into something extremely dangerous. Fe is right; that is an extreme case but you are right too in that we must pay attention to the 4th estate, and it has fallen from being held in esteem in this country. Hopefully, that will change for the better some day in our lifetimes.
ginblossom:
Boom. That is the extreme case of this. I hope that never happens here.
The civil war began by one tribe caricaturizing the other as a menace. Soon the hacking began. The term “soft war” is very very real.
I think it’s worse than that. I wonder if you’re familiar at all with this name: Radio Television Libre Milles Collines. That was the name of a state run radio station added to the airwaves in order to spread genocide propaganda in Rwanda. The Rwandan government said they added the station to ” answer” the existence of another station which tended to be more moderate and supported things like the UN peace missions in the area, and also not killing an entire race of human beings.
People who are familiar with the tragedy in Rwanda will tell you that broadcasts from the RTLN were directly and materially involved in the destabilization of the country, and this was yes absolutely on purpose. Rwandan machete killers were young people incited to hatred by venomous rhetoric, paranoid in-jokes and catchy Zairean pop tunes.
You could easily draw a parallel between the RTLN and the Fox News Channel if you wanted using a couple of stick figures and a Sharpie. In fact it always seemed to me that somebody got the idea for Fox when they saw that the bigoted, illogical braying from the RTLN could raise a volunteer army incited to genocide without cutting a single paycheck.
When no one pays attention to the responsibilities of the Fourth Estate there can be intensely scary consequences. I had a dream once where the floor of my house was going soft under a gray mold that would eventually pull the whole thing down into the sucking mud underneath. I had a dream once that my front tooth was about to fall out. I had a dream once that I had swallowed the wrong pill, but I didn’t know when it would take effect, or whether it would kill me.
That ain’t no idiot. They call it Soft War.
Myst:
Beautifully, clearly and hilariously arcane as always.
Thanks for the careful attention, Fe. It looks to me like Beck and Palin are not actually human – they seem to be composite characters, the pastiche of millions of nightmares aggregated into the American Styx. It is into this Stygian darkness we each get to wade on our way to the Real.
To get a sense of how very very very difficult it is to arrive to the Real (not impossible, but damn…), I suggest taking 20 minutes to read through this page ::
Symbolic
especially the sections on Alterity and Autonomy
If you managed to make it through that primer, to remain aware of ‘celebrities’ illusory nature, I recommend unravelling Palin&Beck in your Eye’s mind like a New Year’s sparkler, fizzling finally to the darkness that flows around the perimeter of Hell.
While remembering –on the pragmatic side– that inciting violent revolution is Treason, and while I don’t see capital punishment, revoking citizenship is well within the limits of the law . . .
Myst(echniques)
By the way, speaking of Ms. Palin, we have this blog post by the inimitable Helen of Margeret and Helen (a blog by two octogenarians):
http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/going-rogue-without-a-condom/
Tamara:
I am not surprised by Mr. Greenwald’s analogy. He continues to be a progressive blogger highly critical of Obama’s centrism. I am also not a hero-worshipper of Mr. Obama’s. He’s still a human being and a politician. But until he starts talking about armed insurrection in America I won’t put him in the category of useful idiot.
Celebrity worship is not the cause, it is the symptom. Are we paying attention to the heart of the problem or the distraction taking us away from resolving it?
Great job, Fe. Eloquent and provocative. Fear not, there is still enough common sense in this country to distiguish facts from obfuscation. Where i come from, those who trade in misinformation, confusion and devisive, inflammatory exploitation are called by the name “crackpot”. Sooner or later they wash out because there is no substance to their schtick. In the meantime they follow the time-honored path of success in our culture – make a lot of money for other people. Mark this, once Beck’s ratings fall and Palin no longer attracts people to pay ten large a plate, they will be kicked to the curb because they are no longer generating a profit for their corporate masters.
Someday, you will go to the grocery and Beck will ask you if you want paper or plastic. Someday you will hear Palin ask if you want fries with that. At least we can dream. Nobody will build a library to the memory of either one of them, unless you count comic books.
You forgot to mention another political celebrity, about whom little has been proven but much is to be believed: Barak Obama. Read Glen Greenwald’s article on Salon.com where he insightfully points out how Obama worship and Palin worship exist on different sides of the same coin.
“Perhaps we should walk contrary to the ways of the world. Is their a way we could choose not make Beck or his followers our enemies by asking ourselves what makes his followers tick and work on the underlying issues of their perceived insecurities and needs. If we acknowledge their fears, insecurities, and needs would that be a way to disarm Beck and those like him and beat our own; as well as others swords into plows sheers?”
Hey truthseeker:
The problem is NOT about the people who follow Glenn Beck. Its about the organizations and interests that USE a Glenn Beck as a useful idiot to distract us from problems that maybe those themselves have caused and perpetrated through their hold on to power.
I do not consider anyone who is a fan of Glenn’s or Sarah’s an idiot. But I find the message that both Glenn and Sarah promote very disturbing and dangerous not only to those to oppose them, but to those who support them as well.
I cannot bring myself to promote celebrity worship of anyone, no matter their left or rightward leaning, who advocates for violence, uses names and terminologies recklessly to caricaturize their opponents (like calling someone a Hitler or a Stalin).
Its the yelling of “fire” in the movie theater that is objectionable, and it hardly is conducive to beginning any sort of meaningful dialogue between the two political polarities running frequencies in our national discourse.
The fact is that like him or not Glen Beck or those like him are needed. Persons like Beck become the hero of a certain type disenfranchised. His followers likely feel powerlessness, angry, misunderstood, and trapped. Such persons will often seek out a mediator or advocate to remedy their suffering and fight for their cause. One could swap out Beck and his group for any other groups who have an avatar or advocate for their need or cause. It’s the same across the board. The question is; do we regard these persons as ‘Useful Idiots?’
Perhaps we should walk contrary to the ways of the world. Is their a way we could choose not make Beck or his followers our enemies by asking ourselves what makes his followers tick and work on the underlying issues of their perceived insecurities and needs. If we acknowledge their fears, insecurities, and needs would that be a way to disarm Beck and those like him and beat our own; as well as others swords into plows sheers?
shebear:
Thanks. On covering our cultural demons, the main problem is where do we start? We have so much to look at. And there is so much to write about.
Maybe that’s the Plutonian phenomenon–stripping down to the roots and causes of our societal and national malaise. Its going to be an interesting era.
This ship was not built by itself but by the efforts, agendas and sometimes unsavory motives of many.
Maybe, as my friend Len Wallick thinks, we need to go all the way back to the last time Pluto was in Capricorn and this colony revolted from the Mother Ship of Mad King George. He thinks, (and correct me if I’m wrong, Len) that the FRENCH may have had a far-reaching agenda in intervening on our behalf.
“Freedom Fries!!!”
Fe,
Bravo — I applaud the honesty and bravery in this piece today, the vein of which seems to echo the one written by Judith Gayle at the beginning of this new year. It is not at all easy to question and reflect on one’s own cultural demons. To shed light on these two nefarious “hoggers of the limelight”, Beck and Palin, may indeed provoke some of their followers to begin, at the very least, to question their ego – driven actions and motives.
Both Beck and Palin appear to me to be projecting serious inner turmoil onto your national stage and the media sucks it up like oxygen; yet if their audience can be enticed to turn them off somehow, that would be an incredibly good thing. It could begin one article at a time and in writing this one today, I think you may have placed yourself out there as a trailblazer! I’m not an American and to be perfectly honest, many times I AM baffled by the cult of celebrity and the addictive cable chatterings and I just shake my head in disbelief (and sometimes offer a prayer,) but to poke around and take a look at a collective psychic disorder that propels so many in the States to follow such empty vessels — well, it cannot have been an easy task and again I admire your courage and smile in appreciation. It made for great reading.
Well done 😉
be and brendan:
This was a hard article to write, because its a topic we shouldn’t sugar coat.
This was not a warning so much to the Planet Waves community, but to raise an awareness for those who take people like Beck seriously. They are out there. Maybe those of us reading know some.
I liken this piece as a form of “a celebrity-as-crack” intervention.
be–btw – with Beck born a day earlier than Sarah – wouldn’t that mean in his progressed chart he would start the tailspin sooner than her?
I’m really hoping both of my fellow Aquarians drop off the face of the planet soon. I’m 4 years, 364 days older than GB, 5 years older than SP. I even grew up in the same part of Washington state as GB. I get the heebie jeebies every time I remember that.
I know they both represent the deep lunatic side of the Water Bearer, since I’m nowhere near their ideological bent or inclination. Revolutionary, yes, since they want to establish a nation on the line of their personal beliefs, but so out of touch intellectually they have no real idea what that would mean.
Sorry, my opinion is showing! Thanks for the essay Fey, and keep watching for us.
Fe,
This must have been hard to write. . . .such an unpleasant topic! I’m so glad you did in the end assure us of their fall (Beck and Palin), and I would put that at around February 2012, when Neptune finally clears the sign of Pisces, which means past the U.S. Moon and past the Palin and Beck Aquarian planets, Sun, Mars and Saturn. The glamour, and deception (shall we call them flat-out lies?) that are the hallmark of these two will no longer be enhanced by transiting Neptune (to the U.S. Moon), and the American people, those who have been duped by them, will see them without the stage lights and makeup and theatrics that are provided by Neptune (wounding provided by Chiron!).
Perhaps knowing this will help us “focus on solutions instead of divisive reactions.” Still, someday, we may be able to see the value of Mr. Beck and Ms. Palin; how they exposed our wounds, our weakness, and in doing so, helped the healing begin. They both do have Pluto opposed Chiron (13 Virgo/Pisces) which sextiles/trines our U.S. Sun. As well, they both have retrograde Uranus at 8+ Virgo which opposes the U.S. conjunction of Ceres (8+ Pisces) and Nessus (9+ Pisces) in the 4th house of home and family, offering even more healing to the American psyche.
Take care Fe, and all, and don’t let the bastards get to ya.
be