My daily casual carpool in Berkeley is the official Fe-911 “Person-on-the-street” poll for domestic politics. There, while surrounded by a captivated audience of three passengers, I turn up the volume on NPR news and let the snippets of information seep in. Then I start the discussion.
Last week, after NPR’s report on Trump’s “2nd Amendment Call to Arms” — Trump’s ‘hint’ sanctioning his supporters to take literal aim (as in gun) at Secretary Clinton — I turned to the other passengers and said, shaking my head: “I want the next two months to have already happened, and that election day is tomorrow!” This was followed by a resounding ‘Amen” chorus in the backseat of my little Honda Fit.
Calling for the assassination of one’s political foe wasn’t the end of Trump’s last bad, bad, very bad and horrible week. Oblivious to fact and history — that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney started the war in Iraq that destabilized the region leading to the creation of ISIS — he called President Obama and Secretary Clinton the “Founders of ISIS.”
The fact that Hillary was New York’s senator at the time the war started, and that Obama was an Illinois state senator, didn’t faze him. What made it worse were his spokespeople trying to pin the start of the war on Obama, extending the story line of Trump’s wrong re-writing of history days longer than needed. Add to that his own obstinate stance, repeating the same lie. As Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist, said in Time magazine: “… normal candidates don’t careen from one self-inflicted wound to another on an hourly basis.”
But this is not a “normal” candidate, nor is it a “normal” election. Members of Trump’s own party have started to peel off. First in thin layers, and now reaching numbers closer to flesh and sinew. Former Bush Administration members have started to jump. As polls steadily climb upwards for Clinton approaching the Labor Day holiday and post-convention bounce, Trump’s support among Republicans dwindles.
This has one effect: it makes him crazier, rousing up his crowds into rabid support and drawing the curiosity of those who are still — amazingly — undecided. There’s a circus effect going on. Adding to that, the press has actually been doing its job, seizing on Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort’s seriously lucrative financial ties to Russian oligarchs, which I covered here briefly on Planet Waves. The media have also jumped on the long history that his lobbying firm — Black, Manafort & Stone — has of “making over” the world’s nastiest tyrants and dictators, including Ferdinand Marcos and despots in Central and Latin America and Africa.
That Trump was introduced to Manafort by Roy Cohn (of McCarthy’s House on Un-American Activities fame) should give one pause as to what this guy’s interests are from the outset. He’s one of those black holes of politics sucking up human life for a lot of money in billable hours.
These days, the mantra of the press about this year’s presidential campaign has been, “we are in unfamiliar territory,” a theme that Eric explored yesterday in his weekly Planet Waves video feature. Best to expect the unexpected; or better yet, not expect anything. I doubt, however, with this candidate and this campaign, we will be pleasantly surprised.
We passed through the looking glass when the Republican National Convention concluded with Trump’s amazingly long and dark screed. He has the dubious distinction as candidate of epic catastrophe — whether he loses, or worse, if he wins. May we all be rescued by the cloaked and invisible roving motherships hovering overhead, filled with light-shimmering aliens, if the latter. Maybe even the former if Trump’s rabid base begin to follow up on his ‘suggestions’.
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In my little carpool, and hopefully elsewhere across America, we know we won’t be rescued by aliens. We only need to vote, after what will be an interminable two months beginning Labor Day. That our tolerance threshold has to hang tough and not break over the next two more months of this lunacy is the next test of our national character. Will we remain civilized, let alone civil?
Last night, Eric’s video and today’s message for the Full Moon should be in full effect for all of us:
…we can reasonably expect a little turbulence in our lives and extra chaos in the news. Uranus-Eris is also in the spotlight because Mars is gradually making a conjunction to Saturn. That is exact Aug. 24, though the pressure is building. There is a temptation to outright revolt against something; I would propose being subtler than that.
If there is something to push against, that would seem to be beliefs that no longer serve you. Are you really sure you actually know what you believe? Or is that level of thought transparent? Now is the time to notice your habits of assumption and presumption. This is not the time to do something simply because it’s there to do; rather, it’s time to act on the right thing to do, based on what you actually know.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Planet Waves community, you’re invited to join us as we hold ourselves together and carry on, calmly. The present time feels like a burning process that purifies and ultimately will find release when we punch our ballot cards and get this election done.
In the meantime, our tolerance and love for each other is the real shimmering mothership that can draw us nearer together and save us, as well as our individual creativity and gentleness to ourselves and each other. Let us seek that daily and hourly, like a North Star.
Well said..Thank you.
Hey Fey, wish it were so; election season over and election day tomorrow. It’s been my contention for a long while that Trump’s purpose is to bring to Conscious America the awareness of how many uninformed people of voting age are among us. Polling percentages are not useful for the average citizens. What we need are numbers like How Many People Believe Trump Would Be A Good President? A million? 10 million? 75,000? Then, in numbers, How Many People Believe Trump Would Be A Disaster as President? 7 billion? 300,000 million?
As long as transiting Neptune remains in the U.S. Sibly birth chart’s 3rd house of communication, information will be illusional, delusional, confused and sometimes correct, but seldom can we be sure unless we are sure of its source. The 3rd house symbolizes grade school, along with TV, Radio and blogs, and frankly, many of our citizens have not completed that stage in their education, let alone get a high school education. Our schools don’t emphasize civics anymore (I believe it was Jude who pointed that out some time back) and it shows.
Neptune is clear about one thing, it dissolves. Dissolving the elementary school system is part of this process and with transiting Neptune being square transiting Saturn (established order) this need is part of the 3rd house message we can believe.
When Saturn met Neptune in 1989 in the 1st of 3 conjunctions, Mercury was on the ascendant of that chart when set in Washington DC, and Mercury is associated with any chart’s 3rd house. That same chart had Pholus at 8+ Gemini (ruled by Mercury and associated with any 3rd house) and that’s where the U.S. natal Uranus is too. Pholus can take a simple act such as opening a bottle of wine and all hell can break loose. Pholus has uncorked Donald Trump for the U.S. Right now transiting Pholus in the U.S. 1st house squares transiting Chiron in the U.S. 3rd house.
Transiting Neptune has been exactly square the U.S. Uranus (and is still in orb) and the September Virgo Solar Eclipse will square the U.S. Uranus. This U.S. Uranus will complete a mutable grand cross with the T-square between the Sun/Moon in Virgo opposite Neptune in Pisces square Saturn in Sagittarius who will be 2 degrees from the U.S. Sibly ascendant of self awareness. Surely part of this hallmark of endings and beginnings will include the beginning of a new education curriculum for young people. Only a good education on what it takes to run a country will provide assurance that our citizens will never elect a fool like Trump to be their President.
Uranus symbolizes breakthroughs and the unexpected. In Gemini that could include education and thought processes and data gathering. Our country’s natal Uranus squares the U.S. Ceres-Child-Nessus conjunction in Pisces. With Nessus symbolizing dishonesty among other things, I believe parents (Ceres) in the U.S. have been duped into believing their children (Child) are getting a decent education. An education that would assure they were capable of determining the attributes needed for one who aspires to be President of the country. Maybe this Eclipse on September 1st as kids return to school, will be a wakeup call regarding what is being taught or not taught in so many schools.
be
B:
The education system is the key. Its been depreciated to the point where its become a prison mill in inner cities. The privatization of education has gone so far down the slope that our own Mr. Trump is facing a federal court on racketeering charges (RICO) for his so-called Trump University.
There is richness in irony abound these days. The wheel of karma seems to be rotating faster, like a turbo.
This is the type of burn baby burn that I appreciate.
An essay from Yuisa Guneno (published in Nellie Wong’s Talking Back: Voices of Color) comes to mind.
(http://www.spdbooks.org/Content/Site106/FilesSamples/9780932323323.pdf)
In “The unfinished battle for quality public schools” she states the origins of our system and points out “Students who fall behind get a pass into the prison system, fueling the school to prison pipeline.”
Thanks, Fe-as always.
Fe, aword, thank you very much for pointing out the degradation of the U.S. education system as it applies to the early formative years of our children. Something I had not noticed in the upcoming 1st conjunction chart (August 22) between transiting Mercury and Jupiter (the Teacher symbols) is how they are going to play into the much larger picture of the 2009 cycles created by that triple conjunction of Chiron, Neptune and Jupiter to the U.S. Moon in Aquarius.
Jupiter now having completed his 3 oppositions to Chiron puts their cycle (as well as the other 2 cycles that began back then) at its midway point, a deciding point when evaluations determine just how the cycle will proceed. In the 2009 chart for Jupiter and Neptune’s exact conjunction it took place in the degree occupied by the U.S. natal (Sibly) Pallas the Planner at 26+ Aquarius.
U.S. Pallas conjuncts U.S. Moon at 27+ Aquarius. This all seems very remarkable in that transiting Jupiter and Neptune were sextile transiting Mars (action) at the time. Mars was in his own sign of Aries (new beginnings) at 26+ degrees. (FYI transiting Uranus will reach 26+ Aries in May 2017.)
This sextile in the May 27, 2009 chart will turn into a Yod when the August 22, 2016, Mercury-Jupiter conjunction takes place at 26+ Virgo because both the 2009 conjunction of Jupiter to Neptune and their sextile with Mars in Aries are quincunx the August 22 Mercury-Jupiter conjunction. That puts the pressure on the August 22 Mercury-Jupiter to adjust. Think changes in the school system. Think teachers up in arms. Note that the upcoming Mercury-Jupiter conjunction is joined by the asteroid Klotho, also at 26+ Virgo; she who symbolizes a new (beginning) thread (life).
Now this 2016 conjunction at 26+ Virgo between Mercury and Jupiter (the teachers) is exactly opposite Uranus (the radical change guy) located in the May 2009 Jupiter-Neptune conjunction chart. Now we are talking about how the Yod pattern becomes a Boomerang pattern since the apex of the Yod that the August 2016 conjunction of the Teachers provides will be focusing the totality of the Yod energy back onto the 2009 Uranus at 26+ Pisces which it will oppose.
Because a cycle (such as the 2009 Jupiter-Neptune cycle) provides a blueprint-like pattern in their chart, it can be activated by transits (present day) which form aspects with the blueprint chart planets as long as the cycle is in effect (the next time the cycle’s two planets meet again).
Transiting Chiron got as far as 25+ Pisces before turning retrograde last June. Transiting Chiron will reach 26+ Pisces next April, around the time that Venus stations direct at 26+ Pisces. This will activate the Boomerang pattern and you can be sure that Chiron speaks the language of Uranus.
All this synchronicity between the . . .
1) Neptune-Jupiter cycle as represented by its chart’s Uranus in Pisces position which is half-way between the same chart’s Neptune-Jupiter in Aquarius (conjunct U.S. Pallas and Moon) and its Mars in Aries, and
2) the Mercury-Jupiter (Teachers) cycle beginning point on August 22, 2016, a cycle which will be effective through October 2017, and
3) the transiting astrology of April 14, 2017, specifically the conjunction at 26+ Pisces between Chiron and Venus-station-direct . . .
reveals one of the ways in which the big triple conjunction to the U.S. Moon+ Pallas in 2009 can affect the U.S. People (symbolized by the Moon) years later through activation by transiting planets. It would seem that history is often formed by such cycles when the time is right, according to the Universe. In the case of basic education for U.S. children, the time is upon us and we will be able to watch it unfold through the magic of astrology.
be
B:
What comes to mind immediately is the Trump University RICO case in the fed courts, which may set a precedent among other private universities charging ridiculous rates for people to get so-called “degrees” under dubious circumstances. These are exactly the things Liz Warren has been talking about.
I am so glad you dig into these levels because I am right there with you , following trends in the news. Let’s go team!