As it Happened

Dear Friend and Reader:

In any sane version of the world, what we witnessed today before the Senate Judiciary Committee would not have happened. The hearing would not have taken place because what Christine Blasey Ford says she experienced should not have happened.

And in any sane version of politics, the hearing would never have occurred, either. When a political appointee becomes this embattled, they are usually withdrawn. That is, with one notable exception in living memory: Clarence Thomas, Monsanto’s representative on the Supreme Court.

We can thank Pres. Trump for the fact that today’s confrontation between Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh and the Senate Judiciary Committee was broadcast to the public. The president could have ended this, but he chose not to.

What takes place so deliberately within a political environment is political by design, and that is an important context in which to view this. I will get to this in a moment.

The whole matter could have been referred to the FBI as a seemingly impartial, third-party finder of fact. It was not. It could have been handled privately, behind the scenes; it was not. It could have come out a long time ago; it did not. It has exploded into consciousness.

Whatever led to this moment, we heard directly from Dr. Ford about what she says occurred at a social gathering when she was 15 years old. I listened carefully, and to me, she seems credible. There is no way to answer the kind of detail she offered, both physical and emotional, with a denial. Were Kavanaugh a criminal defendant, and were we to present this same testimony to a jury, would you vote to convict?

One important difference would be that in a courtroom situation, both sides would be entitled to cross-examination; that did not happen today. The result is that we are left with one-sided presentations. That can be very dangerous. There are no corroborating witnesses. There are no third-party findings of fact. Dr. Ford has called for an FBI investigation; Kavanaugh has not, and Trump has not authorized one.

In fact, at 4:45 pm, when Kavanaugh was asked whether he would support an FBI investigation into Ford’s allegations, he was silent. He did not say yes. The term “deer in headlights” describes his response [listen to 51-second audio here].

We are into the territory of believing or not believing, and Dr. Ford is, at least, believable. Yet to be honest, we would admit that we must take her at her word, and that there is no proof or tangible evidence. We may choose to trust her, though there are all kinds of untrustworthy people who get us to believe them as well — particularly in this time when we want, so urgently, to make this world a better place. As for Kavanaugh, if he did what he is accused of, he has no choice but to deny it.

President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, testifying a few weeks ago. Photo by Jacquelyn Martin.

That said, we might ask why this was allowed onto national television, specifically by Trump. That is not a rhetorical question. Trump alone could have made this spectacle go away, and he did not.

That is how it happened. One result is that this is continuing to galvanize a women’s movement in the United States and in the world, despite him. Or maybe that will be Trump’s karmic role.

It is tragic that it’s a movement based on a response to violence and not based on building the future. It is based on conflict and not on collaboration. Had you asked me as a kid growing up during Second Wave feminism of the 1970s, I would have been certain we’d be far beyond this point today; we seem to have slipped backwards by decades or more.

Another result is that we are getting a window into other facets of American culture, in this case youth culture, that are open secrets.

Whatever may have happened to Dr. Ford, when alcohol and unsupervised teenagers are in the same place, bad things can happen, and happen all the time. We live in a society that extols violence, and that freely associates violence with sex. We live in a society where, traditionally, boys have been encouraged to be assertive and aggressive and girls have been encouraged to be quiet and accommodating.

What Dr. Ford says occurred that night in 1982 might seem like it’s confined to elite schools, though actually, it sounds like it could have happened at any public high school or state school anywhere, at least in the United States. Drinking culture is accepted as a fact of “normal” teen and campus culture. It’s also a part of our whole society and many cultures throughout the world, from Tokyo to Amsterdam to Moscow to the street I live on.

Youth binge drinking is considered normal.

By Dr. Ford’s own testimony today, she said she could not tell her parents what happened because she would have also had to tell them that she had been to a party with unsupervised boys, all of whom were drinking underage. So as it so often does, alcohol became the elixir of lies, secrets and silence.

Dr. Ford did not say she was afraid she would not be believed; she was afraid that she would have been blamed.

While we are sorting out the issues of sexual aggression — which has happened to many women and many men — and while we’re sorting out the issues of teenage binge drinking, parents and school administrators need to take up Dr. Ford’s particular motive for remaining silent, and do something about it.

But it’s not just kids. Alcohol, freely available to nearly anyone, is associated with domestic violence, with death on the highways and with many other problems on every level of society. Prohibition did not work. There is a far more serious problem beneath the one we’re looking at. All of this alcohol is serving a purpose, dark though it is. As Dr. Carl Jung said to Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, spirit is a replacement for Spirit.

While we’re on the topic of sexual transgression, in my experience working with hundreds of survivors, the problem almost always begins in the home. That’s another open secret that I have not seen referenced once in the past year.

*        *        *So why, exactly, did Trump and the Senate’s Republican leadership allow today’s hearing to happen? A lot is on the line for women right now. Brett Kavanaugh would have many assignments if he sat on the Supreme Court, and one of them is to be the fifth vote to repeal Roe v. Wade. I can say this confidently because he has the approval of the Heritage Foundation.

To let this hearing go forward, Republicans have likely done serious damage to their election prospects in November, and could lose both houses of Congress, whether or not Kavanaugh is approved by the Senate to sit on the court. By any normal political calculus, it’s just insane.

Pres. Donald Trump. Reuters photo.

And that is an indicator of how important it is to right-wing strategists and many ordinary people to eliminate Roe v. Wade. If this all seems politically desperate, that is, in my view, the root of the desperation.

To repeal Roe would, from my perspective, be an act of violence against women and girls alive today, and those of future generations. It is a direct attack on the legal personhood of women.

Today, we have little idea what our forebears went through first to get women the vote, and then to ensure access to safe and legal abortion. Between the two is access to birth control, and honest information about sex, both of which are also under attack.

To outlaw women’s autonomy over their bodies, which would mean to return half the population to the status of chattel or non-people, is an inherently violent act, on a scale we cannot imagine. The consequences would be so dystopian we can only approach them in fiction.

Brett Kavanaugh as he has been presented to us is a fitting metaphor for that aggression and disregard of the humanity of women, as are all the politicians who are supporting him.

This is a warning about the mentality lurking behind this strange movement to deny women autonomy over their medical choices and family planning — indeed, their whole lives.

The notion that Evangelical Christians would pressure Trump into delivering this nomination, and the fact that he would respond by leaving Kavanaugh’s nomination live through this insanity, tells us something about who is really running the country at the moment. It’s telling us something about the agenda of an actual patriarchy, a theocracy, and what has been referred to in the past as the American Taliban.

They are no longer hiding this fact; they are being rather brazen about it. While we’re looking at a very ugly, life-altering day in the life of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, we need to look at this agenda as well — whether or not Kavanaugh ever serves on the high court — before it becomes the story of our lives.

We already live in the time of government by ambush, by emotional assault, by drama, by news leak and where nonparticipants — the apathetic and nonvoters — have way too much influence. And we are alive in a time when we need to work together to solve many serious, imminent problems the world is facing, and often forget.

As for what is happening now: We are left to trust that all things work together for good.

With love,

P.S. This morning I wrote a special comment, available here, on the astrology of today’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which began at 10 am and could be watched via live stream.

Living the Aries Point at the Airport (and Weekend Astrology)

By Amanda Painter

It always fascinates me when a personal event reflects not only the astrology, but also something about the cultural zeitgeist. I had one of those experiences early Monday evening, just a few hours before the Aries Full Moon peaked.

Heathrow airport in May; photo by Amanda Painter.

I was going through the security line to board a flight, and opted out of the scanning machine, requesting a pat-down instead.

This has been my policy for a number of years now: it’s kind of a solo, silent protest against the machines and their original privacy issues, and against the massive, barely questioned undermining of civil liberties swept in by the Patriot Act following the Sept. 11 disaster.

I realize a silent protest is not going to effect change, but I do it more for myself: as a way of claiming my limited power of choice in the situation, knowing that I am perfectly within my rights not to offer any explanation. Perhaps someone more hell-bent on making a point to ‘the authorities’ would make a statement, but what can I say? I am a practical Taurus; I want to get to my destination without missing my flight and having to pay for another one.

For me, it is enough to know that I am taking my space in a situation where there’s a lot of pressure — psychological and temporal — to just keep everything moving smoothly and not stand out. I know that as I stand there getting my pat-down, some people are probably wondering if I got flagged by security as a risk. So I guess there’s an element of wanting to be an example to others that it’s possible to go through this procedure without feeling like a victim: I am choosing this, and my reasons are my own.

As best I can remember, I’ve almost always been by myself as I stand to the side, waiting for an available female TSA agent to arrive. Even if I’m traveling with my boyfriend, he goes through the scanner and waits on the other side. Sometimes it takes an unnervingly long time for the agent to arrive if things are busy.

Monday night, however, was another story. Just before I opted out, another woman had. As we waited in line, we both remarked on how we’re always the only ones, and the reactions of our respective partners to this choice when traveling with them. The she said something that surprised and heartened me:

Continue reading…

This Week on Planet Waves FM
Mega Edition: The Boss, the Full Moon and the Showdown

Dear Friend and Listener:

This week, I have a monster edition of Planet Waves FM for you [play edition here]. We can hang out the entire evening, or even for a few days!

Bruce Springsteen.

I begin with an overview of the show, and coverage of last night’s Full Moon in Aries — which was conjunct Chiron and Salacia; square Hebe, Niobe, Vesta and Saturn; and opposite Mercury, the Sun and monster galaxy M87. You could not ask for more!

In the second segment [beginning at 50 minutes], I study the politics and the astrology of the confrontation between Christine Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, who is accused of sexual misconduct as a 17-year-old. I look behind the obvious and consider how this is single combat over the issue of Roe v. Wade, as Kavanaugh would be the deciding vote on that issue. But neither Democrats nor Republicans can state their true position.

In the third segment [beginning at about one hour and 30 minutes], I interview Peter von Stackelberg, co-author of The Gemstone File document collection, which I was involved with publishing last year (and many of you helped pay for with your generous donations).

This collection, accessible online, makes available to everyone documents from the files of Monsanto, Dow Chemical, General Electric, Westinghouse, the Navy, the Air Force and the EPA, many of which come from my collection.

In the fourth segment [beginning at about two hours and 20 minutes], I do a detailed reading of the chart of Bruce Springsteen (chart is below).

And in the last segment [beginning at about 3 hours and 10 minutes], I base Tantra Studio on the lyrics to “She’s The One,” the Springsteen classic from Born to Run. The theme is the complexity of power relationships between the sexes, and how we work them out.

Planet Waves FM is part of the Pacifica Radio Network and published by Chiron Return, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. We are supported entirely by your contributions, with help from your memberships to Planet Waves. Thank you for your many generous contributions.

Thank you for participating and Happy Equinox!

With love,

PS — Here are some resources. My daily horoscope is back. I did an article on Clarence Clemons a few years ago. You can peruse The Gemstone File here, or read the article about the Howard Johnson’s transcript here. Oh yeah, one last: Mercury Weaving the Story of Nessus, my one article on codependency.

Not Exactly Camelot; Not Even Spamalot

By Amanda Painter

I searched for something of simple beauty to balance the rawness and outrage of today, but nothing was crossing my path that hit quite the right note. And although I’ve featured Randy Rainbow a couple of times in this space, I have to give him credit for keeping up with the news in his song parodies.

So, I offer you today “KAVANAUGH!” sung to the tune of “Camelot!” As Randy notes on the YouTube page, “Because when they go low, we go Lerner and Loewe.”

May this video bring you a laugh or two; and may that laugh, in turn, energize you enough to re-center yourself in the midst of whatever chaos, stress, triggering or general despair you might be dealing with. No matter what transpires from this SCOTUS hearing, one thing is clear: we have work to do together; and I would say that we are, indeed, here on this planet together at this time for a reason.

Listen to Vision Quest on Live Stream

Planet Waves has an in-house music ensemble, called Vision Quest. We have a 38-hour loop of our music, which you can listen to any time. Included are finished pieces, rehearsals, live concerts, drum grooves, and spoken word recordings. I consider it a kind of musical divination. Click in randomly at different times of day and see what you discover.

Our Gifts to You: A Little Something Extra

Dear Friend and Reader:

It took me a long time to figure out what kind of gift to offer for new and returning subscribers. Tee shirts seemed too complicated; you need at least six sizes to get started, and not everyone wants a shirt. Tote bags are useful but kind of boring.

So I thought: journals. I love notebooks, and just about everything I write starts scribbled down on paper. I know my readers are a little old-fashioned, so this seemed like the perfect thing.

Black smaller, pink larger, embossed with the Planet Waves logo. There are a few hand painted sketchbooks left, with heavy, acid-free paper.

Then…I researched embossed journals for about six months. That’s how long it took. I requested or purchased samples of the best that suppliers had, and all kinds of stuff came floating in the door. It was more challenging than I imagined to find a nice one, though finally I did.

Everything had to be right: the paper, the lines, and how the book feels in your hands.

However, the one I selected was being discontinued. I ordered as many as we could reasonably afford. We now have two main options: small black ones, and larger pink ones (these are new).

Together, they are the approximate color of Good & Plenty candy. I am one of these people who loves anything pink (sweatshirts, nail polish, headbands, a hot pink Squier guitar that I gave to Zosha a few years ago). We also have a few hand-painted notebooks left, which are acid-free sketchbooks.

You can get an embossed notebook with any monthly, quarterly or yearly membership to Planet Waves. If, by the way, there’s a calling for hand-painted ones, I will make one more-or-less to your preferences (for those who sign up for a full-year Backstage Pass).

Continue reading this letter here.

Monthly Horoscopes and Publishing Schedule Notes

We published your extended monthly horoscopes for September on Thursday, Aug. 30. Your extended monthly horoscopes for August were published on Thursday, Aug. 9. Please note: we normally publish the extended monthly horoscope after the Sun has entered a new sign.

Aries (March 20-April 19) — As Mars continues to retrace the area where it was retrograde, what you learned and experienced during that period is still producing revelations, some being of a deeply profound nature. You seem to be coming in contact with alternative ways of viewing the world, and are in a unique position to listen to and understand what might not otherwise come naturally. Close partners or friends may assist here. Remember that seeing the proverbial forest for the trees can be an especially challenging feat when you’re surrounded by a thick cluster of conifers. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — The world can sometimes seem a pretty chaotic place; what might look like the perfect plan can be subject to delays, hindrances, challenges or changes of mind and mood. Our limited perspective means that finding the best way forward is often a matter of trial and error. Yet, with persistence, you can reach a goal even if that involves taking one step back for every two or three forward. First, be sure you know what you want. Then do what you can, as frequently as you can. And every time you get distracted or waylaid, just keep returning to the path. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Juno, an asteroid that refers to committed relationships, is about to do something pretty rare. It will enter your sign, and then station retrograde within two weeks while still in the first degree. This could give you an unusual chance to consider your attitude and beliefs on this topic, including asking yourself what you truly want from a partnership; sorting your needs from your desires; and figuring out where you end and others begin. You have the opportunity to deconstruct certain ideas on a deep level and toss out what isn’t useful, so that you can concentrate on your real priorities. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — Many people have it pretty tough at some point during their lives; we often face challenges and opposition to being ourselves, in whatever way that manifests. This process tends to start in the childhood home, but can appear in adulthood as well, especially if you dare to be different. You seem to have come through a time of trial, whether rooted deep in the past or more relevant to today, which you’ve experienced with dignity and grace. Keep expressing your unique qualities, regardless of anyone else. Your moral courage is more than likely being noticed. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — When your spirited and charming manner is paired with that determination belonging most obviously to the fixed signs, you can accomplish almost anything you desire. That’s a wonderful power to possess, and only really causes difficulties when you fix on getting something that’s not entirely healthy or wise. This week, examine any impulses carefully, and don’t let them turn into immediate, less conscious action. Instead, if you want to get somewhere, I recommend following a more logical path and keeping an eye on how well it works for you.Get your full reading by Eric here.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — When we describe people as ‘wed to their career’, or to their art, in many cases what this really means is that they’re particularly independent, autonomous and complete within themselves. This isn’t a more valid path to one’s truth than being invested in a relationship; rather, it shows that it’s possible to feel and be whole without depending on one specific person. Knowing this can be tremendously empowering, not least because it offers the full gamut of options for living your life precisely as you choose, without the need to follow a societal narrative. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — It is often wise to seek advice and pointers from others, especially experts in their field; it’s not incumbent on us to take said counsel to heart, but we can give them a hearing. Yet it’s also true that we are the ultimate experts on our own thoughts and feelings. In seeking to resolve a certain issue this week, be open to recognizing and respecting your own knowledge. You have a clearer and better-informed perspective than you realize. Even if it seems others’ opinions contradict your own awareness, bear in mind whatever ideas you’re forming. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You’ve undergone a process of reviewing certain decisions and opinions; which is probably putting it mildly. You might consider Venus about to station retrograde in your sign as phase two of this operation, which is likely to be a lot gentler and less apparently disruptive. Venus will help you guide the rivers of your emotional strength to flow more easily and freely; you can assist by paying close attention to your well-honed feelings and instincts, and not ignoring or attempting to suppress your wishes and desires. Let your soul dance and breathe. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — In terms of a particular skill set or understanding that you’re developing, you’ve now reached the stage where you’re beginning to see the fruits of your labor. Hopefully this is encouraging enough to boost your self-confidence: if you’re not quite there yet, take a glance back and note how far forward you’ve moved. If you’re truly passionate about what you’re doing, don’t allow anything or anyone to dampen your enthusiasm or enjoyment. There will always be opposition to whatever is worth striving for; you’ve faced down too much of that already to stop now. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Life is almost always a string of ups and downs, and it’s an unfortunate (if once useful) quirk of the human brain that the descents tend to make a more profound impression than the climbs. Perhaps this is what helps us to keep striving for improvement; certainly it seems comforting to think that the situations we find ourselves in are often better than they first appear. When all is said and done, you have plenty of resources, including within yourself; and a worthwhile aim in mind, which you have every reason to continue pursuing. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — There are times when it’s necessary to say and do what seems most beneficial to everyone involved; there are other times when you have to express your views or feelings, even if it appears discomfiting to others. The right course isn’t always easy to see, which is why philosophers have such trouble grappling with the question of ethics. In the present case, it looks as if you need to be true to your values, regardless of whose sensibilities you might offend by so doing. Indignation is easy; nuance is harder. Give people something to think about. Get your full reading by Eric here.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — The word ‘namaste’ is an acknowledgement that there is a divine part within all of us, though we don’t always notice it in ourselves or each other. During the next few weeks, it’s likely that you’ll have an unusual number of opportunities to encounter certain individuals on this high level, and for your soul to communicate directly with theirs, as though the cosmos is talking with itself. Of course, this will work best if you’re willing to be open to this perspective, and to trust that what you’re seeing is for real. After all, you already have the requisite sensitivity. Get your full reading by Eric here.