If Not Trump, What?

We’ll probably need a new national story. Up until now, 

America’s story has been some version of the rags-to-riches story, 

the lone individual who rises from the bottom through pluck and work. 

But that story isn’t working for people anymore, 

especially for people who think the system is rigged.

I don’t know what the new national story will be, 

but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive. 

Maybe it will be a story about communities that heal 

those who suffer from addiction, broken homes, trauma, 

prison and loss, a story of those who triumph over the 

isolation, social instability and dislocation so common today.

David Brooks wrote these words on the op ed page of the

New York Times April 29th, 2016

I only guess that no one has told David Brooks 

that the US is having an identity crisis. 

It happens to anyone with Pluto (the Transformer) 

passing opposite your Sun (your Identity).  

We are also having a crisis (Pluto) in faith and trust

 (Jupiter) as transiting Pluto is opposite a retrograde 

progressed Jupiter- which Trump has strangely tuned into. 

In many ways Trump signifies an opponent 

who is making us confront ourselves as to our identity, 

to force us to decide who we are as a nation. 

Is it only the 1% who get the goods??

This identity crisis (Pluto always involves a crisis) 

has been true these last few years in the 5:10 PM 

July 4th 1776 set in Philadelphia.  

(By the way has anyone told Trump that 

"Making America Great Again" will be impossible 

as long has the USA has 5 planets in apparent 

retrograde motion? It is time to withdraw, reflect, 

refine our vision, refocus, reevaluate our past 

actions as to what has been achieved and 

realign present and future actions to clearly 

defined intentions.  We have to ask ourselves 

who we are as a nation and what are we creating?

 This is an identity crisis.

Each moment in time is unique and unlike any other. 

Why does a successful restaurant or corporation fail, 

after closing, reorganizing and reopening a second time? 

It has a new and  different birth moment.  

In order to get a picture of what the USA is going through 

we can also use another interesting moment 

in time-that is Washington's First Inauguration 

on the steps of Federal Hall on Broadway and Wall, 

NYC, on April 30, 1789 precisely at noon. 

(David R. Roell, that prolific bookseller, writer 

and fascinating astrologer, who passed away 

suddenly in the summer of 2014, was a proponent 

of this chart to help explain some of America's 

idiosyncrasies). Can this birth moment help us 

explain some of this identity crisis we are going 

through; and help us to arrive at a new story, 

as Brooks suggests we need?

The rising sign for this chart is Leo the lion, the sign of kings, dignitaries, heroes and the courageous; the planet of the Reformer and the Maverick and the Awakener, Uranus is also in the first house, further defining how we engage with the world.. Considering we were born by revolting (Uranus) from the king (Leo) and mother country this seems apt. It also suggests an inherent individualistic or independent streak running through this country-the mentality that we can do it alone and do not need anybody.  Which is just what Brooks is saying we need to reorient away from.

(A good example of our inherent  sudden reforming ability is in the election of Obama as President. The planet Venus (values and what we are attracted to)) entered the sign of Aquarius (brotherhood and community) and came opposite that Maverick Uranus, eight years ago. Our ability to elect an outsider, a black man, showed the world, (not unlike Washington's ragged Continental Army defeating the British, the greatest fighting force in the world),  that the USA is quite capable of suddenly upsetting the status quo and "turning the world upside down". 

Another very strong and noticeable planet is situated across the horizon from rising sign Leo; Pluto in Aquarius in the 7th house of partners and open enemies. Pluto becomes the lens through which we see our enemies, it describes them. Pluto is the planet of revenge, power struggles, and what is hidden in the underworld. As Uranus symbolizes us as being revolutionaries,  Pluto indicates that we see our open enemies (enemies that we can see-our secret enemies are seen in another part of the chart) as dark, powerful and out to do us harm. We would also tend to project onto anyone who asserts them self against us, as all the unconscious and repressed evil in the world, and that we bear no responsibility for the situation.  It is all THEM!!!

This placement and Pluto's meaning would indicate that our partners or open enemies are emissaries of the underground; they force us to confront unconscious compulsions that are lurking beneath the surface. A good example here (as well as the Trump candidacy mentioned above) is of course the 9/11 attacks-we just made them the enemy without reflecting on what part we played in getting the pilots so crazed as to fly jets into 2 skyscrapers.)

So what of this new story and our ability to become less individualistic and more redemptive, as Brooks suggests? We need to look at the placement of planets Jupiter and the Moon is Cancer lurking behind the scenes in our 12th house of secret enemies.  Here is our secret undoing-the issues and people that can cause us the greatest anguish and suffering. These two planets are very caring and nourishing by nature, but their placement in this position in the Washington First Inaugural birth moment indicates that our caring and nurturing and mothering qualities (Cancer), we as a nation, have repressed or hidden from view.

This is further emphasized by the planet Mars which is very strong in its own sign, highly placed in a day chart and acts much too aggressively as a result. This Mars forms a square (friction, tension, stress) to those beautiful Cancer planets.  We angrily fight (Mars) this innate covert characteristic of our identity-to have empathy, compassion and sensitivity (Cancer) to the unseen suffering. . We want to keep our potential to be redemptive-to heal the sick, addicted and those suffering from trauma or broken homes or those in prison. We are fighting to keep these victimized or violated  people quietly ignored. (Slavery?)

But that will not be forever as planets Pluto, the Transformer and Uranus, the Awakener, are on the Moon (our feelings) in this chart and coming soon to Jupiter (help and aid and redemption). These are the same two planets that oppose one another in the birth moment as discussed above..So the USA will always be sensitive to the connections they make in the sky. and They have been making 7 connections to each other since 2010. 

We have seen evidence of these transformations recently as President Obama visited a federal prison, the the first sitting president to do so; and with the talk of attempts to change drug laws and deal differently with our huge incarcerated population.  Other evidence is both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders campaigns to equalize the off balanced scale of have and have nots.  They talk of reallocating  the excessive amounts of money used on the military (after all we have not been physically attacked on the Continental USA in 200 years) to healing suffering human beings, tackle issues in the environment and educating and inspiring the young disadvantaged. 

A new story is slowly being written thanks to the current planetary activity which is striking notes to the planetary placements in our birth moment that help us see how much farther this "unfinished sympathy has to go. Chaos, where we are now, is a stage of the evolutionary process and comes before order and stability prevail. Faith in the innate ability of these Unites States to radically reform and correct itself is warranted, even when things "seem" so scary..