Class Warfare in the USA

Uranus in Aries (populist rebellion) and Pluto in Capricorn (breakdown of the social order) are off and running. The square between them, ignited by the involvement of the Aries point this past spring, has exploded worldwide in sporadic dissent in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran to out-and-out revolution in Tunisia and Egypt.

For several years this column has covered how the Uranus-Pluto transit fits into the US (Sibly) chart. As the square nears exactitude (2012-16), it is fitting it like a hand fits a glove. Uncle Sam is a marked man during the Cardinal Cross years. So it makes you wonder why the USA has not experienced martial conflict against its own governing regime, such as is going on in town squares and villages elsewhere in the world.

Mars is T-squaring the Longest Arm of the Cross this month, and astrologers are keeping a close eye on the global hot spots. One of these is the USA. The country is having its natal Mars Return (1) at the same time that Mars is bisecting the Cross, and the US chart is making the Cross into a Grand Square. We have here a highly incendiary situation.

In the newspaper this morning, I read that the California state university system—which was once the jewel in the state’s crown, fulfilling the promise of excellent, free education for all—just held a meeting at which they raised the fees for a second time this year, over the objections of desperate students who are already drowning in debt. At this same meeting, the regents gave large pay raises to executives who are paid from state funds.

I know I am not the only one asking: Where is the outrage?

The transits above spell out the explosion (Uranus) of mass anger (Mars) at the plutocratic nature of the American system (Pluto). Yet we see the signs of no mass movement here. With Americans broke, angry and ripped off, and the transit acting like a bellows to the flame, we might well ask: Why isn’t everybody in the streets?

Mind Control

One way to understand why the fated breakdown has not taken this form is the existence of the American media, an immensely sophisticated and far-reaching enterprise which serves as an arm of the country’s controlling interests. The Sibly chart’s Mercury (opinion) is opposite Pluto (power)  in the two money houses (second and eighth). When we see these two planets opposed in an individual’s chart, we allow for the possibility of mind control.

Consider the way the mainstream news has co-opted the phrase “class warfare.” By appropriating these highly charged words, and by dulling their significance with repetition and insincerity, the pundits and politicians have done a pretty good job distracting the US public from noticing what could be an otherwise very dangerous thing to notice: that a war between the classes is exactly what’s already going on.

It is not a class war with guns and tanks (2), but in every other way it’s a class war. In a country where almost a quarter of the total income generated goes to the top 1% of its citizens, would it be that surprising to see a military war break out between the haves and the have-nots?

Income Equality

Notice that the phrase “class warfare” tends to come up whenever the Democrats trot out their halfhearted proposals to tax the rich (3). At this point, a righteous Republican will hurl forth his salvo, accusing the Democrat of waging CW.”

Clearly we’re supposed to infer that the phrase means something bad. But why is the charge implicitly a slur? After all, it is supposed to express the fact that one class (let’s call it “most of us;” i.e. 99% of the country) is taking umbrage at the fact that the other class (let’s call it “the very rich;” i.e. less than 1% of the country) is hogging all the wealth and power. How is that so out of line?

Even just a few years ago, you didn’t often hear the phrase “income equality”. But now that the USA is in its Saturn Return, in Libra—the sign of the equality/ inequality spectrum—we hear it everywhere.

Saturn’s placement in the US chart (square the Sun: ouch) indicates that the issue it represents is the country’s Achilles heel. We are very touchy about living up to our Libran ideals of fairness and equality. As a nation, we make big, bold claims to being the world’s greatest democracy, but the facts don’t quite hold up to the ideal.

This summer Pluto is again opposed to the US (Sibly) Jupiter, going retrograde. During August it will move onto the midpoint between the America’s Jupiter (social class) and Venus (money); while Uranus (popular unrest) exactly squares that midpoint, moving retrograde.

Since this transit cycle began, Americans have been experiencing a breakdown of their sense of what things are worth. The value of their work, their houses, their possessions and aspirations has been grotesquely distorted; and so has  the American self-image with which that value has been identified.

Have you ever asked yourself: What would happen if CEOs made—oh, I don’t know—let’s say only fifty times more than their workers make; instead of 500 times as much, as they do now, on average? After all, that would still be an awful lot more. They’d still be, you know, very rich. And without all that locked-up private wealth, employment and commerce would rise. The economy would be healthier.

Musing about questions like this leads us to wonder whether maybe class warfare, rather than being what the Democrats are doing when they try to tax the rich, is what bailed-out banks are doing, when they buy government bonds instead of making loans.

Or what Microsoft is doing, when they take government funds given to them to create jobs, and instead invest it for themselves. (Later, we may see Bill and Melinda Gates at a charily ball, fulsomely praised by beaming NGO staffers for their selfless philanthropy. Classy!)

High Praise

I suspect the reason the Republicans get any traction at all from crying “class warfare” is not because of the “warfare” part of the phrase. American popular culture thrives on violence. No, I think it’s the word “class” that sends the shivers up people’s spines in both Congress and the listening audience. That’s the word that makes the phrase threatening enough to shut up the liberals.

This is because “class” is something the USA is not supposed to have. If you think we have it, you must be a socialist… which is code (in this same belief system) for traitor. Carrying the linguistic analysis one step further, we might find that, for some Americans, the word traitor has a charge not dissimilar to the word Devil, judging by the intensely virulent, emotional energy with which it is deployed in partisan debate.

Of course, all of these fraught insults crumble into nothingness if you don’t believe in the assumptions they’re based on. If you don’t believe in the Devil, then being likened to Mephistopheles will not have the same sting as it would for a Christian. If you don’t believe in nationalism, then being accused of treachery to your nation state will not be a fate-worse-than-death.

And if you don’t believe that it’s shameful to call out class injustice in a society where only 32% of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors (4), and where the state and local taxes of the middle class are rising while their services are being cut, their teachers and firefighters are being laid off, their roads and bridges are crumbling and their libraries and parks are shutting down… at the same time that the marginal income tax rate on the very rich is the lowest it’s been in more than 80 years (5), then being called a “class warrior” is not going to sound like a put-down.

On the contrary, it might feel like high praise.

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Notes:

(1) The national Mars Return on July 22 began the period of over-the-top tension. On August 8 Mars will begin conjoining the US Cancer cluster while opposing Pluto and squaring Uranus; starting with Venus and Jupiter and ending with the Sun on August 24.

(2) Not yet, anyway. But it is no wonder that the powers-that-be are so nervous these days. With their fevered leak prosecutions (Obama has targeted whistleblowers more aggressively than any previous president), their extravagant “Homeland Security” and TSA departments and their ever-expanding surveillance network, the American government is taking no chances of having its large, unwieldy populace become disaffected to the point of armed rebellion.

(3) That is, to tax them a token amount. Not tax them so much that the Democrat’s own net worth is threatened, or that of his corporate sponsors;  but enough so the Democrat can go on record as having made the proposal.

(4) Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, which essentially made it legal for big business to bribe legislators with as much cash as they wanted. (See my blog https://mothersky.com/2010/01/monsters/).

(5) Today the marginal income tax rate is 36%; under President Eisenhower it was 91%. Would today’s GOP blowhards call good ol’ Ike a “class warrior”?

Jessica Murray

Jessica Murray trained as a fine artist before graduating in 1973 from Brown University, where she studied psychology and linguistics. After a stint in political theatre in the heady early ’70s, Jessica moved to San Francisco and began studying metaphysics, where she has had a full-time private practice in astrology for more than 30 years. Her book, Soul-Sick Nation: An Astrologer’s View of America, is available through her website, mothersky.com.
In addition to her column in Daykeeper Journal and the monthly Skywatch on her website, Jessica’s essays appear in “The Mountain Astrologer,” “P.S. Magazine” and other publications. Jessica can be reached by email.