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FEBRUARY 2008 GALACTIC
PROFILE In Part 1 of this biography we dealt with George W. Bush’s Black Hole Sun and Mercury/Pluto conjunction, the most powerful of his galactic contacts, and arguably the most far reaching. But Bush’s Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are no slouch in the galactic department, either—all aspect Black Holes, much to the collective detriment. Mars is particularly potent, with an exact conjunction to the Black Hole at 9 Virgo. The spectrum of Mars manifestations this placement has evoked run from the political tactic of polarizing the electorate with cultural wedge issues, creating enmity and fractiousness, to involving us in the most expensive, disastrous military venture since Vietnam, including coming close to breaking the volunteer army, and completely overwhelming the National Guard and reserves.
But it is in the realm of public policy where this pairing has done the most ill. The overarching change which this Black Hole Mars has wrought, enabling so many of the others and radically altering the nation’s approach to foreign policy, is the so-called “Bush Doctrine” of pre-emptive, unilateral war. We as a people have never condoned aggressive postures militarily, and have always waited for an outright attack from others on our soil, or for requests from assistance from beleaguered allies, before initiating military action. The Bush Doctrine turns that precedent on its head in typical Black Hole reversal fashion, stating that we have the right to anticipate threats and take action before they come to a head, violating the sovereign rights of nations which we deem to be potentially dangerous.
Iraq is the first fruits of this radical departure from traditional policies. With 3900 US servicemen and women killed and 29,000 wounded, with perhaps 80,000 Iraqi civilians dead, with the Iraq War costing $2.25 billion per week, with more than $600 billion spent so far and final costs including ongoing post-conflict health and mental treatment for our troops expected to top $2 trillion, it’s obvious that the power of Bush’s Black Hole Mars to drain resources is unparalleled. This would be bad enough if there were some positive outcome on the horizon, but the invasion and occupation of Iraq has produced not one benefit for anyone involved, except perhaps Al Qaeda, who have successfully used it as an invaluable propaganda and recruiting tool, and American contractors such as Haliburton and Blackwater, who have gleaned hefty profits from the war. All the blood and treasure expended has been a complete waste, a stunning testimonial to the power of the Black Hole to consume without gain. Yet even with all that vast expenditure, our troops still suffer. The army is seriously over-extended, and stop-loss programs have kept troops in the field for much longer than usual, or advisable. Humvees and other transports remain inadequately armored to protect from the IEDs that litter the roads; servicemen’s families pay to provide better armor for their sons than the government has supplied. The extraordinary level of waste, corruption and incompetence that characterizes our military venture in Iraq is directly traceable to Black Hole Mars. Money is poured in, but there is no visible result or benefit.
As noted above, Black Hole Mars (in tandem with Bush’s 18 Libra Jupiter, ruling politicians and campaigns, in square to the Black Hole at 19 Capricorn) is also to blame for the increased polarization in the electorate. Running in 2000 as “a uniter, not a divider,” Bush and his evil genius Karl Rove set out to divide with a vengeance, successfully using wedge issues such as abortion and gay marriage to galvanize their base. Demonizing those opposed to the Iraq War as unpatriotic and anti-American was just the beginning, as on one after another cultural issue Bush’s GOP cultivated the same “with us or against us” attitude. Bipartisan cooperation is a thing of the past, and comity between the parties has eroded to such an extent under Bush’s leadership that a sitting vice president can openly tell a senator to “fuck himself” on the senate floor. The re-emergence of torture is perhaps the most appalling of the manifestations of Bush’s Black Hole Mars. Starting with the use of sexual humiliation at the Abu Ghraib prison, and extending to the rendition of prisoners to other countries which torture, and the use of execrable “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay, the abrupt change in American values regarding treatment of detainees has been dramatic and seemingly unstoppable. We as a nation are now condoning techniques which have long been considered torture, and which we prosecuted others for as recently as World War II. The use of surrogates to perform our dirty work and the substitution of neutral terms for inhumane interrogation tactics cannot change the truth, that under the leadership of George W. Bush, America has squandered its birthright as a nation of high moral standing, and now stands alongside dictatorships and totalitarian regimes who think nothing of using such methods. Money planets Venus, Jupiter and Pluto all conjoin or aspect Black Holes, a sure sign that money issues predominate, and waste is excessive. Venus rules the thousands, Jupiter the millions, and Pluto the billions. With a Black Hole on a financial planet, money is spent to little purpose, and unexpected expenditures are common; vast sums can disappear into the Black Hole’s insatiable gullet without anything at all to show for it. The last few years of the Clinton administration the government took in more than it spent, leaving a surplus of almost $130 billion. The National Debt stood at $5.7 trillion at the end of this “tax and spend” Democratic administration, a sum which had been accruing since the Kennedy administration forty years earlier. And then “conservative” Bush arrived in Washington. As we enter 2008, the National Debt has risen to nearly $10 trillion, with another $1 trillion expected to be added to our collective indebtedness before the term expires in January 2009. In just eight years, Bush will have managed to nearly double the debt, a truly impressive feat.
It should be noted that “special expenditures,” such as the Iraq War, are all done off-budget; and even while utilizing that bookkeeping sleight of hand, the Bush administration has never yet managed a yearly deficit of less than $158 billion (with 2004's $307 billion deficit the high water mark). The addition of Medicare Part D, prescription coverage, to the Medicare program has created a vast new entitlement costing upwards of $40 billion annually, with that figure only to increase as the Baby Boomers reach retirement. Again, bad enough, but the legislation was co-authored by pharmaceutical company lobbyists, and includes explicit bans on the government negotiating cheaper prices from drug companies (as the Veteran’s Administration does). The bill is crafted in such a bizarre way that those seniors who need the most medication, and thus the most help, end up paying the most out of pocket, due to an infamous “donut hole” in coverage which, with co-pays, means a cost of almost $4000 per year. The other huge expense came in the form of the Department of Homeland Security, including the Transportation Security Administration. With 160,000 employees and a yearly budget of $47 billion, this department is the largest increase in governmental bureaucracy since the Roosevelt administration. And once again, as with virtually everything Bush sets his Black Hole hands to, there is no visible merit. No credible evidence of any foiled terrorist plots, nothing done about port security, no increased protection for chemical or power plants or any sensitive infrastructure. Late in 2007 the news was released that agents of the Government Accountability Office were able to smuggle bomb components past airport screeners with ease, but nursing mothers were still having difficulty getting expressed breast milk onto planes for their infant children. We have already discussed in Part 1 of this biography how Pluto interacts with Mercury in augmenting governmental secrecy, etc., but both Venus and Jupiter have their own issues beyond the monetary as well. When we speak of Black Hole Venus we need also to address values, and the transformation in American values during the Bush years has been unprecedented. Playing on the fear and panic provoked by 9/11, the administration has accomplished a complete volte face in governmental policy on such issues as domestic spying, habeas corpus and torture of detainees, with a large percentage of the American public just frightened enough to condone such infringements on their constitutional rights and assaults on basic human dignity. Black Hole Jupiter can also be clearly seen in the corruption of the Justice Department, with disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at its head. The department underwent a systemic purge, rooting out those neutral or opposed to administration policies, and replacing them with “loyal Bushies.” Culminating in the US attorneys firing scandal, the packing of the department with ideologues extends to the rank and file as well, with appointment or preferment dependent upon political viewpoint rather than competence, experience or performance. Of all governmental departments, Justice needs to be as apolitical as possible, but the Bushbot march through its corridors has left it with a credibility gap which will be very difficult to bridge by future administrations. Jupiter also rules the Supreme Court, and although Bush was well within his rights to make ideological appointments to this body, as all his predecessors have done, the choices he has made have tipped a precarious balance rightward at a time when the country desperately needs a final court of appeals that will be sympathetic to issues of abuse of executive power and constitutional encroachment. Historically, conservative courts are less bothered by governmental power and less concerned with preserving individual freedoms, and much of the mess Bush leaves behind him may be harder to redress with the Supreme Court he bequeaths us.
Bush’s Saturn at 26 Cancer conjoins the Black Hole at 28 Cancer, and has also left its mark on the office of the presidency itself. Following Cheney’s vision of an imperial presidency and a unitary executive unshackled by constitutional or legal restraints, the Bush White House has maneuvered Congress into a position of virtual irrelevance, embarking on an executive power grab of unprecedented proportions. Relying on such expedients as the now-infamous “signing statements,” essentially private refutations of laws which have been enacted but which he does not believe himself bound to obey, Bush has undermined the very fabric of our system of government, creating a dangerous precedent wherein the Chief Executive exists in an extra-legal environment that has dictatorial implications. Although signing statements have been used occasionally by prior administrations, Bush has made a regular habit of them. They were first implemented by the Monroe administration in the early 1800s; 75 were used from their inception until the end of the Carter administration, and another 250 from Reagan through Clinton. Bush used the tactic more than 800 times in his first six years in office, taking a bad practice to its logical extreme.
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On a personal note, Mars on a Black Hole tends toward
secretive, obsessive sexual contacts, and there have long been rumors
of homosexual outlets for Bush. Certainly many of the inner circle,
such as former Press Secretary Scott McClellan and 2004 campaign
manager Ken Mehlman are gay. And what are we to make of the frequent
late night visits to the White House of faux “reporter” and former male prostitute
Jeff Gannon? Similar tales cluster about Bush’s father, and other
members of the super-secret, ultra-exclusive
Skull and Bones society of which both were members, and the activities
at the Bohemian Grove retreat in California, which Bush regularly attended.
Whatever the veracity of the allegations of homosexual behavior, Black
Hole Mars always has more than a few sexual secrets to hide.
In the examples above, we see clearly the themes of
Black Hole interaction—dramatic
change, reversal of direction or precedent, the draining of resources,
the acquisition of raw power. It may be impossible to quantify the
damage done by this man to the American collective, but that damage
is palpable, and enduring. He may have failed in his quest to build
a Republican majority for a generation, or to democratize the Middle
East, or even to competently manage the nation, but the Bush legacy
is one we will be living with for a very long time indeed. The America
he leaves behind him may be one which is irrevocably altered, twisted
and refracted by the prism of Bush’s Black Holes into something
unrecognizable, and previously unthinkable.
Alex Miller-Mignone is a professional writer and astrologer, author of