Political Waves

By Judith Gayle Political Waves
http://polwaves.planetwaves.net/

THE EXTREME nature of our many personal and political challenges wasreflected in the New Moon eclipse on Sep. 11 complete with a GrandCross in mutable signs -- a triple whammy; this was the companion toour Full Moon lunar eclipse on Aug. 28, popping us into a petri dishof dramatic possibilities.

Add to this week's bombshell the emotional anniversary of the Towersfalling and the long-anticipated Petraeus Report that, as expected,"stays the course" and hopes to pour enough soothing rhetoric on ourtattered sensibilities to put us back to sleep for another six months.Toss in news of a declining dollar that hasn't been this devalued in15 years and a flattened housing bubble that's put even the McMansionsin jeopardy, mix it with talk of a coming recession and you've gotquite a potent little angst-producing cocktail -- a Stinger comes tomind. Oh, and let's not forget our covert provocations with Iran, andthe overt establishment of a base four miles from the Iraq/Iran borderand moving in British troops. Hey, barkeep -- make that a double

With explosive Uranus opposing the Virgo eclipse, and squared byaggressive Mars, war and conflict is much on our plate -- the fourthleg of our cross is an expansive Jupiter, inflating the issues like aJolly Jump at a kid's birthday party. Uranus is the pin that canreduce all that hot air to a crumpled puddle of vinyl, of course --just as General Dave prepared to give his report on the Hill, forinstance, news came that two of the seven daring soldiers who wrote arecent and controversial New York Times editorial questioning "themission" had been killed; a third had received a head wound as thearticle was being written. And as Petraeus spoke (not sworn in, by theway) to the Senate about Bush's "largely successful" surge, insurgentsrocked US headquarters in Baghdad with mortar fire, killing one andwounding 11. Reality check, eh? If you' re just learning about this asyou read this article, you can thank the Holy Trinity of the Bushadministration -- unitary Executive, secretive Pentagon and complacentmedia.

We've come to our turning point, now. We've all had enough; we can'tsee a future ahead that offers us easy passage and we're looking toend this forward thrust into continued mayhem. The Virgo Saturncertainly offers us a way backward into a working relationship withreality, although Virgo tends to nitpick, to seize a project in itsteeth and shake it until it's dead; with the overwhelming amount ofbroken promises, systems and social contracts that we see around us,how...what...to pick for this intensity of attention is problematic.Throwing things into reverse will make us look in the rearview mirror,and that comes with this warning: Objects in mirror are closer thanthey appear. For a nation that's spent years refusing to look at howbad things were getting, turning its gaze to all that's crumblingaround it is daunting, to say the least. And hitting on all pistons,the cosmic engine driving this energy is working not only globally and nationally, but personally, giving us hard realities about our ownlives and habits.