We Are All in This Together

As we begin to reflect on what we are living through these days, I am struck by how much that now familiar phrase embodies the current planetary activity. There is another one as well, “Alone Together”; either way the sentiment is the same.

We have had to separate ourselves in order to re-feel our humanity. Saturn is the planet of separation and contraction. Aquarius the sign of the brotherhood of man, as in we are all in this together-regardless of any religious, social, economic, racial or political biases. Aquarius is the sign ruling circulation. We have stopped circulating.

Saturn will be in Aquarius until July 2nd, when he backtracks into Capricorn until December 18th. So this is just a “coming attraction”for the 2 1/2 year passage of Saturn through Aquarius ending March 2023.

The last time Saturn was in Aquarius was 30 years ago from February 1991-January 29th 1994. You might remember what you were doing then and what area of your life was being affected. These few months until July 2nd offers a preview of your future years.

Saturn entered Aquarius on March 23rd, when the cancellations and quarantines became national news and we all were grappling with what was/is happening; the sudden job losses with loss of income, coupled with employer sponsored health insurance policies being dropped, coupled with having to remain at home with, if lucky, work from home, with or without suddenly-home schooled children, coupled with fear of infecting elders and other immune system compromised friends and family, coupled with the slowness of Congress and the Treasury to actually get the funds out to the small business and the arduous process to sign up for unemployment benefits, coupled with the long lines for food assistance, coupled with the empty store shelves, coupled with farmers in the mid-west turning under mature produce and pouring gallons of milk a day to the ground because the demand has shrunk and the distribution lines have been disrupted, coupled with an uptick in domestic violence incidents, coupled with the inability to walk into an AA meeting, coupled with the heroism of the health care providers, coupled with the down-tick of other accidents and violent crimes needing a hospital visit, coupled with concrete evidence of the ineffectiveness of our current health care system in providing even the basic protective gear for our health care workers, coupled with the ability of the wealthy to retreat to their second homes and “easy” social distancing, leaving those essential workers in the cities providing the basic services that the more fortunate cannot do with out, but who have not been willing to date, to pass a law granting a national minimum income of $15.00 an hour, coupled with the uncertainty if and when and how it is all going to end.

As we all know things will never go back to the way they were. There is a “new normal”. But we do not know what that will look like-no one does. We are all forced to stay in the present moment and put aside all fear and trepidation of what is coming towards us from the future.

However there are a few signs that this pandemic has woken up a sleeping giant-so to speak. Firstly the Federal Reserve and US Treasury are NOT reacting completely the same way to this crisis as they did to the one in 2008. In 2008 they protected the banks and corporations and let the homeowners go bankrupt and lose their homes. (Although last month the Republicans in the Senate tried to react in the same old way-is this all the know? Do they not see this is a different time?) Wiser minds prevailed who did not want to make the same mistakes again, and passed laws that put the health and survival of individuals, families and small businesses first. Instead of the ‘business as usual” of the “trickle down” economics of the Regan era, we have the “trickle-up” era as Speaker Pelosi termed it.

On watching CNBC, the stock market channel, I was struck by how many of those presenters (Jim Cramer comes to mind-but there are others) who were openly encouraging CEO’s to sign a pledge that they would keep employees on at their own expense. I view this as the very beginning of having a government that is responsible to the will of the people and to the larger social trends.

If you attended or listened to my presentation on 2020 most recently at the Rogers Memorial Library, I mentioned this possibility. According to John Townley and his research as seen on his website, AstroCocktail, ://www.astrococktail.com/news.html, from January 12th 2020 to July 1st 2032, we are going to experience a span of time when- and this would apply to all world governments-those governments would be more in touch with current times and their demands. Townley describes the time before Jan 12th 2020, as a time where “the folks who are running things are out of tune with history and greater social cohesion and thus encouraging destructiveness, often in the name of keeping things safe, stable, or the way they used to be”. This sounds right to me; as does the fact that we are no longer in that time.

I am encouraged that we are in the beginning of a new time period by the words: “I think the Republican attempt to suppress votes in Wisconsin backfired profoundly”, spoken by Ben Wikler, the Chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party on the results from the April 7th election. Wisconsin voters stood on line in social distancing mode, risking their lives in this corona virus pandemic to keep democracy alive in the state.

This is an even more important achievement because the Republican majority in the Wisconsin Legislature sued to make sure the election was held. The case went all the way up to the US Supreme Court, whose conservative leanings, against the wishes of the Governor who feared for the safety of those standing on the long lines, mandated that the election go forward. (See The New Yorker Today’s piece “How Democrats Won Big in Wisconsin” by Isaac Chotiner, April 14th 2020)

I am also encouraged by the problems the oil/gas companies are having. When oil prices were $55 dollars a barrel in 2019, only a few of the top-tier fracking companies were profitable. Oil prices today are trying to get to $20 a barrel., with production shut down. They were unprofitable before the virus. The fracking process is just too expensive and completely unsustainable. Although the present US Administration cannot imagine a world where gas and oil were not the mainstays of the US economy, the writing is on the wall.

I am also encouraged by the New York Time current ongoing series of “The America We Need”. Today, (April 15th ) there is a piece on climate change entitled: “Think This Pandemic is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/opinion/climate-change-covid-economy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage Written by Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who is the Director of Climate Policy at the Roosevelt Institute. She believes that addressing the climate crisis is a big-enough idea to revive the economy. We just need the political will to move the dinosaurs off the stage; just like they did in Wisconsin last week..