In Search of the Soul of America

by Eric Francis Coppolino, September 28, 2011

The Sun recently entered Libra, but through this year there has been some unusual astrology happening two signs away, in Sagittarius. It involves several of the recently discovered small planets that orbit our Sun, aligned with a strange body called the Great Attractor. The alignment is precise to the degree right now. I associate it with a kind of toxic spirituality that is on the loose lately. Taken one way, it can manifest as the desire for healing, or if taken unconsciously, as some inflamed, weird ideas and behavior. The grouping involves a little Pluto-like planet called Ixion, which I associate with the lack of moral or ethical consciousness.

We’re seeing this blatantly in modern politics. The campaign of 2012 is well underway, and so far it’s all about who you can screw over the worst. I know you may not watch the news, and if that is true, I can tell you that the political environment would qualify as unconscious, inflamed, and weird lately. I am as disgusted by politics as anyone right now. But as I was watching one of these “jobs creation” discussions recently, peering through the language and the deception, it occurred to me that politicians get away with what they do because most people don’t understand politics—that is, how the game is played, and who influences it from backstage.
 Most people don’t even know that it’s a show. Usually, you have to participate directly or watch from the first few rows to notice. It requires some experience to see the Democrat/Republican game for what it really is, and what it has become. Though the parties have different outward positions, most of the time those differences are about as meaningful as dividing the summer camp into the Blue and Gold teams for the mock Olympics. 

The summer camp is capitalism itself. Wall Street sets the most basic terms of our society, which you can tell (in part) because there is a stock ticker on every TV station’s news ticker rather than, say, the voting record of our representatives. Political campaigns are now all about the money invested by people who purchase influence, and the supposed issues we debate are a ruse. The flow of cash, lots of cash, determines nearly every decision. The ongoing debate over eliminating Social Security—I cannot believe I’m even typing those words—is about who gets their hands on that huge fund (Wall Street wants it desperately).

In order to convince us that we need to take away benefits that people have paid for their whole lives, and that every employer pours money into every week, we have to be convinced that it’s a bad thing, and to do that, we need to chill down the emotional temperature of society. We all have to be desensitized to one another’s needs. Usually this is done indirectly.

You may have seen a video of the discussion during one of the recent debates when eternal presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul was asked what society should do if someone who was healthy and didn’t think he needed health insurance (and didn’t want to pay the $300 a month) ended up in a coma. Should society keep him alive? The audience cheered at the possibility that he should be allowed to die. 

This was not at some homespun backwater political rally—it was at a Politico/CNN event, and the questioner was Wolf Blitzer. At the prior debate, something even weirder happened. Brian Williams, the anchor of NBC News, asked candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry: “Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any governor in modern times. Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?” At the mention of the executions, the audience sent up a cheer, during which Williams paused—then he finished his sentence. I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised, but the little kid in me feels nauseous that people would cheer about executions. Of course, we’ve all seen the “pro death” rallies in prison parking lots as someone receives the lethal injection, and throughout history executions have often been public spectacles. Perry replied, “No sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, very clear process in place of which when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States if that’s required. But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you’re involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is you will be executed.”