No poetry or inspiration today, friends – looking for the crack where the light gets in which I usually try to do in difficult times can’t change the basic facts on the ground here in the United States. The culture of the country is based on guns, and it’s hard to imagine that this will change. “The Shot Heard Round the World” began the American revolutionary war. Guns were needed to subdue the native peoples in order to fulfill the Manifest Destiny of the Sagittarian ascendant given to the signing of the Declaration of Independence (Sibley chart).

The roots of gun culture in the United States seems to be less about sportsmanship (really, how sporting is it to use an assault rifle to go deer hunting?) and more about fear of the “other” – the native peoples, the freed slaves, the rise of the Mexican and Black minorities to claim more equality. “This use of a friend/enemy distinction to crystalize a political identity is a well-known authoritarian technique, popularized by fascist theorist Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political (1932). According to Schmitt, sovereignty is the power to decide who is an enemy, a category of person against whom it is justified to use lethal violence. ” read more in this excellent article.

I have written many posts after these mass shootings, including this one in which a commenter said “Ask someone who was protecting their business or home during the LA riots why someone might need an ‘assault rifle’.”  All of this fear is very good for business, and even though the clout of the National Rifle Association may be weakening, its symbolism is still strong as we can see from the unabashed and uncompromising call for more guns at this weekend’s NRA convention in Houston just after the Uvalde massacre. And guns have become an integral part of the platform of today’s Republican party.

We are in the throes of the US Pluto return, the return of Pluto to its position in the second house of the US chart. Money and the breakdown of our economic system is a big part of how this seems to be manifesting. Rent increases are rampant which leads to increases in the homeless population. The size of the Mexican-American minority is growing. The rule of the white majority is under threat, and the reaction is more violence, leading to more gun purchases. The rise of gun ownership among Black peoples and other minorities is also growing.

At some point this will have to stabilize, but the Pluto return doesn’t end until the fall of 2023. Pluto forces us to dig into the underworld of the dark matter, the dark aspects of the psyche and the culture that hides under rocks and in all of the dark places until it can be exposed to light and transmuted. The 2022 mid-term elections fall right in the middle of the Pluto return, and the leadership that is elected at that time will have a significant effect on that transformational process. In addition, Pluto is completing its journey through Capricorn, the sign of social structures, which has brought about an increase in authoritarianism around the world. Increased social chaos breeds desire for greater authoritarianism and I think we are seeing this pretty much everywhere.

I am at a loss to provide inspiration today, but I also don’t want to fall into the depths of despair. I tend to be a pragmatist by nature, and these are the facts as I see them. At least with the astrological lens we can see why energies are manifesting a certain way and when the pressure is likely to ease. Now let’s get to work to create as much fair play in our communities as we can, and elect strong leaders who can help to defuse the growing tension rather than further inflame it.

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