Is the Country on the Right Track?

I don't know if you've noticed, but people in both parties are already vying to be elected President in 2008. Personally, I don't much care for any election season because I always feel that my TV starts drowning in negative ads during a campaign, and that kind of gets me down. But this past week or so, a couple of people asked me to do some research on stuff that's normally outside my area, mundane astrology or world events astrology. So I did the (minor) research and immediately jumped to the conclusion that whoever is elected in 2008 is going to have his or her hands full. I'll lay out a few thoughts and then you can tell me whether you think I'm crazy or whether the country is on the right track or whether there's going to be some kind of reckoning.

By late 2009, early in the next President's term, Saturn in Libra will be squaring Pluto in Capricorn. Squares are traditionally considered a "bad" aspect, and they're often thought to indicate conflict and miscommunication. Libra and Capricorn are both cardinal, leadership-type signs, so I suppose if you were to take that literally, a square between these two planets would indicate conflict and miscommunication between leaders.

Conflict between world leaders or even various branches of government is not particularly uncommon; in fact, it seems to go on all the time. In fact, conflict is an ongoing part of human life anyway. Still, I wasn't thrilled to see this aspect because Saturn and Pluto were in a bad mood with each other (opposition) during 2001, and 2001 was not a good year. Saturn and Pluto weren't in a particularly good mood with each other during 2002, either.

I don't know whether I am jumping to an unwarranted conclusion to think that the issues raised during the last meeting of Saturn and Pluto during 2001 and 2002 (September 11 and the invasion of Iraq) will be scheduled to come to some kind of new crisis point in 2009 or 2010. On the one hand, they may not. Who knows what will be happening on the world stage then? Maybe something else will have caught our attention.

On the other hand, it seems almost absurd to think that we'll manage to escape without some kind of new crisis point since neither of these situations has really been resolved. Osama bin Laden is still at large; Al Qaeda is still operating, and the violence in Iraq has not ceased. At some point, it seems we'll have to deal with these things.

But Saturn and Pluto are just the beginning. Uranus will edge into another cardinal sign, Aries, a rather aggressive cardinal sign at that, during 2010. By early 2011, we'll have three significant planets in cardinal signs and none of them are seeing eye to eye. This is a level of outer planet disharmony we haven't seen for awhile. By mid 2012, near the end of the next President's new term, Uranus and Pluto will be in exact square to each other.

This is the kind of aspect that doesn't come along too often. According to my quick search, the last time these two planets were in exact square was during the very worst of the Great Depression in 1932. Not a happy time.

This doesn't mean, obviously, that we'll have a replay of the Great Depression during 2012. As far as I know, history never repeats itself quite that exactly. Still, when Uranus and Pluto were conjunct in Virgo during the mid-1960s, the US began an economic downturn that culminated in spiraling inflation and eventually wage and price controls imposed by then President Nixon. Young people may not remember the economic woes of the early 1970s, but boomers should.

So what do you think? Is the US economy so fundamentally sound that significant economic troubles are out of the question? Or will deficits and other fiscal mismanagement catch up with us during the next President's term?

There are other possibilities of course. I did a quick and dirty count, and it appears to me that Uranus and Pluto will reach an exact square configuration 8 times over the course of about four years. That seems like an awful lot of times for two very energetic and powerful planets to be in an aspect of conflict.

What it makes me think is that...well, decisions have consquences. Pandora's box can be opened. In fact, the energy of Uranus square Pluto reminds me very much of Pandora's box, the metaphor being that of unleashing forces over which you have no real control or understanding.

The decisions world leaders have been making since 2001 or so will eventually play out and we'll see, I suppose, who made good decisions and who made bad ones. That's what I'm thinking these squares indicate, although I could be wrong. But it seems to me that decisions, political decisions, do have consquences, and that eventually those consequences must come to light.

These are global aspects, not aspects that affect the US specifically. I did read some commentary by a couple of astrologers who thought that the US chart would be particularly affected, but I'm not an expert on that.

What I am wondering instead, is whether or not the US leaders have been making good decisions (particularly with regard to terrorism and Iraq) over the past 5 or 6 years or whether they haven't. Are we on the right track? Will we escape unscathed during the next President's term and beyond, because we've been conducting our affairs with wisdom, prudence, and insight?

Or will we have holy hell to pay because we've been doing the opposite? I occasionally read polls that seem to indicate that a fairly hefty percentage of Americans now think it was a mistake to invade Iraq at all. An even larger percentage seem to be of the opinion that whatever the merits of the initial decision, the subsequent events have not been handled particularly well.

With so many Americans seeming rather unhappy with their leaders (particularly the current President I guess, although the recent Congressional elections indicated voters weren't particularly thrilled with their legislators either), it makes me wonder if we aren't due to reap some consequences of what our leaders have sown.

What do you think? Do you think the upcoming aspects indicate that at some point we must all face the realities our leaders are currently creating?

Do you think they mean nothing at all? Do you think they mean something else entirely? Do you think our country is on the right track?