2016 Election Wrap-Up

How Wrong Could I Be?

            Ever since Hillary called Trump and conceded the election at 3 a.m. EST on Nov. 9, I’ve been trying to set down my thoughts in some sort of coherence. The result seemed to me like a disaster. I wasn’t even sure--I’m not sure yet—it wasn’t a coup d’etat.

            Yet even if all that’s true, I have to say I was completely wrong in my own predictions. I thought Hillary was going to win because it was obvious to me she’d won the debates and Trump kept digging his own grave with his sinking reputation—apparently earned—with women.

            I also listened to the pundits, who seemed to know what was going on, and I didn’t know too many people who admitted they were Trump supporters, or if they did I expected it of them.

            So I’m still on a learning curve about who the American people are. Then again, when I hear talk about who Trump is going to help, I hear about janitors and home health workers. Hell, I’m a janitor! Don’t tell me Donald Trump is going to lift me up! That would be a heavier mind-f**k than his winning the goddamn election!

            But I digress.

            I dabble in astrology, so I ran off charts for the candidates as the primaries went on. Interestingly, I found that there’s no certainty about the time Hillary was born, though the date is known.

            Trump’s birth information, on the other hand, is certain because he held up his birth certificate on TV when he announced his candidacy. Another low dig at Obama.

            I ran Trump’s chart on my computer, and the first thing to hit my eye was Pluto, the dark Lord of Death and the Underworld, but also of Rebirth, Resurrection, Transformation. Trump’s Pluto, like all of his generation born between 1940 and 1958, is in the sign of Leo, and in the horoscope I ran Pluto sits right on his rising sign. He’s a Gemini, who some call the con men of the zodiac, with Pluto in Leo rising.

            Immediately I thought I’d found exactly what I feared Donald Trump to be—a dark Lord of Destruction reaching out his hand to grab control of our world—possibly a dictator, probably a criminal, with a highly dramatic public persona. It all fit!

            And he was born at a full Moon eclipse, supporting my conviction that he was emotionally closed, perhaps even psychopathic, and lived for the excitement he could stir up with his Sun-Uranus conjunction in Gemini, inflated to grand proportions by a harmonious connection to jovial and expansive Jupiter, the Lord of Good Luck.

            And also of excess.

            It all confirmed what I believed was happening in this election—a power-hungry Caesar trying to take over the Republic, and all that kept him from his grab was Hillary, a sequel to the scandal-ridden past who no one could get excited about any more.

            I even worked out quite logically that Trump won because, while both of them were ruthless, his had no limits while hers, fierce as it is, did. She would not go nuclear, and he would. Perhaps even did, if that Comey affair has anything to do with it.

            Well, how wrong could I be?

            The original chart I ran was for 9:15 a.m. on June 14, 1946, Queens, NY. But that was wrong. I found that out coincidentally from a YouTube video by Rick Levine, a West Coast astrologer. The chart Trump held up on TV was for 10:54 a.m., which made a significant difference in my interpretation.

            Trump does not have Pluto on his Ascendant after all. Pluto is off by itself, barely operative in his waking consciousness in the 12^th house of spirituality and the deep unconscious.

            For awhile I could hardly believe this. I almost posted my article as it was, arguing that the time I’d used was accurate. But I’m not quite that stupid or stubborn.

            Once I realized I couldn’t post that first article because of its colossal error, I had to scrap it. I thought then I’d write nothing at all. But that didn’t satisfy me either.

            I learned in the few days after the election that, with very few exceptions, everyone I listened to on NPR or watched on network news or followed on the internet was as stunned as I was by the results. We were all thinking the same wrong thing and feeding one another in a loop of error.

            This brought me up against the peculiar coincidence that I’d made an error which caused an objective result confirming exactly what I believed. And I almost hung myself with it.

            What we see in Trump’s correct horoscope is a powerful personality, to be sure, with that same blessing of luck on his wildly intuitive ventures (and con jobs). And there is that full Moon eclipse casting a shadow over his emotions, in some sense sealing them off from his full consciousness.

            It’s also worth noting that he’s got the heavy hand of Saturn in close conjunction with Venus, depressing his love and partnership life in shy, self-protective Cancer. Trump may not necessarily be comfortable with women. But he is not a conduit of dark purposes.

            Had I continued to believe so with my inaccurate horoscope, I would have thought it necessary to join the protests against him.

            Now I see deep irony in those protests. People who howled when Trump said he’d challenge the election if he didn’t win are now in the streets howling because he did.

            It’s all some kind of madness. Trump, whatever his deficits, is not the villain I believed him to be, as confirmed by an inaccurate horoscope. It’s not too far a jump to see the parallel. Just as I created a horoscope that fit my beliefs, so I saw a Trump who also fit my beliefs. And just as my horoscope was inaccurate, so my assumptions about Trump could also very likely be misconstrued.

            I don’t forget his bluffing his way through every debate, and I don’t forget his insults and crude impersonations of people who didn’t deserve his ridicule, and I can’t forget the followers he’s drawn to his campaign. We all know the list: fascists, racists, misogynists, xenophobes, white supremacists, gun nuts, and other uneducated “deplorables.” All of that is very troubling.

            But he is probably not the ring-leader of some dark tide of ignorance about to wash over us all, as I saw in my imagination and became convinced could be real when I cast his horoscope. His inaccurate horoscope.

            So, ready to learn if I must—and accept humiliation if I have to— I admit I misjudged Donald Trump according to my own prejudices, which I believed were more justified than they were. I misperceived the man. I don’t say he’s not a villain, and neither does his horoscope. But he’s not some o’erweening evil coming over the horizon to round up all Democrats and dissenters and send them to work in the coal mines.

            I’m giving Trump the benefit of a huge doubt, stepping back from my short fuse, keeping an eagle eye on what’s going on, taking action where I can. That’s my definition of citizenship after this heart-stopping election.

            But I’m not going to give up on the vision of a free, unified, diverse United States of America.

            Or is that just another error of interpretation?