In 1968, the musical “Hair” opened off-Broadway, and soon was on Broadway for nearly 2000 performances. In 1979, the book and music by Gerome Ragni and James Rado were made into a film. Between theater and film, it brought into popular consciousness the notion of the Aquarian Age, which astrologers had anticipated for centuries. And although astrologers didn’t necessarily agree about when it would start, a significant majority said that would be January 2023. We’re in it.
This song from the musical describes what the Aquarian Age is about:
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius
It has been over a thousand days since the planets all fell into alignment. Most of our obsessions at this time are hardly full of harmony, trust, or the mind’s true liberation, and we have more falsehoods and derisions than we could possibly stand. However, we are in a state of transition, between the last age and the new one, and a human condition that takes centuries to build isn’t discarded all that easily.
At this moment in time, we are living in a world where the government has ditched the Constitution for the Seven Deadly Sins, while calling themselves Christian and doing the opposite of what Christ stood for. They are destroying the corner of the world that gave us Jesus, plus any other corner providing filthy lucre.
All the deadliest sins are well represented in the capital. Lust: The Epstein Files; gluttony, the chief executive who gets two scoops of ice cream, while everyone else gets one; greed, the tech bros who want all the money and control, the crypto market, late-stage capitalism, and people who are bought; sloth, the chief executive who falls asleep in meetings and golfs constantly at taxpayer expense; wrath, the kind of anger that starts wars and sees the Other as enemies; envy, for people who get the Nobel Peace Prize, and starting wars to show who’s important.
Then there’s pride. The administration’s cast of characters presents as full of pride, but it’s false. A person who has done something good for the world can be genuinely proud of what they’ve been able to do to help their fellow humans, from curing a disease to helping elderly neighbors. Their world is full of love. People who are full of hate are so often coping with insecurity, needing their own make-up studio or office full of golden trophies to countermand self-loathing. At worst, our government is full of sociopaths, who love inflicting cruelty.
Formerly, in America, middle class people could buy houses, send kids to college, retire comfortably, and so on. It was perhaps the rise of the tech industry that was the kiss of death for capitalism, when suddenly money stopped being even remotely reasonably distributed, and the richest people profited from the products we were forced to need. The middle class shrank, the lower class exploded, and the billionaire class had everything. As Bernie Sanders pointed out at the No Kings rally in St. Paul, the top 1% of Americans has more than the bottom 93%, a fact that has no conceivable justification.
It’s beyond awful. The daily news is horrific. Every day we face the embarrassment of a leader who has lower than average intelligence and multiple psychological diagnoses, spending gratuitous billions terrorizing others. His own country struggles and he pays for his cruelty with further cruelty, cutting our already insufficient safety net so he can afford to kill people he doesn’t like. If the Devil really exists, he’s probably an advisor to the president. But as hard as it may be to deal with the horror of America’s current governing, there may be an extremely weird silver lining.
Yes, a silver lining. We’re led by a guy so terrible—who was convicted of 34 felonies before he won reelection—that he has alienated too many, including some of his MAGA diehards. Republican candidates are losing special elections all over the country, including the part of Florida that contains Mar-a-Lago, where a female Democrat won an election, the first Democratic win there in over half a century. He’s infuriated the farm lobby by sending ICE after farm workers, or any Latinos, and killing their markets, losing two demographics at once—farmers and Latinos. He’s infuriated women by demanding they’re registered to vote under the name on their birth certificates and suppressing them as much as possible. He’s screwed everyone who lost their ACA insurance. Students who mercifully had their loans relieved under Biden are now hearing that he’s going to re-instate their debt with a more expensive payment program, so he’s lost them, if he ever had many of them to begin with. Scientists and medical professionals are furious at his stupidity, criminalization of life-saving abortions for pregnant women, anti-vaccine policies, and cutting funding for research. Academics hate him for destroying schools and limiting what they can teach. The ousted professionals in the Pentagon are enraged by his illegal and ill-conceived military actions. Et cetera. He has few friends left, except the tech bros who bought him, because with enough money funneled into his pocket, he would let them turn the US into the Network State they covet.
Well, you might say, there’s MAGA. But although they love him for his racism and sexism, there’s one thing they despise: sexual abuse of children. So, when the unredacted Epstein files finally see the light of day, he’ll have lost them, too.
The only way he can win an election is cheating, and there are still unanswered questions about the swing state votes in 2024. Musk even hinted publicly that he could go to jail over that, whatever that was. We’ll find out.
But here’s the silver lining: it’s that the corruption, pedophilia, depravity, lawlessness, stupidity, lies, and cruelty of this administration took barely over a year to completely disgust us, as seen in the No Kings events drawing millions. (Historically, we know that when protests draw 3.5% of the population, dictatorships collapse. In this country, it would take about 13 million protesters at once. We can do that.) Democrats could retake Congress, too.
And then what will happen?
There will be impeachment, and then the trials, Nuremberg 2.0. Career civil servants will replace the amateurs. A lot of monsters will go to jail, or perhaps they could be deported to detention centers surrounded by moats filled with alligators in the Amazon. Or perhaps a tall concrete wall, surrounded by guard stations, could be built around Mar-a-Lago and they could all be interned there, with no one to provide services and no contact with the outside world. Just imagine.
Inside the concrete wall, it would be a mess in no time, but the outside wouldn’t be much better. A lot was destroyed in rhe months since the last inauguration, and it’s a perfect time to rebuild things right. There will probably be a Constitutional Convention, and with the con artists de-fanged and removed, intellectuals, scientists, academics, sociologists, psychologists, artists, and visionaries would be part of the discussion of what to do next.
If you start with obviously useful agreements, like Medicare for All, you give everyone an immediate yes. Universal Basic Income is another popular yes. Childcare, solar energy, education, environmental clean-up are all things that most people want, putting all voices on the same team, working together, setting new priorities for the richest country in the world. There will no doubt be people who disagree with each other about some things. But are white supremacists going to turn down Medicare for All, a couple of thousand extra dollars a month, free solar energy, public childcare and education, etc. to keep their prejudices visible? And if, in fact, your government is really making your life easier and better, might some of the anger that breeds hostile attitudes seem less important?
And suddenly, if the people who shape the New America make life better for the people, what do you have? A lot more harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust resurgent. Our minds spared so much from the anxieties and stress of modern life can find some mental liberation. Maybe we’ll see some golden living visions, and we’ll certainly have fewer falsehoods and derisions, as we lurch into the Age of Aquarius.
When things were even remotely tolerable, Americans could just accept the status quo. But when the status quo became intolerable, people got off the sofa and into the streets, including lots of people who had never protested before. The outrage is massive. So, we might look at this administration and its cruelties as the one intolerable thing that made change mandatory and opened the door for a much, much better world. It’s been so awful that the need to get rid of the sociopaths at the helm became urgent, and that’s the extremely weird silver lining. It won’t last long now.
Proust Said That © 