I lifted the phrase, “…the world continues to vex good people everywhere,” from the notes associated with the song my son put on the Internet yesterday. Those eight words spoke to me, and described my feeling that we are being swept toward an uncertain, albeit, monumental moment. In the era of the COVID -19 pandemic, wildfires in the West, a staggering economy, an unwarranted nomination to the Supreme Court, and an election that may lead to insurrection, being “vexed” may be an under call.
In line with being “vexed,” earlier in the day my wife announced that Tuesday was the beginning of a three week retrograde Mercury. A retrograde Mercury has become a “vexing” period of time for me. If nothing else it can be a test of my marriage. This last retrograde of the year is like no other previous retrograde. Can you believe that the retrograde ends on November 3rd, Election Day? Will the retrograde insure that for the next three weeks we will be vexed? Will chaos be the flavor of the time? Will we be even more vexed on the morning of November 4th?
I knew nothing about the meaning of a retrograde Mercury until my wife and I got together almost forty years ago. Her concern about “retrogrades” was one of the first things of importance in her world that she tried to pass on to me. I’ve mentioned retrogrades before, but just in case you are in the same state of “unknowing” that defined me in 1981, or did not read the definition from the Farmer’s Almanac associated with the first link, I will use a few lines to pass on to you what I learned from her.
Mercury does seem to move “retrograde” in relationship to the earth a few times a year in their individual travels around the sun. That is a fact. The consequence of that fact brings us to the intersection of science and astrology. It is not hard to imagine that there may be some associated physical phenomena that may occur with this observable event. Just creating the idea in people’s minds that something unusual or problematic could happen, may, because its effect on our emotions, cause bad things to happen. My wife and many others who do give some credence to the stars and the planets, and their impact on our actions and fates, do believe that “bad things” happen during “retrogrades.” Mechanical things are prone to break. Travelers encounter obstacles. Misunderstandings occur in interpersonal communications and contracts. Everyday during the “retrograde” you are living in a “red zone.” I wonder what happens in elections that occur during a retrograde. My wife’s philosophy is that the best defense for a retrograde is to act before it occurs, or to wait it out. Once the retrograde is upon you, wait until it over to act, or if you must act, act with extreme caution. Make no plans. Make no big purchases. Buy nothing mechanical, because if you do, there is a great chance of the product being a “lemon.” Sign no contracts. Expect to lose your luggage or have your flight cancelled if you travel.
When I was first exposed to these concerns my response was in essence: “Life goes on during the retrograde. How am I supposed to conduct my life during this time?” The answer was essentially that I should delay everything that could be delayed. I was told that if I must do something, do it with extreme caution. It is a time to re-view, re-think, re-consider, before acting.
My wife pointed out that an approaching retrograde can offer some strategic benefits. At one moment in the seventies she needed to buy a new car. She usually does her homework and seeks the best deal. She was haggling with the dealer over when he could deliver the car she wanted when she realized that a retrograde was approaching. She got the deal she wanted when she told the salesman that he must deliver the car and complete the transaction before the retrograde, or she would walk away, and he would lose the deal. Score one for the retrograde!
I found a reassuring and humorous piece about retrogrades on the Internet yesterday that was written by Jorge Espinoza for The Rocky Mountain Collegian. The piece was entitled “Horoscopes 10/12/2020: What to expect this Mercury retrograde.” His first line is ominous:
It’s that time of the year again! Mercury is stationing retrograde Oct. 13 through Nov. 3. Your life is officially falling apart.
But that is tongue in cheek as revealed by what follows. What follows also matches my wife’s approach to managing the retrograde,
First and foremost, it’s not the reason your life’s falling apart — that’s most likely your fault. Mercury simply represents how we communicate our ideas, learn new things and share information. Any problems you’re having outside of communication have nothing to do with Mercury retrograde.
Retrograde is simply planets switching directions. From our perspective on Earth, there are periods of time where specific planets appear to be orbiting backward. Think of looking at a fan. If you stare at it too long, it can look like the blades are spinning in a different direction. As technology has advanced, it’s been noted that planets don’t actually orbit backward. However, astrologers still track when planets seem to switch direction.
Mercury goes retrograde three to four times a year, so you’ve survived plenty of them. Don’t let this one scare you. Mercury will be retrograding in the sign of Scorpio, so expect secrets to be revealed and feelings to be hurt.
As with all retrogrades, this is a time to pause and reflect. Mercury retrograde teaches us to slow down. Patience will be key to getting through these next three weeks. Proofread your texts, make pros-and-cons lists and never say yes to anything without thinking about all the details. Most importantly, give yourself grace. You will mess up, and that’s OK.
Maybe, I am making a mistake. I always interpret retrogrades in terms of their potential impact on me. Perhaps, it is not me or the Democratic candidates in the upcoming election that should give some extra thought to things during the retrograde. Could it be that it is the Republicans who should “ re-view, re-think, re-consider, before acting.” Should I find hope and reassurance in the words, “Mercury will be retrograding in the sign of Scorpio, so expect secrets to be revealed and feelings to be hurt?” Will secrets be revealed that block the pathway of Amy Coney Bennett to the Supreme Court? Or is it that the president’s financial obligations will be finally revealed during this retrograde, and it will be easy to see why he behaves like a sycophant around Vladimir Putin?
I hope that LIndsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the Republicans in the Senate realize that they are doing their reprehensible deed in the midst of a retrograde, and that their unseemly plans could blow up in their faces. As fate would have it eight of the twenty two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are up for reelection in 2020, and five of the eight are Republicans. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Majority Leader and the master schemer behind this embarrassing moment is also up for reelection, and nothing would be happening if it were not for his willingness to disregard his own pronouncement from 2016 that in the year before a presidential election seats on the Supreme Court that become vacant should not be filled until after the election.
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has an opinion piece in the paper today entitled: “This isn’t a confirmation. It’s a referendum on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.” He makes many quotable points, but the one that I will pass on to you is:
…several Republicans used their opening statements to accuse Democrats of an “absolute disgrace” (Cornyn), a “freak show” (Kennedy) and a “crusade to tarnish a nominee” (Chuck Grassley, Iowa). Barrett? No, they were all talking about Brett M. Kavanaugh — two years ago.
The Republicans conjured these fantasies, no doubt, because the reality of this confirmation is indefensible. Republicans shut down the Senate floor because of a covid-19 outbreak that apparently began at Barrett’s nomination ceremony at the White House. But they are still pushing through, mere days before an election that Trump appears likely to lose, a nominee who Trump hopes, by his own account, will help him delegitimize the election result.
Last month, shortly after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USA Today published an analysis of the vulnerability of the five Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee who are up for reelection. These comments are a month old and things may have changed, but all five of them are in close races for reelection. I hope that they will have the wisdom to consult a reputable astrologer before charging headlong into actions that should contribute to their individual defeats. I have especially harsh feelings for Graham, Ernst, and Cornyn based purely on their performance in the Senate. Nothing personal. But none of them come close to the “supreme enabler,” Mitch McConnell. Here are the thumbnail descriptions offered by USA Today on each of the five.
Lindsey Graham
Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is running against Democrat Jaime Harrison. An August Quinnipiac University poll found the two candidates nearly tied, while a Morning Consult poll showed Graham ahead by one point in a state Trump won by 14 percentage points in 2016.
Following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, Graham, said the Supreme Court vacancy should not be filled until after the election. On Saturday, Graham tweeted he “fully understood” where President Donald Trump was coming from after the president said Republicans should move to fill the Supreme Court vacancy “without delay.”
Graham did more than make a comment in 2016. As recently as 2018, he reiterated in an interview with The Atlantic that he stood by his 2016 statements, and if he were to change his mind on his stance on naming justices prior to a presidential election, he said once again, “You can use my words against me!”
Joni Ernst
Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa is running against Democrat Theresa Greenfield in a close race. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released Saturday showed Ernst, a first-term senator, down by three points.
Ernst faced criticism for a fundraising email sent by her campaign shortly after Ginsburg’s death that mentioned a vacancy on the Supreme Court bench, according to ABC affiliate KCRG.
Soon after Ginsburg disclosed another battle with cancer In July, Ernst said the Senate should hold hearings on any Supreme Court nomination made by Trump, even if he loses the 2020 election.
“(If) it is a lame-duck session, I would support going ahead with any hearings that we might have. And if it comes to an appointment prior to the end of the year, I would be supportive of that,” Ernst said during a taping of the Iowa Press show on Iowa PBS.
Thom Tillis
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina was elected to the Senate in 2014 but faces a tough race against Democrat Cal Cunningham. Cunningham held a roughly 3 percentage point lead over Tillis in an Emerson College poll last month.
Tillis said he would support Trump’s Supreme Court nominee in a statement released Saturday.
“There is a clear choice on the future of the Supreme Court between the well-qualified and conservative jurist President Trump will nominate and I will support, and the liberal activist Joe Biden will nominate and Cal Cunningham will support, who will legislate radical, left-wing policies from the bench,” Tillis said.
John Cornyn
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is serving his third term in the Senate. He will face-off against Democrat and U.S. Air Force veteran M.J. Hegar in November.
Cornyn voted to nominate Trump’s picks, Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court in 2017 and 2018.
Ben Sasse
First-term Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska is running against Democratic opponent Chris Janicek. Sasse also voted to confirm Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
The three Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are also up for reelection are Chris Coons of Delaware, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Cory Booker of New Jersey. All of them are headed for likely reelection. Kamala Harris is also on the committee and is obviously not running for the Senate.
According to the article, Dick Durbin has expressed hope for a long shot. Maybe he knows about retrogrades.
“If four Republican Senators commit not to vote to fill this Supreme Court vacancy until after the presidential inauguration, then the voices of the American people will have a chance to be heard,”…
The smart money says that the judge will be confirmed. If so, my hope is that the undecided voters will use the confirmation and the audacity of McConnell as good reason to send the Republicans into a minority position that will remind them in the future that actions have consequences, and that one should be very careful during a “retrograde.”
Given the president’s loose relationship with science and facts, and his attraction to quacks who have alternative views of the world, I am surprised that he is not paying some attention to the potential downside of a retrograde. He apparently thinks that “he defeated” the virus. He promises us that he will make the medicines he received available to everyone. Will that happen soon? Experts say that is unlikely because of the production and distribution issues of monoclonal antibodies, and then there is the cost of his treatment. It is possible that in time, every patient may get the same treatment, just not as fast as the president did. There is always the issue of cost and access. Will he extending the promise of better outcomes like his through the availability of the treatment that he got because of his position and privilege to everyone, including those who endure healthcare inequality and the downside of the social determinants of health, or was it a lie, or just a promise to his base? What is the president doing to improve access to care? How do you go from attempting to gut the ACA and depriving tens of millions of currently insured Americans coverage, to promising everyone an expensive management of their COVID infection? His strengths do not include the ability to re-view, re-think, or re-consider, before acting.
Details are of little consequence to a president who is running scared, and the deniers who idolize him. He was back on the campaign trail yesterday with a huge rally in Sanford, Florida. His crowd is pictured in today’s header. To the chagrin of Dr. Fauci, Trump has several similar rallies coming up soon. What is amazing is that his own infection has given him no insight into his responsibility to demonstrate rational behavior. It is vexing, indeed, to see and hear such behavior coming from the one individual who has the office and the influence to make a difference.
There are at least three recurrent themes that Trump and his alternative mouthpieces use that vex me no end. First, is the comment that in 47 months he has done more for America than Joe Biden has done in 47 years. That piece of campaign lying doesn’t even deserve comment, but repeating it frequently, and having his surrogates, like Mike Pence, repeat it every time they open their mouths could make a difference to some confused independent voter somewhere.
The second thing that irks me is his denial and misrepresentation of the responsibility for his failures of management during the pandemic. I can’t stand hearing him claim that his administration has saved millions of lives, even though 215,000 have died, and his denial of the impact of his mismanagement of the economy drives me up the wall. Just yesterday, David Cutler, an eminent Harvard economist with extensive experience in healthcare economics, and Larry Summers, former Harvard President, Former Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, and Director of the National Economic Council for the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2011 published evidence in JAMA, that under Trump the administration’s management of the pandemic has cost the nation the equivalent of 90% of one year’s annual production,16 Trillion dollars. That is an average loss of $200,000 for every family of four. It is more money than we have spent fighting in the Middle East since 2003. It is the biggest national loss since the Great Depression. Comparisons to the rest of the world quickly undermine Trump’s unfounded claim that he has done a great job. Current death counts are climbing from 215,000 with perhaps as many as 200,000 more on the horizon as infection rates are rising across the country.
Third, his attempt to associate Biden/Harris with the radical left, “Antifa,” and communism in general is unfounded and slanderous. These are lies with legs that I hope most voters ignore, but the remaining three weeks of the election will occur during a retrograde, and the outcome is not yet settled, nor is the outcome of the outcome.
Now that he is back on the campaign trail he is lying with a vengeance. Today’s New York Times contains an article by Linda Qiu entitled: Trump’s False Claims as He Resumes His Rallies After Hospitalization: In Florida, the president made a series of inaccurate claims about his election opponent, the coronavirus pandemic, the Nobel Peace Prize and Cuba, among other topics.The bottom line to the article is that as usual he told some whoppers, and there will certainly be more to come. I am delighted that the next “faux debate” has been cancelled. It would have been a very vexing experience.
My wife and I requested absentee ballots long before we departed for California. We did not get them before we began our trip west. We had a friend checking our mail and she FedExed them to us in California at some expense. We have now voted–before the “retrograde.” Voting has begun in many places. At least ten million votes have already been cast before the retrograde. I found an article that describes how each state will handle voting by mail. In New Hampshire our vote will be counted by election day.
It goes without saying that voting as early as you can is a good strategy. It is also important to emphasize that the future of healthcare is also connected to down ballot races all the way down to state and local government. I hope that as you vote you will remind yourself of the Triple AIm, the Social Determinants of Health, and healthcare inequities, as well as the environment, and the Black Lives Matter movement. All of these things are connected. They are not connected by left leaning conspiracies. They are connected by the attitudes that determine a humane society.
For many years I have told friends and colleagues that they should look west to see what weather is coming, and look west to see what our world will be like in 10 or twenty years. As my wife and I drove across the country, for much of the way I had the sense that we were going back in time. Now in California, what I see encourages me. I see “Black Lives Matter” signs on many lawns as I take my walks. Trump signs are rare, and when I see them they are often attached to a delapolated pickup truck or a rusted out RV. People in my son’s neighborhood came close to losing their homes to the recent fires. The fire was stopped within a mile of my son’s home. Everywhere there are “thank you signs” for the firefighters and the first responders. The community seems to be one where people care about issues beyond their own self interest.
There are three first class providers of healthcare in the Santa Cruz area: Kaiser, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and Dignity Health. Anyone of them would be an asset to any community in America. Having all three is amazing. I am encouraged when I think about the worst possible election outcome that the majority of Americans are not buying what Trump is selling. I am reminded by what I see in California that the strength of America is bottom up. It is helpful when there is an alignment between central leadership and local action, but facts, science, and a desire for health flourish in places where the lies and misinformation that the president offers have always generated the scorn and resistance they deserve. That is reassuring, and I want to believe that retrograde, or no retrograde, good sense will trump Trump’s misguided efforts to co opt our collective future for the personal gain of himself and a few others.
“Vexed” is not synonymous with defeated. Vexation is a call for resistance and persistence. I hope that the sum total of the psychology and mystery of the retrograde Mercury that covers the remainder of the election process will disproportionately favor those who care about the future of everyone, and I long for the day when we can say that we are living up to the full meaning of “these truths.”
